bookgazing | Pump It Up - It's Women In Sport month

As promised November is ‘Women in Sport’ month here at Bookgazing. This might seem like an odd theme month for me as I always say I’m not a huge sports fan.

I find football (the only sport that seems to count in this country) unbelievably dull and the characters that populate the men’s game (the only game that gets screen time on the main five channels) so frustrating and ridiculously overpaid. I will admit to a soft spot for Ronaldo and Lampard, but that is it. It’s rare for me to be really interested in sports where players only compete in a team (psychoanalyse me through the frame of that comment all you want). There need to be individual contests alongside team events for me to be interested.

When it comes to reading about sport though I lap everything up, all kinds of team and individual win, lose, injury stories. Maybe it’s because I was allowed to watch the first Mighty Ducks movie on repeat when I was growing up, or because the sporting narrative got pumped in through my eyeballs as I read masses of ‘Saddle Club’ books. I know lots of people used to be disparaging about girls reading ‘horse books’ but they’re really a great place for teenage girls to see women get involved in sport – and again more on that later this month. However it happened I grew up with little interest in playing sports (because I was terrible and people seem to care about that) but hungry for sporting narratives.

The one sport that I follow regularly is speedway, which is very much about the men, but looking around the net it looks like female riders might be gathering together to get more visibility in the sport – hopefully more on that later this month. The contests I find myself most interested in outside of speedway, are sports which have a history of promoting both genders competitions at the same time: athletics, swimming, cycling and equestrian events are all sports I love to watch.

Here’s the potential book pool for this month’s reading:

‘Girl Overboard’ – Justina Chen Headley: The heroine is a Chinese American snowboarder who has to learn to cope with a serious injury that keeps her off the slopes. This is a book Ari made me notice so I’m expecting good things.

‘Derby Girl’ – Shauna Cross: The book that led to the film ‘Whip It’ (which I haven’t seen yet). Do you remember watching that episode of ‘Clarissa Explains It All’ where Sam’s mum comes home from the roller derby – wicked! I so want to organise a trip to see roller derby in the UK next year, so if you’re interested in a jaunt be sure to get in contact.

‘Swimming’ – Nicola Keegan: Self explanatory title. I won this from Simon at Savidge Reads, so I guess he’s kind of an unofficial sponsor of this themed month ;)

’Twenty Miles’ – Cara Hedley: Coleen talked about this novel which features an ice skater who joins a women’s ice hockey team after her father dies. Since I think Coleen is a genius at picking great books I bought this book right away and now seems the time to crack it open.

‘Dairy Queen’ –Catherine Murdock: I guarantee if you ask for recommendations for young adult books about sport this book will be mentioned. Tomboy, American football playing heroine, who according to the blurb isn’t great at using her words. I’m reading this right now.

I also have some ideas for extra posts on this theme, but I fancy creating a bit of mystery around what they’ll be about, so watch out for theme posts popping up.

I know this is a young adult heavy month (‘Swimming’ is an adult novel with a teenage protagonist and all the rest are young adult novels) and I hope I’m not turning off those of you who prefer adult novels. As you can see from the list of holiday reads I put up yesterday there will be reviews of adult novels a plenty in December so hopefully you’ll come back after theme week (or discover a love of YA during theme week – YA, I tempts you with it like it is delicious cookies).