RTW: Best Sports Book

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week’s prompt was: In honor of the end of the Olympics, share your favorite sports book.

I’m going to be honest: I’m not really into sports. (Oh, that sound? That’s The Man laughing at me for saying “not really” when the most appropriate phrasing would be “not at all.”) Sure, I like the Red Sox and have an innate hatred of the Yankees—that, my outside-New-England friends, is something we’re born and bred with. But do I sit on the edge of my seat for every Pats game? No, and that’s saying something considering Tom Brady’s in high def.

Ahem.

Because of my disinterest in sports, I rarely pick up a book that involves sports. I don’t mind if a character is an athlete and talks about sports on occasion, but I pretty much avoid Hoosiers in book form.

(Though I’d totally be into reading a book about boxing with some good pummelings, especially if the character’s a girl. I’m not sure what that says about my mental state.)

That was your warning. I do have a favorite book involving sports, but it’s one of the few (only?) I have read. My pick:

I’ll be honest: The only reason I picked up the book was because it seemed like a cute romance and I’d been desperately trying to make the romance in my book believable. So I was reading all these YA romances to see what worked, and this one sounded adorable. I decided to overlook the whole football thing.

I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it, even though I know less about football than, like, nuclear fusion. The romance was cute, but I was also a fan of the kickass girl factor—a chick playing football, score—and, yeah, even got into the game. Which is really saying something about Kenneally’s ability to explain the sport’s details without slowing the pace.

I’m going to say something that’s even shocking myself: Catching Jordan is a fun read, even if you don’t like sports. 

What’s your favorite sports book?