Review of "The Average Joe's Super Sports Almanac"

Every now and then, it is a treat to review a book that is simply filled with interesting stories and facts instead of a serious tome about a particular person, team or sport. This is one of those books.  It frequently made me smile or laugh so it was very entertaining and a quick read as well.  Here is my review of "The Average Joe's Super Sports Almanac"

Title/Author:

“The Average Joe’s Super Sports Almanac” by Steve Riach

Tags:

Sports, history, trivia, humor

Publish date:

April 3, 2018

Length:

224 pages

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (Very good)

Review:

At times, it is refreshing to read a book that is simply filled with interesting stories and facts.  Instead of delving into a particular athlete, team or sport with minute detail, “The Average Joe’s Super Sports Almanac” takes short stories, little-known facts and other tidbits of information on a variety of sports and melds them together into a fun, quick easy read.

Steve Riach uses his many years of covering a variety of sports to collect many entertaining facts and stories on various sports – mostly the main four team sports in North America and some Olympic stories as well.  The subjects vary widely – from examples of excellent sportsmanship (the Olympics are the source of many of these anecdotes) to funny quotes to unusual facts.

To illustrate the variety of topics, here are three facts that the reader will learn while reading this book. First, one of the most memorable golf meltdowns occurred on April 14, 1996 when Greg Norman lost a big lead in the final round of the Masters.  Coincidently, April 14 is also when two other tragedies occurred: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.  Second, the athletes with the most Instagram followers is LeBron James with over 26 million followers.  Other athletes with large followings on social media are Stephan Curry, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Ronda Rousey and Dwayne Wade. Third, the only member of any sports Hall of Fame born on a train was Rod Carew.

These types of unusual facts, along with some humorous quotes (who can forget Latrell Sprewell rejecting a $29 million contract from the Timberwolves because “I’ve got my family to feed”?) and stories of the origins of several sports make the book a fun one to not only read in short bursts but also one that can be used to settle bets or instigate a debate.  This latter idea will most likely happen after the readers learns the author’s choices for the greatest teams in the four major sports (I agreed with three of his four choices).

Any sports fan, no matter how big a fan he or she is, will enjoy this book that is a quick and easy read that can be finished easily in one sitting or enjoyed in short bursts, depending on the preference of the reader. Because so many sports are covered in this volume, no matter which sport readers prefers, they are sure to find something interesting about their favorite game.

I wish to thank Harvest House Publishers for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book Format Read:

E-book (Kindle)

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Average-Joes-Super-Sports-Almanac/dp/073697248X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 

Free books! Giveaway of baseball trivia books

In the spirit of Black Friday weekend, I am going to make it easy to shop for a gift for the baseball fan in your life.  Black Mesa Publishing has generously allowed me to offer a 4 pack of baseball trivia books to one lucky reader of this blog.   The books are all in the series of "The Ultimate Test of True Fandom and are the following titles:

- Baltimore Orioles IQ
- Cleveland Indians IQ
- Cincinnati Reds IQ

Also a trivia book on all of Major League Baseball, MLB IQ

In order to enter the contest, simply leave a comment with your email address on either this post, the review of "Baltimore Orioles IQ" that was posted November 25 or on the interview with the author of these books, Tucker Elliot, posted November 30.  The winner will be randomly drawn on December 7.  The winner will be given contact information to the publisher and the books can be obtained as either e-books or paperback format.

Good luck to everyone and keep reading.

Lance

Review of "Baltimore Orioles IQ"

I received a request from the publisher of this book for a review.  Mildly surprised to see a request to review a trivia book, I decided to go for it and I was glad I did.  Even though this isn't my favorite team and as a result, I didn't do so good on the trivia questions it is still a book worth consideration.  Here is my review of "Baltimore Orioles IQ."

Title/Author:

“Baltimore Orioles IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom” by Tucker Elliot

Tags:

Baseball, trivia, Orioles

Published:

October 13, 2013

Length:

148 pages

Rating: 

3 1/2 of 5 stars (good)

Review:

Books on sports trivia can be tricky to review as a reviewer may not know much about the topic and therefore may not know the accuracy of the information as presented.   I found this to be my dilemma when a review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher who requested that I review it.   Feeling up to a challenge, I decided to give it a go and also contacted the author in case I had any questions.

While I have not followed the Baltimore Orioles closely so some of the material would not be known to me, I did find that the book had some very good narrative pieces and was organized well.   I felt it was clever that the questions were divided up by topics and each topic was an “inning.”  For example, the first inning was about numbers worn by Orioles players.  There were 20 questions on this topic, with 10 questions asked in the “top of the first” and the other 10 questions asked in the “bottom of the first.”  There were 10 such innings for a total of 200 questions.   The difficulty of the questions, at least to this serious baseball fan who follows a different team, ranged from fairly easy to having no clue to the answer without searching Google.

Without doing a through fact check on the validity of each question, I did match the answers to the questions I did not know back to the question to at least see if they made sense from what I did know or recall.   While this may not a totally accurate way to verify information, I did find it useful in order to get a feel if this was a trivia book that would be useful to baseball fans, especially Orioles fans, and I found it to be that.   If I did want more information on a question, I contacted the author who was very responsive and helpful. 

Elliot has written several of these trivia books on different teams and is continuing to do so.  That is good news for baseball fans, for if you like trivia books on your favorite team, this format makes reading them and answering the questions easy and fun.   I recommend this book for both Orioles fans and hard-core baseball trivia buffs. 

Did I skim?

No. 

Pace of the book: 

I was able to go through the questions pretty quickly.   The organization of the topics helped with that, along with the answers being listed at the end of each half inning instead of the back of the book.

Do I recommend? 

Yes to Orioles fans, as they would enjoy this book best.  It would be also good for trivia buffs who want to win the next round of bets with their buddies for some lesser-known facts.

Book Format Read:

E-Book (PDF)

Buying Links:

http://www.amazon.com/Baltimore-Orioles-IQ-Ultimate-Fandom-ebook/dp/B00GNQXLMY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1385422947&sr=1-1&keywords=baltimore+orioles+iq