Over the Counter #201

What books caught my eye this week as they passed over the library counter and under my scanner? This week is memoirs - from the world of sports.

First up was Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile by Nate Jackson.

From the publisher, Harper Collins:

"One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the national football league
This is not a celebrity tell-all of professional sports. Slow Getting Up is a survivor's real-time account of playing six seasons (twice as long as the average NFL career) for the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos.

As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup, Nate Jackson is the talented embodiment of the everyday freak athlete in professional football, one of thousands whose names go unmentioned in the daily press. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the daily rigors and unceasing violence of quotidian life in the NFL.

Fast-paced, lyrical, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best twenty-year-old athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell."

Next up was Anchorboy: True Tales from the world of Sportscasting by Jay Onrait.

From the publisher, Harper Collins:

"TOP TEN THINGS YOU’LL LEARN WHEN YOU READ THIS BOOK:
 10) Jay was beaten up by an MMA fighter on live television
 9) Interviewing Will Ferrell can be a harrowing experience
 8) Jay once ruined a perfectly good pair of underwear on Christmas Eve
 7) Failing as a stand-up comedian can lead to a job in broadcasting
 6) Jay ran a marathon to get a ticket for the 2010 men’s Olympic gold-medal hockey game
 5) Jay was sexually harassed at TSN by a senior citizen every day for ten years
 4) Jay appeared as the Phantom of the Opera on national television
 3) Jay was entertained nightly by free live sex shows throughout university
 2) Jay was single-handedly responsible for Winnipeg’s second NHL team being called “The Jets” (he claims)
 1) Running around in a full-body unitard at the London Olympics is a bad idea
 All this and more awaits you inside ANCHORBOY!"

(Over the Counter is a regular weekly feature at A Bookworm's World. I've sadly come to the realization that I cannot physically read every book that catches my interest as it crosses over my counter at the library. But...I can mention them and maybe one of them will catch your eye as well. See if your local library has them on their shelves!)