I received this book via Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review.

Total Football burst into the popular consciousness with the Dutch national team at the 1974 World Cup led by Johan Cruyff.  In Cruyff’s posthumously published autobiography My Turn, the former player and manager talks about the course and evolution of his entire life in football as well after his time actively involved in the sport.

Cruyff is upfront from the outset that he won’t recount every big match, for him the important thing was the development of technique and the evolution of getting better by learning from successes and failures.  However, Cruyff’s explanation of his development as a player as well as the style he both played and coached are a fascinating read in which the results of certain matches come in to play.  Cruyff’s stories about growing up at Ajax from a ball boy then through the developmental system give a insight about how talent is developed over in Europe, especially once he explains what he took away from how talent was developed in the United States when he played in the NASL.  Yet, the most interesting stories were Cruyff’s time at Barcelona and the politics of Catalonia and Spain were a literal culture shock to him and his family.

The latter part of the book covers Cruyff’s most “controversial” time in football, his managerial tenures at Ajax and Barcelona as well as the shakeups to both clubs that he was an advisor for to bring them both to prominence.  Cruyff is upfront about his thought about his loathing of boardroom managing the pitch in place of the pitch dictating the boardroom.  For Cruyff this direction from on high, especially at Ajax is one of the reasons that the style of Total Football that he advocates is no longer seen in Dutch football as both technique and fundamentals instilled at an early age are never truly developed because of the increasing change of trainers and development personal because of agendas of non-football individuals who have an agenda of their own.  This critique of money interfering goes handed in hand with Cruyff’s explanation of his preferred style of football as well as a rather informative explanation of the tactics of football is easy to understand even for those uninformed about the game. 

Although My Turn seems to have been cut short by Cruyff’s death in March 2016, it is still a wonderful read for anyone interest in football or sports biographies.

FRACTURED by Catherine McKenzie

Visit her online at www.catherinemckenzie.com, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/catherinemckenzieauthor, and on Twitter at @cemckenzie1

10/30

Like Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, a copy of which I owned in the early 1990's and am not sure where it has gone, this is a mix of photos, ephemera, and fabulous illustrations. The psychic imprints (pressings) of fairies are whimsical, ranging from the expected girl with wings and pointy ears to the nearly goblinesque, bringing to mind other work by Brian Froud (especially for those of us who might have an inordinate amount of affection for movies such as Labyrinth, just as an example). The illustrations and images are well suited to the text by Wendy Froud, consisting of her delightful forward, Madeline Cottington's journal entries( both 'handwritten' and typed) as she discovers fairies and her heritage, notes between early 20th century Cottington twins, and even a letter from THE Lady Cottington. In retrospect, the forward might even be my favorite part of the book's text.

This book holds great appeal for those who enjoy the eccentric and fantastic world of the Frouds and the aesthetics of fey and somewhat steampunk worlds. While I do enjoy the photographs that are included, and in particular their allusions to the original photographs of the "Cottingley fairies," the majority of those depicting the early 1900's feel too similar to those of the modern Maddi. This does not, however, detract from the amusement they provide.

Recommended. This is a quick, enjoyable read.  Reading the previous, related books is not a prerequisite, but you may very well find yourself wanting to read them all afterward.

The full review, including a few quotes, was previously posted at bookworlder.wordpress.com.  This review refers to a finished copy (available for pre-order prior to it's Sept 27, 2016 publication date) won in a First-Reads giveaway on GoodReads, from the publisher.  All opinions are my own.

Strip everything away and this is just the story of a day in which a maid has her last tryst with the youngest, soon to be married son of an upper class Berkshire family.  Oh, but it is the everything that makes this little book.

Within the story of that day and that tryst (so, adults only on this one, with a tolerance or taste for a bit of the naughty and a few crass terms) we are given a whole history, a picture of a time and a way of life.  A bit of a transitional upstairs/downstairs between world wars, when traditions were held onto as the world was irrevocably changed and changing. British traditions like "Mothering Sunday," one that I had no knowledge of, but it slowly came together for me in the first 30 or so pages.

When I found out that I had won a copy of this novella, I reread the synopsis and had winner's remorse.  Stories of affairs are not usually my cup of tea.  But while some of the subject matter and content is not to my taste, it was redeemed and elevated by the writing, which I cannot adequately describe (or quote here, as I read an uncorrected proof).

This story, to me, was written with a bit of a cinematic hand.  It had a feeling of the nostalgic glance backward, the thoughtfulness, the stillness, the brightness even in the most tragic moments, of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, or of a Merchant & Ivory film.  Indeed, the author leaves me wanting to rewatch those films and the Brideshead series and to delve into the novels that inspired them, to see where this feeling comes from and how it is evoked (and his main character, Jane Fairchild, left me wanting to read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness).

While the story is firmly set on one unseasonably warm day in May 1924, the narrative glides back in time and forward to when Jane is an 80 year old author, encompassing her present, future and past all with a sense of nostalgic melancholy.  Again, I am thinking how interesting it would be to study, to discover the mechanics of how Swift did this - both the mood and the slippage of time.

I think I'll be looking to see what Graham Swift's back catalog might have in store for me (though I'll be looking a bit closer at each synopsis before choosing my second Swift read).

This review refers to an uncorrected proof of Mothering Sunday that I won in a GoodReads First Reads Giveaway, courtesy of the publisher.  While not required, the First Reads program does encourage winners to post honest reviews. This review was originally posted on bookworlder.wordpress.com at http://wp.me/p5Tcfi-VU  Please do not reblog without permission.

CRENSHAW by Katherine Applegate