Betting books for the beach!

IF YOU HAVE a week or two to spend lazing about on a beach or in a hotel room somewhere and fancy catching up with some reading then Sharpe Angle has a few suggestions for you:Not too many 'serious' writers tackle racing as a theme, but Literary Laureate of the San Francisco Public Library and former New Yorker staff writer, Bill Barich, has always been a racing buff and his Laughing in the Hills, about racetrack life in the States was heralded as a classic. When he met an Irish girl who stole his heart and he moved to Dublin to be with her he decided to combine his personal romance with his love of racing and write a kind of paean to his partner and to his adopted land's love of the racehorse.'a fine place to daydream' (Collins Willow £15.99) may be a little on the flowery side for some racing tastes, but this well written tale of 'racehorses, romance and the Irish' does contain some evocative descriptions of the sport and the passion it engenders in the Irish. It also offers an interesting perspective on many familiar names viewed from a different angle by a 'foreigner'. Well worth investigating.I've only just got round to Stewart Peters' latest work, 'Derby Days: Fifty Years of the Epsom Classic'. (Tempus, £25)> It is fair to say that there is no real shortage of Derby histories, many of which go back much farther into the two and a quarter century past of the great race. This generously illustrated tome starts from 1953 and works forward, featuring a detailed analysis of every race, comprehensive statistical information and a wealth of anecdotes from each year.Peters, who also wrote 'Festival Gold: Forty Years of Cheltenham Racing, tells the tales chattily and informatively and although you could not describe the book as essential it is certainly a book to which you will turn to check facts and refresh the memory over the years.Amir D Aczel's 'Chance' (High Stakes, £12) is a guide to 'gambling, love, the stock market and just about everything else' it says on the front cover. Well, most of it went straight over my head as the mathematician investigates the probability theory, measuring the likelihood of random events in what is described as 'layperson's terms' which, I guess, means I am no lay person. And I don't quite understand how come 27 page Appendix, which contains most of the gambling-related interest, is written by Brad Johnson, who holds a Master of Science degree. Oh well, I must be a bit thick, I suppose.After that, Malcolm Boyle's 'Nursery Class', a study of two year old handicap races boasting a foreword by Tanya Stevenson, is far more down to earth and comprehensible to a plain old Grammar School boy like me. From the High Stakes stable again at £9.99, this book does what it says it is going to, and in a straightforward, sensible, no nonsense way.A couple of football titles from the always reliable Parrs Wood Press (www.parswoodpress.com, surprisingly enough). 'Glory Days' (£17.99)by Alan Adamthwaite will stir the memory banks of anyone of, shall we say, mature years who has followed football since their early days. It looks at the 'Golden Age' of one of the big names in what used to be known as 'amateur' football. The book features plenty of snaps of the days when footballer had baggy shorts, the ball was a hefty, heavy leather sphere with laces - and so were their boots! Wonderfully evocative.'Standing In The Corner' by Peter McParlin (£9.95) is almost like intruding into private grief - the sub-title reveals all - 'Watching Newcastle United in the Wilderness Years'. An odd phrase, seeing as most people, wrongly or rightly, believe that the Geordies are still in those wilderness years! The years of which McParlin writes, though are from 1984 to 1995. Really, this is a book for the committed Magpies' fans only.