Now, I have to admit that titles didn't exactly come flooding to mind. In fact the group of friends I happened to be with, several of whom belong to the same reading group as I do, racked their brains for a good hour but could only come up with Lionel Shriver's Double Fault, which had not been a universal favourite, and Stephen Fry's The Star's Tennis Balls, which we weren't sure was necessarily referring to the sort that bounce!!! There are novels like A Room with a View and The Thirty-Nine Steps where a game of tennis plays a very peripheral role and I wouldn't mind leading a discussion on either of those, but I'm not certain that they would be deemed relevant enough.
So, a plea for assistance. Are there obvious books out there that I'm missing? Are you all yelling "What about......?" Or is this something that the gallery education team has not thought through properly and an idea that is really going to be a non-starter?
Annie
I can't recommend any from my own reads, but some poking around on Google turned up Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott and Doubles by Nic Brown. Sorry I don't have better suggestions! What an interesting topic. I hope you turn up something good!
ReplyDeleteWell, those are two that haven't been suggested by anyone else, so many thanks, Erin. What I will enjoy about a series in this setting is that it will draw in a very wide range of readers, most of whom I won't have met before and meeting other readers is always exciting.
ReplyDeleteWell, the Lionel Shriver came to mind first, but you have that already. And now I'm realizing that Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace features tennis very prominently ... but that's hardly a good book group book (for most groups anyway). Wallace does have some great tennis essays as well. But I'm afraid that's all the help I can be. I'm curious to know how this turns out.
ReplyDeleteDorothy, I'm curious as well and, if I'm honest, more than a little apprehensive. We have a new education officer in charge of this area of activity and yesterday I saw the publicity that had been put out for the exhibition. It was full of such sweeping generalisations they amounted in sone cases to falsification of the facts. Now I have to find a way of saying that without doing to much damage, Especially as it's too late to do anything about the brochure. I don't know 'Infinite Jest' so I'll have a quick look at it, but I do know you well enough to expect it not to be any use if you don't think it will. Thanks for mentioning it, though.
ReplyDeleteInfinite Jest is over 1,000 pages and is experimental in form, and while I LOVE the book, I wouldn't ask people to read it unless they really wanted to!
ReplyDeleteAh! Doesn't sound as 'quick look' is quite the expression I was searching for! Thanks Dorothy.
ReplyDeleteWith Wimbledon 2012 we have put together some tennis - themed novels, set in some wonderful locations around the globe.http://tripfiction.blogspot.ch/2012/06/you-cannot-be-serious-but-we-are-tennis.html
ReplyDeleteIf you have a kindle or whatever, this e-book called The Fire-Eyed Maid of Smoky War (what a mouthful) is cheap and a great read. It's about a player at a tournament in the Middle East who gets mixed up in an Arab Spring revolution. http://www.amazon.com/The-Fire-Eyed-Maid-Smoky-ebook/dp/B008HA2198
ReplyDeleteI found it on an Amazon search for tennis books. I wonder why it's not better known. Maybe the title is too obscure.
If you like chick lit/romance type books, I've got a list on my blog of ones with a strong element of tennis. http://wp.me/p3NgTA-6k
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