I just won my Fantasy Football League. First time ever, though I’ve played for five years. (Thank you, Andrew Luck and DeMarco Murray!) I watch football every Sunday; I go to at least one Philadelphia Eagles game per year; I think the NFL RedZone Channel is amazing; and when I have a babysitter, I head to a bar for Monday Night Football. Yes, I’m a woman. And it turns out I’m not alone.
According to recent articles in The Washington Post and Bloomberg Businessweek, women make up 45 percent of the NFL’s more than 150 million American fans.
Between 2009 and 2013, female NFL viewership grew 26 percent. And in just 2013, fantasy football leagues included 6.4 million women, a 10 percent jump from 2012.
Yet, it is surprisingly hard to find football books geared toward women. Seriously. When I started writing this blog, I immediately thought of two books: Catching Jordan and Dairy Queen. But I write YA, so I figured that explained why teen books were front and center in my mind. There must be tons of adult novels featuring female characters who love football, right? Wrong.
So if you’re a chick and you love football, please take a glance at the list below. I hope I save you some time digging through the bookshelves. And if you’re a football-loving writer looking for the concept of a new book—well, I think I’ve found an untapped niche.
Hello from sunny Chicago! Really, it's sunny in Chicago! I just arrived and am excited to see all of the fabulous librarians that will are joining me in the Windy City for ALA Midwinter 2015.
There is a lot going on at ALA Midwinter and Quirk is certainly well-represented at the Penguin Random House booth.
Winter is… here, actually. For better or worse (probably worse). My Michigan-bred, winter-loving roommate is all smiles at the prospect of snow while I sink further back into my anti-winter blanket cocoon of denial. I’d much prefer to read about winter than actually, you know, experience it. Though I have to admit, literary characters have it way worse—most often their winters are horrible snowmageddons that would make short work of weaker individuals (i.e. me) or really anyone who isn’t Elsa or Jon Snow.
Everyone knows about the nasty snowpocalypse that is George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—the books, people, the books!—but what about other literary polar vortexes? As bad as winter may be this year, I suppose this group of unfortunate characters endured a much worse one.
What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Well, maybe you’d keep reliving the same day until you changed something about (dun dun dun) yourself, and something something inspirational. We’ve all seen the movie: Groundhog Day. Soon it will be February 2nd again, and some kind of creature... badger... thing will predict six more weeks of winter or (hopefully) an early spring.
Charlie Brown had a special for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and even celebrated Arbor Day, but he somehow failed to honor this singularly important day. So as it gets closer, take some time to really appreciate the one movie that does it justice, and respects the importance of oversized rodents—not to mention the increasingly popularized use of time loops in fiction. Yet there are many other examples of this trope from literature that remain largely unrecognized.
In honor of Bill Murray and groundhogs everywhere who find repeating time less suicidally funny and more unnerving, following are a few of the best examples:
Quirk Books
