What is the best Sports fiction book?

Answer 1

Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella is a sports novel--and more than a sports novel. Here's an excerpt from one review of the book from Amazon.com:

"W. P. Kinsella plays with both myth and fantasy in his lyrical novel, which was adapted into the enormously popular movie, Field of Dreams. It begins with the magic of a godlike voice in a cornfield, and ends with the magic of a son playing catch with the ghost of his father. In Kinsella's hands, it's all about as simple, and complex, as the object of baseball itself: coming home. Like Ring Lardner and Bernard Malamud before him, Kinsella spins baseball as backdrop and metaphor, and, like his predecessors, uses the game to tell us a little something more about who we are and what we need."

Kinsella has a number of other works of fiction about baseball, but Shoeless Joe is still the best. (See the annotated bibliography of his novels and short stories in site listed below.) Kinsella is a Canadian author, but he studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop; hence, many of his baseball stories are set in Iowa: e.g., The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, Box Socials, and a number of his short stories, like "The Dixon Cornbelt League."

Malamud's The Natural is the book most often compared with Kinsella's. I think it's good fiction, but not an especially good baseball story (and the movie with Robert Redford just doesn't work). Here's Wikinpedia's brief annotation of the novel: "The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a crazed female fan. Most of the story concerns his attempts to return to baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his legendary bat."

Enjoy!

Answer 2

Any of the Myron Bolitar, sports agent and PI, by Harlan Coben. Lots of fun, lots of sports stuff. A character like Robert Parker's Spenser but with a jock strap.

Answer 3

ok so i hate activities yet i appreciate those books. something by technique of chris crutcher. there is even a e book finished of short thoughts about activities. a number of his books have the important topic of activities even as others have the important topic of boom and helping others. verify EM OUT!!!

Answer 4

All of Dick Francis' novels. They are all connected to horses and racing. Simply unputdownable.

Answer 5

Dick Francis, crime novels with horse racing settings.