Bleachers

**__INTRODUCTION__** Hello! Its your fellow classmate John Messina and I'm here to write about John Grisham's, __Bleachers__, which was published in 2003. John Grisham has written 21 other books. Some of his best works are __The Firm__, __Playing for Pizza__, and his newest piece, __The Appeal__. __Bleachers__ was Grisham's first work of football and it payed off becuase it became a bestseller according to New York Times.

__**PLOT SYNOPSIS** Bleachers__ takes place in Messina, Texas and follows the story of Neely Crenshaw. Messina lives and breathes high school football. If you were on the team, you had privilages and advantages that no high school student should have. Their freshman team has more attendees than most varsity games accross the country. Neely was an All-American quarterback for Messina and was one of the best the Messina Spartans have ever seen. He had the choice at almost any university, but he chose Texas Tech. No one knew why he chose it when he did, because there were far better colleges offering scholorships. We found out later that he chose Tech because they offered him a large sum of money if he accepted their offer. He gets his first start as a freshman and all of the sudden becomes Mr. Popular on campus. This all goes down the drain when he hurts his knee in the Texas State game. He has to get surgery and he cannot play football as long as he lives. He wants to eliminate all memories of football until he gets word that his old football coach, Eddie Rake, is dying.

Eddie Rake was the long time coach for the Spartans and has won many games for them. Rake was renowned for being very tough and working his kids to their limit. This incedently led to one of his player's death, which was a freak accident but would later lead to his firing as the head coach. Neely never really liked Rake, but he always respected him. During Neely's senior year at Messina, the spartans were getting killed in a very important game. During that halftime, Rake got angry at his players and took it out on his starting quarterback. After getting punched in the face, Neely responded by sending a punch of his own, knocking out his coach. Everyone freaked out until the players made the coaches promise they wouldn't tell a soul about what happened or come out on the field during the second half; the players didn't care for any coaches at that time. During that half, Neely and the Messina Spartans overcame a thirty point deficit and won the state championship.

Years later, Rake died and Neely finally made his dreaded trip back to Messina to pay his respect to his old ball coach. There he finally realized that he did in fact love his coach and his high school sweetheart, which he messed up by going after the popular girl.

__**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**__ John Grisham, who was born on February 8, 1955, is known world wide for mostly his legal fiction books, but he has also written others outside of that genre. As of 2008, 250 milliion of his books have been sold world wide. As mentioned before, his best works are known to be __The Firm__ and __Playing For Pizza__ among many others. He began writing in 1989 and has written best sellers ever since. Eleven of his books have been the inspiration to many movies. Some of which include, Chrismas with the Kranks, The Rain Maker, and The Firm. Christmas with the Kranks was based on his book, __Skipping Christmas__.

__**MY TAKE ON BOOK**__ The book all in all did not stack up well to the previous Grisham book that I read, Playing For Pizza. They were both about football but I enjoyed Playing For Pizza much more. Bleachers only had four chapters and because of that, I found it hard to find a good place to stop reading. However, it was very easy reading because it was only about 200 pages. It was in third person following the story of Neely Crenshaw, the star quarterback for the Spartans.

__**PUBLISHING** Bleachers__ was published by Doubleday Publishing in 2003. It was Grisham's first book about football. There was a fair amount of dialouge throughout the book, but not many figure of speeches, such as similies or metaphors.

__**CRITICAL ASSESSMENT**__ Patrick O'Kelley from Amazon.com wrote "Physically a narrow book, __Bleachers__ is a modest fiction in many respects. The emotional scope is akin to that of a short story, with a single-minded focus on explorations of nostalgia and regret. The dialogue, especially that of Neely's friend Paul Curry, is sometimes wooden as characters recall Messina history in paragraphs that were perhaps better left to the narrator. But Grisham has otherwise written a well-made, entertaining--if a bit sentimental--story." Patrick O'Kelley

__**RECOMMENDATION**__ All in all, this book had its perks, but on a scale from 1-10, I'd give it a 6. Don't get me wrong I'd recommend it to anyone who likes football because it is very easy reading, lasting only 229 pages. It took me about 4 days to read and it could take you the same amount of time. If you have any questions, come see me. Thank you.