Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous
Review: If you are in any way interested in British Football, Fever Pitch is a must read. Hornby describes the process of his physical, emotional, and intellectual growth in the context of his love for the game of football. The detail and anecdotes are entertaining. It was easy to wade through this work, and even though as a US Citizen my detail knowledge of the games, players and rivalries was minimal, simply being a fan of the game will keep you turning the pages.. As fate would have it, I read the book during a recent visit to the UK. While there, I had the opportunity to watch two football matches in different London pubs. The excitement was infectious and provided an added layer of enjoyment to Hornby's work
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Summary: Not just for footy/soccer fans
Review: Shannon's husband Josh writes: Fever Pitch is the penultimate book for the sports fan. Regardless of how you feel about English football (soccer), any fan of any team will relate to Hornby's feelings. This is especially true if you support a team that hasn't won a championship in a long time. I sometimes wonder if I should curse this book for what it's done to my free time. I was an Arsenal supporter before I read it, but I've now fallen into the true pit of fanatic. I wear the shirts, tape and watch games at absurd hours, listen to internet radio broadcasts, etc. Other Arsenal fans only nod and grin knowingly when I tell them about this. Fever Pitch is brilliant writing that you can feel and relate to. Who knows, you might wake up the sleeping Gunner fan inside you too. Don't worry though; they've evolved into a much better team since this was written.
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Summary: Beware What This Book Might Do To You
Review: I've been meaning to write a review of this book for a long time, but since Nick Hornby reawakened in me many of my childhood sports fan obsessions when I read it for the first time in 1999, I've been too busy. Not only did "Fever Pitch" remind me how irrationally and how much I loved my own hometown team (the heartbreaking Boston Red Sox) but he turned me into a fan of English football and his own Arsenal Gunners to the point where I follow them daily on ESPN's soccernet, LISTEN (!?) to them on internet radio broadcasts and have even gone to two games in London over the past two years. It's sick really, and I suppose it's not the kind of thing Hornby would have wanted when he wrote this quintessential memoir of growing up a soccer fan in England, but I've enjoyed it"Fever Pitch" is an obsessive's tale as much as it is a fan's story, and so should appeal to the same wide audience that enjoys his excellent novels (It was my love for "High Fidelity" that sent me straight to this book). It is a memoir of surprising depth considering how it is organized only by the dates of soccer matches between 1968 and 1991, and it makes perfect sense that Hornby, or any true fan, should see the rest of his life (parents' divorce, his own education, romantic and career trouble) primarily as it relates to the team he spends so much time, money and psychic energy on. The irony, for me, was finding out after I read "Fever Pitch" for the first time that Arsenal was one of the top teams of the last decade in England, so Hornby at least gets to feel the joy that we Red Sox fans are still waiting for. Sure, we're ecstatic the Pats won the Super Bowl, but our lives will change forever when Boston brings home the World Series. But after "Fever Pitch," I'll remember to laugh like the rest of the world laughs when American sports leagues crown their title-holders "world" champions.
Rating: 
Summary: A True Soccer Fan...
Review: just does not describe this man. He recollection of events in his life as they pertain to Arsenal soccer games is relentless. I thought I was obsessed with certain things in my life but compared to Nick Hornby, I am not even close. Amazed to think there are several thousand people who feel the same way about soccer as he does. Nothing like the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Hornby fans won't be disappointed
Review: Like many of the reviewers of this book, I don't know a thing about football, except that it occasionally shows up on ESPN late at night and the fans seem a bit insane. Hornby is one of those fans. In this memoir, Hornby takes us step by step through his life of football obsession, recounting with humorous detail the tragedies and joys it has brought him throughout his life. Fever Pitch is about the fans, not the players, and about the obsession, not the game. As with Hornby's other coming of age stories, this book drags us along with the protagonist (in this case, Hornby himself) through the incredulous situations that he puts himself into in pursuit of his obsession (football, like records, women, or good deeds) to find ourselves in awe at the end of how the whole thing turned out for the best.
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Summary: Don't go in expecting a Hornbyesque book
Review: Thanks to the once in every four year buzz I get when the World Cup is taking place I thought that it was an appropriate time to begin reading the only Hornby book that I hadn't yet cracked which incidentally is his autobiography and a loving testament to the game of football. With those factors in mind, I figured I couldn't go wrong with this one but sadly, for the first time, I was a bit let down by one of Hornby's books. My main problem with this book stems from the fact that I missed out on approx. 30% of the context because I didn't know the people (players and coaches), places and teams that he spends a great deal of time espousing on. This book is written with the assumption that the reader is steeped in all the lore, historical trivia and nuance of British football and for those with limited knowledge, well I suppose they'll find themselves grasping at times trying to catch up with Hornby's detailed play-by-play enactments of memorable goals and on field blunders. Another thing - this is Hornby's first book and it shows. For those readers accustomed to his flowing, easy to digest prose in future works ('High Fidelity,' 'About a Boy,' 'How to be Good') you might be a bit surprised at how clunky his words form here. Yes, there are some very Hornbyesque passages and moments but for the most part it can be choppy reading at times but is interesting in the framework of mind knowing how his future works will evolve into crystalline works of literary brilliance. On the positive note, this book will certainly strike a chord for every hardcore sports fanatic out there. Hornby lovingly touches on the idiosyncracies that every true 'fan' experiences from: Superstitious ritual, disdain for the casual and/or bandwagon fan, the psyche of those who faithfully follow bad teams, etc. Also, you'll find the occassional gem on the beauty of Football/Soccer as a pure sport that makes reading through this 247 page book ultimately worthwhile.
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Summary: Get it and you'll get it, even if you don't get it now.
Review: Get it and you'll get it, even if you don't get it now. That sums up the book... I am 1/3 of the way done and the only thing i can say is, I think I know what it's like -- Leaf fans (NHL) will be able to relate to the sad tale of Arsenal as a football club. In fact their failures and now recent success as a club mirrors the Leafs hockey tragedy and rise to respectability quite nicely. I really wasn't looking for a comparison tale when I picked up this book, but in the end I kept saying... yeah, i remember doing something like that, feeling like that or giving up like that (for ten minutes...) The book is not about football... it's about, as the author says, the consumption of football by an obsessed fan and how everything in life can relate to football. So get it and you'll get it, even if you don't get it now.
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Summary: For frustrated sports fans everywhere
Review: It's fair to say that this book would probably improve tremendously with a knowledge of English football generally and of Arsenal history specifically. That being said, put this book in the hands of a male sports fan, and they will find familiar ground with Nick Hornby, the Arsenal obsessive. In fact, Hornby's never-say-die, thick-and-thin, death-do-us-part, there's-always-next-season attitude will be eerily familiar to any Cubs fan or anyone who has ever spent time with a Cubs fan between April and September. Much of Hornby's obsession is peculiar to English football (e.g. regular attendance at away games - an impossibility in the geographically spread United States), but an equal portion would be recognizable to anyone who has pledged their troth to a team of transient athletes and coaches. Hornby has written three great novels about men and the silly things that they do or over which they obsess, whether it be sports or popular music, or the professional pursuit of loafing. This is one of them, and a must read for anyone who is a sports obsessive or trying to get along with one.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a must buy!!!
Review: Tremendous book! Insightful, honest and true. Whether you're a football fan or not you'll love it. Not boring for a minute, Hornby covers everything from modern masculinity to feminsim. Buy it.
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Summary: Not just another obsessed fan...
Review: Nick Hornby's story is about more than just his love of football, it's about his own place within a world seemingly defined by gate-crashing hooligans. His candid honesty, literary chops, and refreshing lack of pretension speak directly to the thirty-something reader trapped somewhere between the upper echelon of well-bred, urbane literati (with whom we might demographically be categorized) and the suburban, blue collar roots from which we truly hail.
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