Curling, Etcetera: A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game (Hardcover)

~ Bob Weeks (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A lighthearted, fact-filled guide to the roaring game: curling

Immensely popular in Canada, curling has captured the hearts of millions of diehard enthusiasts around the world. Full of quirky characters, fascinating facts, intriguing history, and amazing trivia, this unique guide gives curlers (and lovers of the game) a colorful and often amusing look at this singular sport. With odd, funny factoids on every page, the book sheds light on the long-forgotten Downer Disc, a round curling broom, and how Charlie Kerr, a Brier curler of the '40s, was thwarted by the ash from his own cigar. This one-of-a-kind volume is the ultimate bonspiel prize for curling fans everywhere.Bob Weeks (Toronto, ON) is the editor of the Ontario Curling Report and the author of three books.

From the Inside Flap

An entertaining and fascinating take on the roaring, game, Curling, Etcetera is a collection of fun facts, trivia, record, profiles of personalities in the fame, quirky quotes, and other miscellany.

There's something on every page to interest and inform curlers everywhere: from amusing and intriguing bits of history, to facts and figures, rules of the game, the evolution of equipment, and hilarious stories of the many characters in the curling world, including:

• Paul Gowsell, the enfant terrible of curling, who among his many misadventures, once arranged for a pizza to be delivered to him in the middle of a game, in front of over 1,000 fans at a major bonspiel in Winnipeg.
• Randy Ferbey, who has won more Briers than any other curler, a total of six.
• Russ Howard, who has played the most Brier games in the history of the Canadian championship with 163, and who's quoted as saying "Blood is thicker than Screech," when asked why he was cheering for his brother, Glenn, over his former Newfoundland teammates, led by Brad Gushue in the 2007 Brier final.
• Shorty Jenkins, perhaps the greatest ice-maker in the history of the game and the subject of his own Tim Hortons commercial a few years ago.

Generally considered to be a civilized and social game played by gentlemen and women, there have been occasions where the decorum has slipped and, just as in Canada's other great winter ice sport, fights have broken out. Yes, there's even a section that covers fisticuffs on the curling sheets. There are also entries on curling in the movies, curling in television commercials, curling nicknames, and hundreds of other tidbits on the roaring game.

This quirky little book makes the perfect read, the perfect gift, and the perfect bonspiel prize for curlers and curling enthusiasts.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (October 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470156139
• ISBN-13: 978-0470156131
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #392,577 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stories of that funny game with rocks and brooms..., November 22, 2008

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'm not sure what it is that draws me to semi-obscure sports... at least sports that are semi-obscure to the average American. I got hooked on curling during the Olympics a few years back, and now I'll sit and watch a match if it happens to be on (which is rarely). I saw the book Curling, Etcetera: A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game by Bob Weeks and thought it might be a way to learn a bit more about the history and game. While the book is most useful to those who are heavily into the sport, it was still an entertaining read.

Weeks is a journalist/sportswriter who has covered the game for nearly two decades. During that time, he's collected a huge storehouse of trivia and facts about the game that go beyond who won and who lost, where the game was played, and other such statistical information. Rather than continue to sit on all that knowledge, he wrote Curling, Etcetera to get it some of it out on paper. The results is a fast paced book that sheds plenty of color and light on curling, both the history of the sport and the players who give it life.

Curling has its own version of the NFL's "Heidi game", when the network switched to a different program before the end of the match. The CBC never did that again, and in fact put in a new policy that said all curling games would be covered from start to end, regardless of time. When do you retire from curling? Possibly never... the oldest living curler is 93, and there was once a regular competitor who was a spry 102. It used to be that curling had no clocks to regulate play. Matches could take hours (and often did). An experiment to try "speed curling" based on a chess clock was tried in 1983, and again in 1986 during a nationally televised skins game. By 1989, many jurisdictions were using the clock to regulate play, and now it's a regular part of every event. And you know you've made it to the big time when your sport starts to appear in television commercials, sponsored by such companies as Cialis, Labatts, Scotties tissues, and Office Depot...

A fair number of the factoids revolve around legendary names in the sport, but they are not names that would be known much outside of curling circles. Therefore, I think that actual curlers would get more from the book than I did. Still, I enjoyed the stories and history, and Curling, Etcetera did nothing to dampen my enjoyment of the game.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay book for a casual curling fan, but not much new ground covered., January 13, 2009

By	Curling Fan (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews

I enjoy reading books on curling, and that's why I have a whole bookshelf of them. Ironically, that's probably why I didn't appreciate "Curling Etcetera" as much as someone with less interest in curling might.

For the casual curling enthusiast with a short attention span, this book is perfect. It boils a wealth of curling factoids down into small vignettes that take up anywhere from a quarter-page to two pages. If you know little about the history of curling or its notable players, this book provides an entertaining (if superficial) foundation of such knowledge.

If, on the other hand, you are well-informed on curling and/or have read a variety of other curling books, you will find this book to be redundant and a bit annoying. Redundant, in that there was rarely a fact in this book that I had not already read or learned elsewhere, and more in-depth. Annoying, in that just when you think you are about to learn something new, the article ends and you are on to the next one. I kept thinking that there would be new ground broken by this book, but it never happened.

Overall, this book reads more like a "pile of facts" that were hastily thrown together, than an in-depth discussion of anything in particular. As noted above, this can be good or bad, depending on your existing level of curling knowledge and interest.

Bottom line: If you are a casual or novice curling fan, this book would be a good starting point to learn some interesting facts about the game. If curling is old hat to you, this book will probably duplicate what you already know.