October Highlights

• 5th Oct 2007 at 01:39:09 BST by Liam Doyle
• 0 comments

The key releases for the month of October are highlighted.

Formula 1

Lewis Hamilton is doing a sterling job in keeping Formula 1 in the headlines but, of course, there was life before Hamilton. In fact, one of the major figures in the history of British F1 releases his autobiography this month. Jackie Stewart's book, Winning Is Not Enough offers his insight into his driving exploits and subsequent business career. Don't forget that signed copies will be available shortly after publication. If you're intent of your Hamilton fix, don't forget his official release comes out next month and there's a host of unofficial releases as well.

Football

It's not the strongest month in terms of football releases but if you're a fan of either Arsenal or Manchester United you're in for a treat. Last year saw the release of Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, a celebration of that seminal football magazine, which was quite easily the most lavish and stylish football release all year. The publishers have taken the concept and used it to produce Charles Buchan's Arsenal Gift Book and Charles Buchan's Manchester United Gift Book - books which use the archive of Football Monthly to tell the story of both clubs. If you're a fan and being badgered as to what you want for Christmas, just point the questioner in that direction. They're superb.

On the autobiography front, Aberdeen legend Willie Miller has his book out - The Don - signed copies of that will be available towards the end of the month. There's also Deano, an autobiography from Dean Windass whose cult status could see him replicate the success Perry Groves enjoyed last Christmas.

On the subject of players from yester-year, take a look at Where Are They Now? It's hardly a new format but the continued fascination with knowing what happened to Arthur Albiston or Romeo Zondervan is too much of a pull to ignore.

Cricket

Let's start with the good news. West Indies legend Clive Lloyd releases Supercat at the end of this month and, I'm delighted to say, we'll have signed copies available. This is an intriguing release; Lloyd has ignored the big publishers and released this through Fairfield, a smaller cricket specialist publisher where the accent is on quality rather than quantity. I'm sure he was much sought after by the big publishers so big respect to him for sticking with a specialist. You can place an advance order for a signed now.

And the bad news? Well, this month also sees the release of Monty's Turn. I'm incredibly depressed by this release. Not because I don't like Monty, on the contrary, I, like most others, have taken to him enormously, but I just don't see that he's been around long enough to make this a worthwhile read. It has all the hallmarks of grab the money, sod the quality. Hope I'll be wrong but I don't think it'll be troubling the judges of the William Hill Award.

Boxing

After being starved of significant books for a while, boxing fans finally have something to get their teeth into. You'll (hopefully) forgive that appalling link into a book discussing Mike Tyson but his astonishing defeat to Buster Douglas (even now it seems implausible) is examined in The Last Great Fight. Whether it was the last great fight is a moot point but it'll certainly be useful to remind ourselves of the boxer that was rather than the somewhat pathetic figure of today.

If there's been no great fights since 1990, few would argue that there were many great fights beforehand. The 1950s are often considered to be boxing's finest decade and The Onion Picker celebrates both the decade in general and Carmen Basilio in particular.

There's a glorious photographic release in Knockout, a celebration of legendary photographer Ken Regen. Kings of the Ring, newly released in paperback takes a look at the heavyweight divsion through the years. For the statisticians among you, The BBBC Boxing Yearbook 2008, Boxing's Wisden, is out. Essential stats and facts.

Ice Hockey

Both the NHL Yearbook and The Hockey News Yearbook are out, providing expert guides to the new season. If you like your stats with greater historical data the incomporable NHL Official Guide and Record 2008 is also out. Weighty, detailed and stat packed, you won't go wrong with this. If you prefer your Hockey with a British twist then Stewart Roberts' Ice Hockey Annual makes another welcome appearance.

Away from the stats, there's a couple of paperback releases for Searching For Bobby Orr and Brodeur.

The Smokey Stuff

I don't know whether it's the nicknames, the atmosphere or the folklore but books on Pool always seem to intrigue me. That's the case again ere's a couple of interesting looking titles in The Hustler and The Champ and Running The Table. Both look excellent. Whilst we are on the subject of "sports" that don't require much in the way of physical exertion, you could do worse than take a look at Ghosts at the Table, a detailed history of Poker or The Sun Darts Quiz book, a fun quiz book with over 2,000 questions to test your Darts knowledge.

Others Key Releases

Sports Illustrated have previously produced two glorious books on Baseball and Football. I suppose therefore that it was only a matter of time before they produced a Basketball version. The format is unchanged and the same high quality is guaranteed. Hockey fans hold on, you'll be next I'm sure....

The annual delight that is The Best American Sports Writing returns with their 2007 edition. This collection of sports journalism really is among the best you'll find. It's a shame that a UK publisher hasn't been able to make this format work over here.

On the subject of books that haven't really been able to establish themselves here, there's yet another stab at a general Sports annual this time in the form of White's Sports Almanac. I've always thought this is a popular genre and the failure to truly establish the format had more to do with the deficiencies of the publishers rather than the genre itself. Let's see how this one gets on - I hope it succeeds.

Two other quick recommendations from the humour market. Harry Pearson's Dribble! and Dom Joly's Letters to My Golf Club are both very funny and should help raise a smile or two. In the case of Jolly's effort, it elicited a couple of snorts!

And Finally.....

If you've seen the increasingly exotic football adverts with all the tricks and glorified keepy-upy and wanted to know how you do the tricks, then Freestyle Football Tricks explains all. I wonder whether trying to explain complex tricks through diagrams in a book will work - might a DVD have been better? - but regardless, let's hope they're sufficiently easy to follow to enable even someone of my limited ability.