Extremely popular collection of running literature.

The Runner's Literary Companion: Great Stories and Poems About Running

Literature & Fiction

United States

Breakaway Books

All the best fiction and poetry on tennis.

Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game

Contents Introduction The Starting Line Voices from the Midpack (and Elsewhere) Coaches Eat, Drink, But Be Wary Training Fear Racing Records Cross-Country Hills In the Footsteps of Atalanta The Marathon The Mile Mind Over Matter The International Runner Pain The Olympics Medals and Money The Finish Line: Retirement Victories and Defeats Who's Who A few of our favorite quotes: "Bid me run and I will strive with things impossible." —Shakespeare "Long distance running is particularly good training in perseverance." —Chairman Mao "Without ice cream there would be darkness and chaos." —Don Kardong "Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, like the muscles of the body." —Lynn Jennings "If you want to win a race you have to go a little berserk." —Bill Rodgers "Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it." —Oprah Winfrey "The mile has all the elements of drama." —Roger Bannister "Mind is everything. Muscle — pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind." —Paavo Nurmi "The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare." —Juma Ikangaa "Start slowly, then taper off." —Walt Stack "Records are made to be broken." —Anonymous Introduction by Mark Will-Weber Compiling a book of quotations is a bit like prospecting. For long, unrewarded hours you sift through the silt, murk, and bottom mud which comprise the great body of sports literature and journalism—all for that rare nugget of gold. I began work on The Quotable Runner without actually realizing that I was doing it. (I highly recommend this method for any lengthy task if you can arrange it.) The first few hundred quotations that I gathered were used at the bottom of race results, in batches of five or six quotes per race, which I passed on to the cross-country runners at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As their coach, I thought it might be a fun way to jazz up the results sheets and inspire the runners to train with diligence and a new spark. Maybe a line from Zatopek, Nurmi, or Benoit would ignite a dre

The Quotable Runner: Great Moments of Wisdom, Inspiration, Wrongheadedness, and Humor

Sports & Outdoors

Individual Sports

Chance

Shilstone, Steve

Genre Fiction

Classic running novel about a young miler and his quest for excellence.

The Other Kingdom

Price, Victor

The greatest cycling novel ever written. . . . An underground classic. . . . A bicycling book that follows a different course—one with characters you can relate to, whose actions raise questions about life on and off the bicycle. . . . The heart of The Yellow Jersey is the Tour de France itself, which serves as a metaphor for life.—Bicycling Magazine "This is sports fiction at its very best. Mr. Hurne has a cool, downbeat style descended from Lardner and Hemingway, and a fine hand with the hairpins turns of suspense."—The New York Times Book Review "Full of wit, charm, excitement, and intelligence."—Publishers Weekly An excerpt from the novel: It's a funny sort of stage. Everyone seems to be waiting for Romain to attack. Van Faignaert, as I expected, is taking things easy and trying to keep the bunch together. Butch Cassidy's not a bad climber and on the Col de Foreyssasse he has a go, but the Belgian team swoops and soon has him under control. I can see on the faces of the spectators that they are disappointed. They've turned out in their thousands expecting this to be It; I feel like shouting to them to go home and come back tomorrow. We get strung out a bit coming down the Foreyssasse but regroup at the bottom. The ominous threat of Romain taking off, coupled with the strong control of the race by the Belgian team, who're doing their damnedest to keep everyone in one lump, has really put the mockers on things. I'm just beginning to think that the worst of the stage has passed when the rider directly in front of me punctures, loses control and goes sliding along the loose surface on his side. It's on a sharp descent and the bunch is moving. Although it all happens in a split second, I'm unable to go either to the left or right of the fallen man and I jam on my brakes. With both wheels locked solid I pile into him at about thirty miles per hour. Normally I would have been flung over the handlebars, but my toe straps are sufficiently tight for me to do several cartwheels with the bike still attached to me. For a second everything seems upside down; then pain. I lie there feeling as if I'll never move again. From the front of the group I see v

The Yellow Jersey

Hurne, Ralph

Introduction
Dennis Trudell
I wanted this book to exist because I love to read and I love basketball.
And there was no gathering of strictly "creative" writing about what is surely one of our most spontaneous, creative sports. While many literary baseball anthologies were available, fans of basketball and writing had only collections of journalism, or journalism mixed with an occasional story and novel fragment. Yet basketball is now our nation's most popular sport (fifty-four percent to forty-six percent over baseball, I read in the newspaper-though we're talking about passion, and how does one measure?). Further, it is a sport that our genders and races and classes play, bumping and rubbing in confined spaces, during all seasons throughout the U. S.: from farmyards and suburban driveways to housing-project courts and packed dirt churchyards. From suction-cup hoops in college dorms to milk crates nailed on phone poles. As I write this, a boy somewhere tosses underwear at a basketball laundry hamper; a girl in pigtails shoots alone in a haybarn; a seventeen-year-old slams an imaginary ball through a netless rim above smashed crack vials.
I once scored sixteen points in a grade-school intramural game to lead "Yale" to a championship over "Army." That is not very interesting to anyone else, but is of lasting importance to me. I had only scored six other points all season; and whatever else happened that day in Morris Peabody's gym-he who in 1950 insisted we shoot underhand free throws-I left there in love with a hole ten feet in the air. With a love song and story, I could never quite tell enough. One that later years on other courts, in driveways and parks and schools (on auditorium stages or gyms trespassed on weekends), would broaden and deepen. I learned the joy of jump shooting while learning the one of reading-during those indelible, crazed teenage years of learning to hide erections after glimpsing bras across school aisles. Basketball and stories, basketball and desire. . . . The pairing occurred before I knew enough of this world to count my change. Before I knew enough of language to read or write any truth. The pairing has occurred, and occurs, inside countless others. How could at lea

Full Court: Stories & Poems for Hoop Fans

Contemporary

Literary short stories on the place of ice hockey in our lives and imaginations.

Hockey Sur Glace: Stories

LaSalle, Peter

An inquiry into how ultra-endurance sports can induce preternatural states in athletes.

Bone Games: Extreme Sports, Shamanism, Zen, and the Search for Transcendence

Religion & Spirituality

SCHULTHEIS, ROB

New Age & Spirituality

The bicycle in literature, exalted in poem and prose.

The Literary Cyclist: Great Bicycling Scenes in Literature

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