The proper name is football

Finished How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer today. Got sidetracked with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, I'll talk about that later. (SO AMAZING)

Soccer was quite interesting, I liked how each section was titled "How soccer explains..." then subdivided into five smaller sections. I like nonfiction writers who organize their work in a way that works with my obsessively organized mind. He also had firsthand experience in the stadiums of many of the clubs; he took a leave of absence from his job at the magazine New Republic and traveled the world and experiencing rabid soccer fandom up close. He went to Brazil, Bosnia, Italy, Iran, England, Scotland, Bulgaria, making one shocking discovery after another. There was the blatant anti-Catholicism in Scotland, the sex segregation in Iran, and the promoted fan violence in Serbia.

What Foer does is use soccer to examine the greater problems of the world through soccer and how many cultures use soccer as their release and as a channel for their frustrations.

I could go into lots of detail, but to be honest, while I found the book interesting while I was reading it, I find that many things, mainly the little details, left my brain after I stopped reading. I'm not saying that I didn't learn anything, because I did. I just couldn't tell you names and dates with any accuracy. At all.

What the book did inspire me to do was to educate myself about some of the issues Foer brings up, such as the Balkan Wars in Europe and power of Silvio Berlusconi. I don't know much and still don't, so I want to learn more and reading this book is what piqued my interest. Any book that actually makes me want to learn more is very okay by me. Isn't that the point of all books?