Book Review: Western Lane

Western Lane By Chetna Maroo (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023) by James Zug Chetna Maroo’s debut novel—short and tight, at 150-pages it is really a novella—is set in the 1980s in Luton, a town north of London, and...

Book Review: Lucky, Anil Nayar’s Story

Lucky: Anil Nayar’s Story—A Portrait of a Legendary Squash Champion By Jean Nayar (New York: Five Rivers Press, 2020). By James Zug Lucky is the biography of one of the top amateurs of the twentieth century. Anil Nayar...

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes: How to Rethink Your Life

By James Zug When to Jump: If the Job You Have Isn’t the Life You Want By Mike Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 2018) When we last visited with Mike Lewis with the article “Have Racquet, Will Travel”...

Time for the Beach: Two New Novels

By James Zug Eden Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2017 A family struggling to overcome devastating secrets while in a beautiful place is the core of Jeanne Blasberg’s debut novel. Blasberg is most well-known to this...

Murder, Demurrage and Double-Dot Deadlines: New Squash Books To Consider

By James Zug Last issue we reviewed a single book, 555, about Jahangir Khan; this issue we take on seven books ranging from novels to anthologies to coaching manuals. The Science of Sport: Squash By Stafford Murray,...

Conqueror of the World

By James Zug 555: The Untold Story Behind Squash’s Invincible Champion and Sport’s Greatest Unbeaten Run by Rod Gilmour and Alan Thatcher Worthing, England: Pitch Publishing, 2016 It is hard to recall now, a quarter of...

How to be a Good Squash Parent: A Look at New Books

By James Zug The Winning Parent: A Parent’s Guide for the Journey of Competitive Sport—A System for Winning Now and Forever with Your Children in Sport By Daniel Massaro (New York: Mairs & Shaw Publishing, 2015) Last year...

Good Literary Length: Three New Books

Good Literary Length: Three New Books By James Zug Trading Secrets: Squash Greats Recall Their Toughest Duels Rod Gilmour (Durrington, England: Pitch Publishing, 2015) Oral history books are notoriously unreliable. What one person remembers might not jib with the...

Book Review: Play Better Squash by John Beddington

By James Zug Forty-one years ago John Beddington wrote a tiny paperback squash manual, Play Better Squash, which was published in London by Queen Anne Press (the publishing house that Ian Fleming ran; perhaps the...