What are the best - and worst - sports books of all time?
With the BBC's Big Read asking the nation to vote for their favourite work of fiction, it seems only right and proper that sport gets a look in too.
Does Mailer's "The Fight" rate in your top five?
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JK Rowling is yet to pen, "Harry Potter and the Push for the Final Uefa Cup Place", while Dickens wrote "Hard Times" well before the current plight of Leeds United.
But there are still a thousand contenders out there. Here's just a few - but please feel free to contribute your own. We'll collate the replies and have a vote on the all-time top five later in the week.
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An early mention must go to Norman Mailer's The Fight, his account of the 1973 Rumble in the Jungle.
No mere reportage of the epic battle between Ali and Foreman, the book takes in debate on subjects that most sports writers would run a mile from - post-colonialism, racism and metaphysics - while remaining a rattling good read.
Sadly, it also inspired the worst song lyrics ever written - Lloyd Cole's shocking, "If you really want to get straight/ Read Norman Mailer/
Or get a new tailor."
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Few people now remember John Toshack's ill-advised 1976 venture into the world of verse, which was published under the appropriate title, Gosh It's Tosh.
Inspired by the early works of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg - or possibly the thought of the cash the publishers were offering him - Tosh penned such epic lines as,
"Coming in to land at Speke
My legs are feeling very weak
We've just returned from Barcelona
And now I'm going for a sauna."
That's sauna pronouced "so-ner", of course.
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The best sports books do not necessarily deal with best-known stars.
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Best sports books ever?
Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby
A Lot of Hard Yakka - Simon Hughes
The Miracle of Castel di Sangro - Joe McGinniss
Rough Ride - Paul Kimmage
It's Not About the Bike - Lance Armstrong
Beyond a Boundary - CLR James
All Played Out - Pete Davies
Ali: His Life and Times - Thomas Hauser
The Glory Game - Hunter Davies
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Such is the case with Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend, the tale of a knock-kneed horse in Depression-era America who went on to become a champion.
It matters not a jot/If you care about horse-racing or not, as Tosh might have put it.
This is a tale as dramatic as they come - and one which is currently being made into a Hollywood blockbuster.
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Is there anything as dull as the generic football biography?
To highlight the failings of Hell Razor: the Autobiography of Neil Ruddock might seem harsh, but this is a tome which is guilty of all the clichés of the genre.
There is the terrible pun of the title, followed by the familiar sequence of events: my impoverished childhood; how football saved me from a life of crime; I used booze as a crutch to deal with fame; still haven't forgotten my roots; happiest I've ever been after wife forgave my philandering; the end.
Read it and snore.
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It might be fiction rather than fact, but Brian Glanville's Goalkeepers Are Different remains arguably the greatest football book of all time.
The tale of Ronnie Blake's rise from the streets of west London to a Wembley cup final with Borough United, rooted in the realities of the game in Britain in the early 1970s, has it all - not least a final line that stays with you for the rest of your days.
All together now: "Corner? I could clear 50 corners...."
Stomach-turner
Another classic of the genre is the "early doors" autobiography - when the star in question is approximately six weeks into their professional career.
The first edition of Michael Owen - In Person came out when all there was to tell was the fact that he had been born, played a lot of football growing up and then made an immediate impact with England.
That was it. Expect "Wayne's World: the Wayne Rooney Story" to be in bookshops in time for Christmas.
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I defy anyone to read Lance Armstrong's 'It's Not About the Bike' and not be moved - It underlines the fragility of life