The Sports Bookshelf

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 The winner is announced Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. By William Finnegan (Corsair) £9.99 William Finnegan  (centre) shows off the 2016 William Hill  Sports Book of the Year Award, flanked by (left-to-right)  judges Graham Sharpe, Alyson Rudd, Hugh McIlvanney, Mark Lawson, John Inverdale and Clarke Carlisle. Surfing memoir Barbarian Days, described as “compelling, elegiac and profound” by the chair of the judging panel, has won the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for American author William Finnegan. The book, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize for the veteran New Yorker magazine writer, tells the story of Finnegan life through the prism of his 50-year obsession with surfing, from his childhood days in California and Hawaii to the present day. Barbarian Days beat a particularly strong field to land the £28,000 cash prize that goes with the award, which also comes with a leather-bound commemorative cop

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 On the Shortlist Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. By William Finnegan (Corsair) £9.99 Review by Jon Culley William Finnegan won a Pulitzer Prize for Barbarian Days Award-winning books have often been contenders for more than one prize and sometimes arrive in the hands of the judges having already impressed another group somewhere else, with their stamp of approval staring at them from the cover. In those instances, rival authors might feel disadvantaged, understandably.  This year, the six others on the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year may well feel they have to clear a particularly high bar given that William Finnegan already has a Pulitzer Prize under his belt for Barbarian Days. His memoir of a life spent chasing waves around the world won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for biography and autobiography.  The Pulitzers, first awarded in 1917 to recognize outstanding journalism, now has 21 categories and none

The shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award – the world’s richest and longest-running prize for sports writing – has been revealed following the deliberations of the judging panel, who have whittled down a longlist of 17 to a shortlist of seven. Six sports are represented on the list, the majority sharing a common theme in that they dig deep into the psyche of their subjects, showing how their strengths and weaknesses helped and hindered them in the pursuit of their dreams. This is demonstrated in two memoirs set against the backdrop of the sea - Barbarian Days, by journalist William Finnegan, and Find a Way, by swimmer Diana Nyad. Barbarian Days, surfing’s first appearance in the 'Bookie Prize' field and already a Pulitzer Prize-winner, tells the story of a restless young man whose sport both anchors him and takes him around the world as he becomes an adult. Diana Nyad’s memoir is a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit: a wor

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short