The Sports Bookshelf

TODAY'S TOP TEN BESTSELLING SPORTS BOOKS Click on the title or picture link to buy 1 -- A Weight Off My Mind: My Autobiography Author: Richard Hughes Published by : Racing Post Books Richard Hughes is not only one of horseracing's most successful and talented riders but also one of sport's most unlikely success stories. In this frank autobiography, Hughes describes with stark honesty the battle he had to wage with his body and mind to become a top rider. Too tall and heavy to be a jockey but too talented a horseman to be anything else, Hughes offers insights into the life of a top jockey, and the personal story of his descent into prolonged and deep alcoholism, from the perspective of seven years' sobriety. Shocking but also uplifting, A Weight Off My Mind is the engrossing story of a man who has overcome extreme personal trauma to become a racing superstar. For fans of racing and readers new to the sport, it offers a turbulent ...

Engage: The Fall and Rise of Matt Hampson, written by award-winning journalist Paul Kimmage and published by Simon & Schuster, has been named as the British Sports Book Awards overall 'Sports Book of the Year' for 2012 after a public online vote.  Sports book fans were invited to name their favourite from the winning titles in each category from the British Sports Book Awards. Engage , deemed by the awards judges to be the best biography of the year at last month's British Sports Book Awards ceremony at the Savoy Hotel in London, tells the moving story of Matt Hampson , a promising young rugby player who was paralysed from the neck down after an accident in an England training session. Remarkably, Hampson has adjusted with enormous courage to a limited everyday life.  He is constantly attached to breathing equipment because the damage to his body left him unable to inflate and deflate his lungs unaided yet attended the awards dinner alongside Kimmage. Mick De...

TODAY'S TOP SELLING SPORTS BOOKS Click on the title or picture link to buy 1 - Be Careful What You Wish For Author: Simon Jordan Published by: Yellow Jersey Simon Jordan loved Crystal Palace. He grew up a stone's throw from Selhurst Park and his father was on the club's books.  Simon was not a footballer but his success in the mobile phone business enabled him to have a lifestyle all but the highest paid players would envy: 18 cars, six homes, a private jet on lease, a £2.5 million boat, a permanent suite at the Grosvenor House Hotel and the wherewithal to spend £100,000 on living costs.  Then he decided he would buy Crystal Palace.  Ten years later the bulk of his fortune was gone.   Be Careful What You Wish For lifts the lid on Jordan's story and how he discovered a world where hopes and aspirations sit alongside greed, self-interest, overpriced players, dodgy transfers and top-level incompetence. He doesn't hold back. 2 -- London...

NEW CRICKET BOOK The Valiant Cricketer: The Biography of Trevor Bailey Author: Alan Hill Published by: Pitch Publishing Alan Hill has twice won the prestigious Cricket Society Literary Award for his biographies of the Yorkshiremen, Hedley Verity and Herbert Sutcliffe.  His work also includes portraits of Surrey legends Peter May, Jim Laker, Tony Lock and the Bedser twins, as well as Brian Close, Johnny Wardle, Bill Edrich and Les Ames. His latest subject is the three-times Ashes winner Trevor Bailey, regarded as second only to Ian Botham among England's premier post-war all-rounders. A multi-talented sportsman, a schoolboy prodigy at Dulwich College, Bailey won cricket and soccer blues at Cambridge University and an FA Amateur Cup winners medal with Walthamstow in 1951-2. He was regarded as a fighter, a loyalist who served England and Essex, his home county, particularly well in a crisis. He was at his most competitive when tensions ran high, as was emp...

NEW IN CRICKET BOOKS The Sports Bookshelf spotlights a selection of new cricket books published during the last month. Tuffers' Cricket Tales Author: Phil Tufnell Published by: Headline Phil Tufnell used to be known as The Cat for his fondness for dressing room naps, when not sneaking off for a crafty cigarette. These and other examples of an unorthodox approach to cricket turned him into a cult figure as a spin bowler for Middlesex and England. Now more commonly referred to as Tuffers, he has developed a second career as a broadcaster and reality show contestant.  "Tuffers' Cricket Tales" is a deliciously eccentric collection of his favourite cricket stories, featuring a cast of colourful characters he has encountered in dressing-rooms and commentary boxes and who have provided him with dozens of entertaining and insightful anecdotes, told with warmth and humour. The Plan: How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Crick...

TODAY'S TOP TEN BESTSELLING SPORTS BOOKS Click on the title or picture link to buy 1 - Tom Daley: My Story Author: Tom Daley Published by: Michael Joseph Tom Daley started diving at the age of seven. Specializing in the 10 metre platform event, he became the youngest British world champion in any sport. He represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics, where he was Britain's youngest competitor, and won two gold medals for England at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. In 2007, 2009 and 2010, he was named BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year.   In this, his first official memoir, illustrated on many pages with his own photographs, he shares the pressures, challenges and fascinating experiences of his career as well as glimpses into his life away from his sport in the build up to the London Olympics. 2 - Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2012 Editor: Lawrence Booth Published by: John Wisden & Co Ltd First published in 1864 and probably t...

Already recognised for its outstanding quality by being crowned William Hill Sports Book of the Year last autumn, Ronald Reng’s brilliant biography of tragic German football star Robert Enke completed a memorable double when the judges at the 2012 British Sports Book Awards determined it to be the best in the Football Book category. A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke (Yellow Jersey), the story of the German national team goalkeeper who took his own life while suffering from depression, was voted top of the pile among a strong field that included former Manchester City player Paul Lake’s wonderful autobiography I’m Not Really Here and Ian Ridley’s assessment of the impact of the Premier League, There’s A Golden Sky. Cricket writer Chris Waters , meanwhile, scooped his third award when Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography (Aurum Press)   was named Cricket Book of the Year. The Yorkshire Post cricket correspondent’s highly acclaimed life of the Yorkshire and E...