Tragic tales and talking points

A STELLAR year for sports books?

Not at first glance. There wasn’t a book this year which broke out of the sports ghetto the way, say, Donal Óg Cusack’s autobiography did a couple of years ago.

That said, there are some very good options for stocking-fillers, even if there are few enough books that you could say were truly groundbreaking or earth-shattering.