William Barr (4)

In which a disillusioned supporter of a (fairly) big club, Norwich City, spends the better part of a season watching football at the lower division grounds of England's League Two, i.e., the League's lowest division. The author, talented, articulate and witty, checks a lot of boxes; he tries to speak with a supporter or club official every week, usually describes the town and the club's history a bit, shares the weather and the condition of the facilities, and, especially, provides a match account, incorporating hilarious descriptions of the yobbos and their antics and his weekly rating of the pies. This was almost a perfect book, but his match accounts should have been shorter; too often it resembled reading a newspaper account--years later. He also left this reader with a bad taste by his coda explaining that his running joke about his automatic pie rating scoreboard was, well, a joke. I never dreamed. Explaining a joke is rarely a good idea, and in this case he compounded his error by ridiculing anybody who didn't get the joke. Authors shouldn't be sneering at their readers.… (mehr)