Managing Football

The plot: One man's quest to raise a team from the dregs of Italian football and return them to the glory they once had ninety-plus years ago. The catch: The narrative is entirely born out of a game called Football Manager where instead of actually control the players on the field, you make all the administrative decisions and see how your team performs. Seriously, though, there's like a hundred entries in this series and I'm completely engrossed (I'm about 3/4 of the way done). Every time I pick up my iPad to read it I realize how totally insane it is (I'm reading an account of a video game which is in itself an account of a real soccer team with fake players in an imaginary future). But really, it's amazing and sometimes funny and sometimes gripping and at the very least it's worth reading because it's definitely different. Here's a small, almost random sample, from an entry titled "Wolves to the Slaughter:

When you're right on course for a safe mid-table finish, it sometimes feels like there's not a lot of news to report. A win isn't a huge story, but then, a loss isn't a huge story either, and time can slip by pretty fast as you make minor adjustments and chart the weekly ticks in your balance sheet. One game blends into the next, and before you know it, the season turns into a reverie. You're living life like a Middlesbrough fan. If you want to be sharp, you have to fight the glide.

Enjoy. [Via Metafilter]