Sightlines

I was polite. I was respectably attired. Outside the temperature was 90 degrees. But still the barman at the Brabourne Stadium's Wet Wicket Bar would not serve me. Not even a glass of water to wet my wicket.

Aston Villa fan and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Football Grounds Of Britain, Simon Inglis packs his bags and embarks on a global odyssey in search of the stories behind the world's sport stadia--the legendary, the long-forgotten and the wonderfully obscure. Part-travelogue, part sporting history, part exploratory dissection of his own lifelong obsession with sports grounds,Sightlines chronicles a series of Inglis's real, imagined or remembered stadia experiences.

From Ancient Greece, through India, the Americas and Asia, to the as yet untrammelled venues of the 2000 Sidney Olympics, Inglis is a critical, though clearly devout cleric in the churches of sport. Fortunately for the reader, he never quite loses his sense of astonishment that he is making a living from pursuing what is, by his own admission, a minority interest--and his disarmingly personal and humorous outlook on his adventures makes this lighter reading than you might reasonably expect.

Highlights include his imaginary correspondence with the long-deceased Judge Roy Hofheinz-irresistible force behind the dollar monster that is the Houston Astrodome--and Inglis's observations on the commercial imperative in sport and architecture, as he wanders around this (literally) crumbling temple to modernity and greed, are typically direct and surprising.

The author is almost certainly unique in the depth of his passion for his subject, but never boring. To his credit, this book makes it easy to understand his enthusiasm. --Alex Hankin

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bitterly disappointed - Rated
If you're a stadium fanatic and are looking forward to connecting with Inglis regarding your passion you will be disappointed. He seems to have gone for a pseudo-intellectual style that is not appropriate and put simply, boring.
The book starts out with a fictional dialogue between two characters in ancient Greece which seems to go on forever and has you turning to the back to see how much money you wasted.
With this book being a study of such an arcane passion I thought every page would induce gasps of 'I agree' and 'Yeah, I do that too' but alas it didn't happen. Inglis seems to be on a different planet and he may as well have been talking about crocheting.
This book would be better told in a Nick Hornby blokes-down-the-pub style.

very disappointed - Rated
Being a stadium fanatic like Inglis I looked forward to reading this book especially as it claimed to delve into the reasons and psychology behind a fascination for stadia.
I was bitterly disappointed. The opening chapter is a fictional discourse set in Roman times that seems to go on forever, doesn't work, and has you looking at the back cover to see how much money you've wasted.
Inglis seems to have gone for some kind of pseudo intellectual approach to his subject, and though I consider myself to be an intellectual, it just isn't fitting for the subject. I was expecting a blokes-down-the-pub approach, looking forward to empathising with his comments on our shared passion and proclaiming 'I agree!!' and 'Yeah, I do that too' on every page.
But he may as well have been discussing crocheting for all the interest it provoked in me. I feel that Inglis has abused his position as leading stadium expert and used this book to experiment with different styles of writing and self-indulge in inscrutable asides and personal history.
If you are a ground lover email me and we'll talk stadiums - you'll get more from that than you will this book.

Don't approach sightlines blindly - Rated
I bought this book on the basis of my love of Inglis's earlier book 'The Football Grounds of Europe' and I have to say I was disappointed. What I wanted was a nice coffee table book containing large photos of famous sports grounds around the world accompanied brief history on each. However what I got was a long tedious exploration of one mans obsession by a writer who clearly doesn’t have much of a grasp on reality.

Firstly, I was disillusioned to discover that Inglis ‘work’ for this book basically involved turning up in a city for the day, taking a few pictures (BADLY I might add e.g. his snaps of Brabourne Stadium, Wrigley Field and River Plate's El Montumal) and having a brief chat with whoever happened to greet him at the ground. That’s all that happened. However, the net product of this graft would be an entire chapter based around the experience. Nice work if you can get it but because of the clear lack of research the book ended up being more about Inglis than about the stadia.

The only part of this book that I found acceptable was the Cuidad de los Estadios (city of Stadiums) which is four chapters devoted to the many stadia of Buenos Airies. Descriptions of each ground are kept short and interesting without venturing into the realm of absurdity, something Inglis clearly does in Chapter 12 where the entire passage is written in the form of a letter to the deceased Judge Roy Hofheinz (creator of the Houston Astrodome). It wasn’t clever and it wasn’t necessary.

But by far the most annoying feature of this book is the photographs of the grounds themselves. The few illustrations contained within are quite shocking if you have seen the glorious pictures taken in The Football Grounds of Europe. For example in the picture of Chicago’s Wrigley Field the ground itself features in only about 1/3 of the frame and the rest is taken up with a block of houses outside the ground.

Also Auckland’s cricket/rugby ground is an aerial view of the ground but it only fills about half the shot (the other half is taken up with housing estates). Now, I'm not a professional photographer but I wouldn't have thought it that difficult to take a photograph of a stadium that filled the entire frame.

All I can say is that Inglis job of touring the world cataloging stadia is what I would consider an ideal one. However I would rather have spent my time reading a book about the stadia themselves rather than one boffin’s misguided assumption that just because he finds his own career interesting that automatically we all will.

So just be warned that when you buy this book you will be getting a read that is more about Inglis than about Stadia.

And he's missed a sitter.... - Rated
I am definitely the sort of man who likes well cut grass, I also enjoy watching a vast number of sports, I also believe stadiums to be worth every penny that is ever thrown at them. After all this being said I found myself surprised at my lack of interest when reading this book. Especially as it takes great joy in both historical detail and statistics wherever possible.

In summary then this book is about one mans lifelong (career) and obsession with stadiums. Something which most men understand at some base level. He tells us various stories of his exploits around the globe in the pursuit of the perfect stadium. He dips into history, both ancient and modern, to underline the importance of stadia within any civilised society (and Spain). He meets with a mad Argentinean Jewish psychiatrist with a view to visiting an impossible amount of them in Buenos Aires in a limited period of time.

All the elements are there for me to really enjoy this book, yet I did not. What is even more disappointing is the fact that I cannot truly explain why this is. This book is relatively funny and insightful, yet I never really connected with it. My only explanation is that it does read like a really, really long magazine article. I do still recommend this book to sports fans of the world, but have my doubts if it would truly interest a wider audience. (Sorry!)

Interesting but self-centred - Rated
Let me start by first saying that I enjoyed the remoteness of the locations, and the detail and uniqueness of some of the stories. I did find the book very interesting to read, as, like the other reviewers here I imagine, I have an almost anorak interest in stadia - and Inglis clearly knows his stuff.
But herein lies the problem for me. What I did not like, was the self-centred way in which Inglis approached this book. A comparison for me would be something like The Miracle of Castel di Sangro in which McGinness manages to view the proceedings surrounding him without too much emphasis upon his own role in the story.
I personally felt that Inglis took almost every opportunity possible to state how much of an expert and fanatic he was of stadia - ok, we kind of gathered that by his simple choosing to write such a book - we don't need to be told this repeatedly.
I don't know, maybe you guys did (this is only my opinion after all). I can see why one reviewer felt that it should have received more acclaim but I can very much understand why it hasn't - basically a very good idea for a book, but Inglis fails to make his subjects special in the way they deserve to be - how could they be seen in such a light when compared to the greatness of Inglis.
OK - maybe I've gone a tad over the top - but something about his style really grated with me by the time I finished the book.