Fever Pitch // Six Degrees of Separation

Better late than never should be my new life motto. The idea behind this exercise is to connect books in any way that’s meaningful to you, from the profound to the inane. Although Kevin Bacon is typically behind the six degrees game, books are just a bit more fun.

Fever Pitch is Nick Hornsby’s ode to soccer (or football, depending where you live). Oddly enough, when it was adapted for a film in the US, it was about a fan’s love of the Red Sox. How you get from one to the other, I’m not quite sure, but the love of the Red Sox* inspired the next link.

In Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Trisha, a Red Sox fan, is (nearly) hopelessly lost in the woods. She survives relatively unscathed, but the same can’t be said of the pseudo-outdoorsmen in James Dickey’s Deliverance.

Initially planning on taking a two day canoe trip, the men have a run in with the locals that derails their course. The canoe provides the next link with Love Is a Canoe by Ben Schrank, a lovely novel about the destruction of a marriage. Schrank detailed his play list on Largehearted Boy. One of the characters was said to enjoy Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Everyone knows that CCR’s hit Bad Moon Rising is the official werewolf anthem, but I specifically assigned it to The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan. The novel is a literary take on the werewolf genre, so to speak, just as Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is a literary zombie apocalypse novel.

I once called Zone One “fresh, interesting fiction” and recommended The Sisters Brothers for a similar reading experience. I’m standing by that recommendation now and making it my final link. From a love of soccer to a blood soaked western, all in six easy steps. Care to join in?

*Of note, one of the items on my bucket list was the see the Red Sox play in the world series and I did. I watched them absolutely slaughter the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series (though I only attended one game).