The Wild Within

The final sports book, Book 92, The Wild Within by Simon Yates, is a first hand account of various climbing expeditions, plus a loose diary of his life in between. I suppose it gives a few years in the life of a professional mountaineer, but in truth some of it was fairly tame and about as interesting as reading someone else's holiday diary. The mountains climbed were all in remote parts of the planet, but a few of them didn't sound that hard or noteworthy. If not much happens the story is: "We went up, reached the summit, then came down". The last mountain, which took six days to climb, was the most interesting account, and that did sound very difficult, and raised a few questions about how much gear to take and whether to take a satellite phone (I would!). All in all though, a rather lightweight book, which scores 5 out of 10.

Forever Young

In my previous entry, I said how much I hated Football biographies, then ironically decided to read one! However, Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football's Lost Genius by Oliver Kay is a variation on a theme as it deals with a footballer who never made it, not because of lack of ability, but due to injury. Adrian Doherty, who was tipped to go to the very top, was on the verge of making his debut for Man Utd when he got injured, and hardly played again.

Everyone thinks of footballers as well-paid superstars, but for every 100 Youth players, probably only a handful actually achieve that status, yet those are the ones you generally read about. Forever Young breaks the mould because it deals with someone who was a) not a typical footballer, b) never played a first team game, c) died young.

It's not a bad book, I am not convinced that Man Utd treated Adrian so terribly as to justify this book, but it's about a more interesting person than most footballers are.