Weekend Review - Mon 16th July

• 16th Jul 2007 at 00:19:09 BST by Liam Doyle
• 0 comments

Indians Summers, Althea Gibson and Lewis Hamilton

It's relatively quiet with regard to reviews this week. In anticipation of the forthcoming Test against India, there's an interview with John Wright in The Guardian. Wright has recently released an account - Indian Summers - of his time coaching India and is in that privileged position of being up close to many of that most political of teams. It's got the potential to be a useful insider's account.

Although London already seems but a distant memory, especially for the riders one would think, there's still plenty of interest in and coverage of, Le Tour. The ever reliable Andrew Baker in The Telegraph offers a neat round up of 3 cycling titles - Rough Ride, Put Me Back on My Bike and Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France.

We've all heard of Glorious Goodwood and the Summer Festivals, but if you prefer your Horse Racing a bit more earthy, then Not By A Long Shot might be worth looking at. Although it's been out in the States a while, it attracts a hugely positive review on the Sports Journalists' site. Oh, ignore the bit about buying it from Amazon........

The reviewers in the States have been only marginally more busy than their counterparts in the UK. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of her birth and the 50th anniversary of her victories at Wimbledon and the US Open, two new books are released on Althea Gibson. The books - Playing to Win and Nothing but Trouble - are both aimed at children and are scheduled for release shortly. There's additional information available on the releases over at Publishers Weekly.

There's a review of Seth Mnookin's Feeding The Monster in the NY Times and The Seventh at St Andrews gets a bit of a frosty reception (the author's style rather than anything else) in Publishers Weekly.

Apart from that, the only real news concerns books that aren't yet available. There's news of a forthcoming Christiano Ronaldo title in The Bookseller. It was previously available in Portugal but a repackaged edition, with English translation, is being made available to the UK market. It's not a biography as such and would, I imagine, be more suitable to a younger audience. Still, I can forsee it being requested it should have very strong support in the run up to Christmas.

The other news concerns Lewis Hamilton. Publishers are falling over themselves to try and get a piece of Hamilton and there's a ferocious bidding war for the rights to his story. Sensibly, his advisors seem to be trying to avoid some of the pitfalls that have led others to release "autobiographies" at absurdly young ages. Let's hope that approach continues when the advance reaches stratospheric levels.

Can't wait for the authorised release? Don't worry about that - there's plenty of publishers scheduling books on him regardless and expect that list to grow if he continues in the same vein.

With so many titles trying to get in on the act, you wonder how they're going to be able to differentiate themselves. One way will be to get to market first. Indeed such is the desperation to get first release advantage that some of the books have official release dates of early September, despite the fact that the season will be still be in full swing with as many as 5 races to go. Most are playing safe with a due date of early November, but expect to see plenty of changes to those release dates as the season draws to a close.

Finally, in a completely unrelated piece of news both to sport and books, I should wish Rough Trade good luck with their new venture. It's good to see an independent shop boldly striking back out into the High Street (or slightly off High Street to be more precise in its location). It's welcome and necessary - reclaim the streets!