Playing for Pizza by John Grisham Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Playing for Pizza
Book Review: Different John Grisham
Summary: 5 Stars
Playing for Pizza
Being an avid John Grisham fan I was slightly concerned about this book but need not have been as I thoroughly enjoyed it but would hope that he will revert to his normal theme once again.
Book Review: Disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
I read half the book then started paging through the book just for the football scores and to see if the Panthers won the Super Bowl. This book read like a travel brochure. The Rick Livvy relationship was as shallow as most teen romances. Maybe this was a guy book. I don't know what else to say.Book Review: Dull and pointless
Summary: 2 Stars
Leaving the courtroom for the football field, John Grisham gives us Playing for Pizza, where we meet Cleveland Browns third-string quarterback Rick Dockery, who is lying in his hospital bed unconscious from a severe concussion. Rick, it seems, took the field at the end of an all-but-sewn-up game that would have propelled the long-suffering Browns into the Super Bowl. With Cleveland about to go bonkers, Rick throws three interceptions in the final quarter - the last resulting in the massive hit that sends him to the hospital and gives the game-winning touchdown to the Denver Broncos.
With his career at the crossroads, his agent decides a year out of the country may help Dockery. He sets him up in Italy, as the quarterback for the Parma Panthers -thus the novel already a football story, becomes a fish-out-of-water tale as well.
I had some huge problems with this book, as the many hallmarks of his - the tightly written, page turning scenes - where dropped for an almost parody take on those a Silhouette romance novels. It's that light and airy.
Plus, while this is suppose to be a football book, it resembles more part Tuscan Under the Sun style look at Italy, plus a culinary dictionary from the Food Network, and Frommer's travel guide to the country.
I'm unsure what Grisham was trying to do here, after all, I did enjoy is non-thriller novel The Painted House. I finished because I had too, but find it lacking in every regard.
Book Review: Extremely Disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
This is the first time I have been compelled to write a review. "Playing for Pizza" is the worst book I've ever read and I'm an avid reader. It was not a novel with a storyline it was a DIARY! I threw it in the garbage and then retrieved it thinking maybe it will get better. It never did.Book Review: Fluff read about a rough sport
Summary: 3 Stars
Grisham examines the brutal world of pro football in this light-reading novel. Rick Dockery is a third-string NFL quarterback who unexpectedly loses a key playoff game. Hospitalized, cut by his squad, and unwanted by other NFL (or Canadian) teams, Dockery ends up playing for the Panthers of Parma, Italy. Yes, they play NFL-style football in Italy (they even have a Superbowl). Crowds run about 1,500 fans per game, and most of its players get paid in postgame pizza and beer (Dockery and a few other Americans get modest salaries). We get a nice feel for Italy, football, the brutal competitiveness, locker room camraderie, and inevitable aches and pains. Dockery is a typical jock focused mainly on his game and girls, but he is intelligent and likeable.
This book makes nice reading given Grisham's enticing prose, but lacks the seriousness or message of his many legal thrillers. A fluff read, but a good one.