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Books : A Season with Verona
Rating: 
- not what I expected, but the better for it.
This is one strange book. It starts with about fifty pages introducing you to these hard core fans on a long long away game. It's fun and you think. Right, it's going to be one of those books. And instead then it changes, and it changes again and again, with all the weirdest ways of thinking about football or describing games. At first some of it's a bit off-putting and you think maybe it's going to get pseud, but as it goes on, talking about the players, and girl fans, and the football calendar and Italy, you realise what he's really talking about is all the ways football invades you head and what it means that you let it do that and that you experience emotions that maybe have nothing to do with the 'important' things in your life. Anyway, a great book, I really really enjoyed it and read some of the sections twice. Can't understand ..being predictable. Don't think I've ever read a book that turned out to be more different than I first thought.
Rating: - amazing book not only for football fans
As a long term Sheffield Wednesday fan I was most pleased to find this book on the shelf of my favourite bookshop a couple of weeks ago. I've always loved stories about football, but especially about mad football ites, people like myself who follow their beloved team week in and week out. Although I've never been to Verona and I don't know anyone in Italy, I felt like I have an awful lot in common with the people Mr Parks amazingly describes. The excellent thing about this book however, is that even people who are not particularly keen on football, can easily read it. It clearly emerges from the pages of this manuscript that Mr Parks is not only a passionate supporter of Hellas Verona, but also a clever academic. At some stages of the book i envied the author for his incredibly huge ability to describe the emotions us football fans go through during a whole season.
Needless to say that although it is quite a thick book (about 450 pages) I read it in less than two days.
Thanks Mr Parks for sharing your passion with us readers, I wish you all the best for your professional life and your team.
Rating: - The best football book, since Fever Pitch
After reading Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch' many years ago, I felt at the time that no one would ever produce a better novel of this type.Tim Parks has proved me wrong.
Unlike Hornby, Parks does not have the luxury of relying on a lifetime of childhood memories or championship triumphs for material.
Initially I asked myself, how can he write about Hellas Verona without having rheems of material on the club's scudetto (championship) winning season in 1985? Not an easy task, but one which Parks overcomes by going beyond the standard subjects addressed in the pulpable post Hornby contributions of the same genre.
The irrationality of loyalty, local rivalries and the post modern condition associated with violence, constitute standard fare for this type of book, and accordingly Parks, unlike others who have followed the same path, does not disappoint. However, the book's real strength (Mr Hornby et al, please note) is the manner in which it identifies the intracies of Italian history and contemporary life in modern calcio. This is seen, for example, in the case of the Verona supporter who ignores the Italian national team, preferring to concentrate on the exploits of the Rumanian international midfielder (Mutu) who plays for the club. The manner in which Parks does this has as much to do with the strong residual feelings of pre-unification city-state parochialism and incomplete Italian national identity, than any perceived petty fanatacism. All this substance from just one paragraph in the book!
Parks' least generous critics could argue that the book is aided by Hellas Verona's dramatic 2000-2001 season. This is not so, because these events without the analytical context provided by Parks would read like a long (and boring) chronological report. A chronology which this Reggina tiffoso, as evidenced by the book's last chapter, would not bother revisiting if there was not a broader and original tale to be told.
Rating: - A fabulously entertaining, absorbing and exciting read!!
This will surely become one of the legendary books about soccer and about Italy. It is also a brilliantly entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable book that you won't be able to put down even if you have no interest in soccer at all. A long-time resident of Verona, Italy, Tim Parks decides to follow the fortunes of its soccer team through one long, harrowing season that eventually builds to an extraordinary climax. Along the way we are treated to a close-up view of a world that is never described in the tourist brochures. We travel with the most rabid fans as they trek the length and breadth of Italy, and we listen as they tell their stories and share their hopes, dreams and obessions. Parks draws a warmly telling portrait of his cohorts, and builds and intriguing picture of the world they inhabit. Although they are continually accused of racism and a fondness for violence, Parks sets them firmly in a culture which is struggling to absorb ethnic and social change. He has a marvelous feel for the warmth of their camaraderie, their idiosynchrosies and their glorious humanity. Parks also gets to know the players, the management, and the journalists, indeed the whole apparatus of the Italian soccer circus. And he travels Italy as no tourist will ever travel it, escorted by the police through stone throwing mobs into sunblistered stadiums, rolling through long nights in squalid busses listening to the almost mythical sagas of the supporters and flying in luxury with a team of pampered athletes whose trainer seems interested only in thrillers. In short, this is about as rich and wonderful a book as you are ever going to read. Congratulations Mr. Parks and thank you for an amazing treat.
Rating: - Brilliant mix of story and reflection
I've been living in Italy, for ten years now and thought I knew everything about the place, and about football for that matter. This book changed my mind. It really is a fantastic mix of stuff about why we get so involved in football and why the Italians have their own special approach to it. Ten out of ten. And Verona is one of the teams I hate most!
- not what I expected, but the better for it.This is one strange book. It starts with about fifty pages introducing you to these hard core fans on a long long away game. It's fun and you think. Right, it's going to be one of those books. And instead then it changes, and it changes again and again, with all the weirdest ways of thinking about football or describing games. At first some of it's a bit off-putting and you think maybe it's going to get pseud, but as it goes on, talking about the players, and girl fans, and the football calendar and Italy, you realise what he's really talking about is all the ways football invades you head and what it means that you let it do that and that you experience emotions that maybe have nothing to do with the 'important' things in your life. Anyway, a great book, I really really enjoyed it and read some of the sections twice. Can't understand ..being predictable. Don't think I've ever read a book that turned out to be more different than I first thought.
Rating:
- amazing book not only for football fansAs a long term Sheffield Wednesday fan I was most pleased to find this book on the shelf of my favourite bookshop a couple of weeks ago. I've always loved stories about football, but especially about mad football ites, people like myself who follow their beloved team week in and week out. Although I've never been to Verona and I don't know anyone in Italy, I felt like I have an awful lot in common with the people Mr Parks amazingly describes. The excellent thing about this book however, is that even people who are not particularly keen on football, can easily read it. It clearly emerges from the pages of this manuscript that Mr Parks is not only a passionate supporter of Hellas Verona, but also a clever academic. At some stages of the book i envied the author for his incredibly huge ability to describe the emotions us football fans go through during a whole season.
Needless to say that although it is quite a thick book (about 450 pages) I read it in less than two days.
Thanks Mr Parks for sharing your passion with us readers, I wish you all the best for your professional life and your team.
Rating:
- The best football book, since Fever PitchAfter reading Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch' many years ago, I felt at the time that no one would ever produce a better novel of this type.Tim Parks has proved me wrong.
Unlike Hornby, Parks does not have the luxury of relying on a lifetime of childhood memories or championship triumphs for material.
Initially I asked myself, how can he write about Hellas Verona without having rheems of material on the club's scudetto (championship) winning season in 1985? Not an easy task, but one which Parks overcomes by going beyond the standard subjects addressed in the pulpable post Hornby contributions of the same genre.
The irrationality of loyalty, local rivalries and the post modern condition associated with violence, constitute standard fare for this type of book, and accordingly Parks, unlike others who have followed the same path, does not disappoint. However, the book's real strength (Mr Hornby et al, please note) is the manner in which it identifies the intracies of Italian history and contemporary life in modern calcio. This is seen, for example, in the case of the Verona supporter who ignores the Italian national team, preferring to concentrate on the exploits of the Rumanian international midfielder (Mutu) who plays for the club. The manner in which Parks does this has as much to do with the strong residual feelings of pre-unification city-state parochialism and incomplete Italian national identity, than any perceived petty fanatacism. All this substance from just one paragraph in the book!
Parks' least generous critics could argue that the book is aided by Hellas Verona's dramatic 2000-2001 season. This is not so, because these events without the analytical context provided by Parks would read like a long (and boring) chronological report. A chronology which this Reggina tiffoso, as evidenced by the book's last chapter, would not bother revisiting if there was not a broader and original tale to be told.
Rating:
- A fabulously entertaining, absorbing and exciting read!!This will surely become one of the legendary books about soccer and about Italy. It is also a brilliantly entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable book that you won't be able to put down even if you have no interest in soccer at all. A long-time resident of Verona, Italy, Tim Parks decides to follow the fortunes of its soccer team through one long, harrowing season that eventually builds to an extraordinary climax. Along the way we are treated to a close-up view of a world that is never described in the tourist brochures. We travel with the most rabid fans as they trek the length and breadth of Italy, and we listen as they tell their stories and share their hopes, dreams and obessions. Parks draws a warmly telling portrait of his cohorts, and builds and intriguing picture of the world they inhabit. Although they are continually accused of racism and a fondness for violence, Parks sets them firmly in a culture which is struggling to absorb ethnic and social change. He has a marvelous feel for the warmth of their camaraderie, their idiosynchrosies and their glorious humanity. Parks also gets to know the players, the management, and the journalists, indeed the whole apparatus of the Italian soccer circus. And he travels Italy as no tourist will ever travel it, escorted by the police through stone throwing mobs into sunblistered stadiums, rolling through long nights in squalid busses listening to the almost mythical sagas of the supporters and flying in luxury with a team of pampered athletes whose trainer seems interested only in thrillers. In short, this is about as rich and wonderful a book as you are ever going to read. Congratulations Mr. Parks and thank you for an amazing treat.
Rating:
- Brilliant mix of story and reflectionI've been living in Italy, for ten years now and thought I knew everything about the place, and about football for that matter. This book changed my mind. It really is a fantastic mix of stuff about why we get so involved in football and why the Italians have their own special approach to it. Ten out of ten. And Verona is one of the teams I hate most!