I finished my latest book the other day (Andy Mcnab’s - Crisis Four), which ended dissappointingly I’m sad to say, but we’ll get back to that later, and my housemate handed me a book by the famous author, John Grisham. Not that I’ve read any of his wares, apart from about an hour spent trying to get into The Firm, but a world famous author with such titles (and Hollywood movies) as The Pelican Brief, The Rain Maker, The Firm and The Innocent Man I was expecting a top notch crime thriller.

The books title is Playing for Pizza, and this is it’s blurb:

“Rick Dockery was a quarterback for one of America’s most famous football teams when he gave arguably the worst performance in his league’s history.  Overnight Rich became a laughing stock and unemployable in his own country.

But somehow RIck’s agent finds him a job.  He is guaranteed a starting position and a salary.  The only problem is that the team that wants him is in Parma, Italy.  The American footabll league in Italy is tiny and unlike RIck, the Italian players only get paid in free meals.

Rick has never been to Italy, so it’s no surprise that the country has a few surprises for him.  What follows is a delightful, heart-warming storay of an innocent abroad.”

Now, I’m not one to judge.  I’m not a critic, and my experience with reading books for pleasure only goes back about 9 months, but could you think of a more boring (nor ridculous sounding) synopsis for a book?  It’s like every 80′s American sports movie (… You know the ones, underdogs fight hard to win all season, then drama, then the team wins in overtime), crossed with the likes of Home and Away (an Australian soap opera).  

I honestly thought I was being had, and the cover was indeed a satircal ploy to get you sucked into a book with all kinds of death and debauchery, but on inspection, its a real book, by a real author, and a good autor at that.  The top of the book even claims it to be, “The International Number One Bestseller”, though I’ll garuntee that has nothing to do with this particular title.

As I said though, who am I to judge?!? The quagmire of life experiences undertaken in the story surely leave my solid reading history of crime thrillers for dead, and put the reader at a new level of enlightenment.  At least I hope this is the case.  I’ll read it though, it sounds interesting enough, and I’m intrigued to find out if there’s something I’m missing like the short for a movie that tells you nothing at all about the movie in general.

Time for me to get started, and report back as soon as possible.

What a movie!

The Growing List

Since I started reading again I’ve notched up fair few titles on the literaty bed post, whatever that means, and I’m loving it so far.  I’ll be looking at branching out a bit and trying some new genre’s too.  Any suggestions?

The list so far, in the last 12 months:

• I Hope They Server Beer In Hell – Tucker Max
• The Alphabet of Manliness – Maddox
• Gun’s Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond

• Playing for Pizza – John Grisham (I’m looking forward to it now!)
• Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts (Sitting here waiting to be read)
• Freakonomics – Steven Levitt
• Digital Fortress – Dan Brown
• The rest of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
• The rest of the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab
• The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll
• Kite Runner
• One of Peter Hamilton’s Trilogies
• More Harlen Coben
• Try John Grisham’s more serious titles
• One of Len Deighton’s Non Fiction books (a recommendation)

I’m always open to suggestion though, so post any replies, please!  I’m turned off by girlie stories (Danielle Steel), middle earth Scifi (like Lord of the Rings, I’m not sure why) and Mills and Boon (If I wanted porno, i’d download it).

Afterthoughts

I said at the top of this post that I’d get back to why I found the end of Crisis Four (the third book in Andy McNab’s Nick Stone series), and it won’t mean much without having read the book, but I just thought it was too transparent.  I could see the outcome of the story after about the first 15 – 20% of the book, and it just ended so abruptly.  

I’d say this is a really good reason to space out these series I’ve been reading as I guess like anything else thats done repeatedly you get to know the author, and how his/her writing works, and can quickly weed out plot lines if they’re similar to previous titles.  Not only this, I found a dissapointing book a bit of a kick in the guts from what is so far such an awesome series, I’d imagine its better to space out the pleasure of the other books as long as possible.

I should prefix this with a bit of background, after about thirty or forty pages of the authors build up to an action scene, the main character, Nick Stone,  describes in detail how stealth is the key to any subtle operation.  He describes in full the surveillance required in the stake out, and how each part of the target (IRA headquarters) was broken into without extreme force.  This goes on, and on, and as you’d expect thing’s eventually go hay wire as Stone is discovered and is seconds away from death via handgun down his throat after being taken out by a fire extinguisher to the back of the head.

By this point, I’m engrossed, the build up was enormous, and I’m literally hanging off the end of my seat wondering what on Earth is going to happen next.  There’s a small scuffle and Stone jams the gun, temporarily disabling it and a scuffle breaks out eventually resulting in the enemy being shot in the head.

This was followed by:

“He was going to die soon.

Tough Shit.”

It’s a pillow, what a horrible prank!

In hindsight it doesn’t seem anywhere near as funny, but it blew me away at the time.  After such an enourmous build up with everything and every moment described in such precious detail, the climax was abrupt, like a kick in the guts.  I have to liken this to getting amazing sex, mind blowing passion with the ultimate build up:

"mmmm...."

"ah..."

"MMMMmmmmm yea!"

"Oh.  Job's done"

"Yea, would you like a cup of tea?"

I’d half expected another ten pages describing the blood as it made its passage from the chest driven by the last few beats of the heart, up the arteries, and out the convinient new escape vent in the head.  But no.. He was dead, and that was it.

Bloody good book though, both Andy McNab books I’ve read so far have been an excellent read, which makes them incredibly hard to put down.