The Nolympics by Nicholas Lezard

Essentially this book is a big essay on the Olympics and Sport in general. There is some reference to the events of the London games, and the book is based around the days of the London Olympics, but the book is more comment than commentary, for example day 12 of the book contains no actual coverage of the games.

The introduction to the book starts with a synopsis of "Asterix at the Olympic Games", so I guess that could be put on your prerequisite reading list. After that the rest of the book is split into days from day 0 to day 16, with maybe 2,000 words a day.

So from day 0 the author has a moan about how the Olympic cash spent on training the GB athletes could have been more usefully spent on keeping libraries open, or on hospitals. This is followed up by a moan about the medals with the "disgusting logo", comparing them to the "austere beauty" of the 2008 China ones (not mentioning the fact that this was a logo designed by a child). I thought it was going to be one of those moany books, and that the Asterix opening was going to be the highlight. Luckily I was quickly put right.

The funny moments soon came. Like how the author set himself up as Mr. anti-Olympics but when Mitt Romney states that "Britain wasn't ready to host the Olympics" he still takes exception. And how the opening ceremony had the opening line of the Pistols "God save the Queen" in a montage, and the crowd and viewers at home immediately thought of the second line of the song even though it was unsung.

And if you think that this book uses the games "as an excuse for a jumped up commentator to get on his hind legs and see only what he wants to see" then you'd be wrong because the author says so.

Anyways, even though the author in failing to actually watch the Mo Farah race says that "I feel I've let my publisher down, I've let my agent down, I've let my friends and family and girlfriend down, I've let the cat down, but most of all I've let myself down," in a parody to an losing athlete's speech he really hasn't because I enjoyed the book. Sports books don't need to contain the details of the events taking place on the field, Fever Pitch is an example of that. 

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.