Where would you like to be right now?
Lying on a beach in the Maldives? Sun shining, sparkling calm aqua ocean, sipping a strawberry daiquiri and catching-up on holiday reading?
Sounds pretty good. Or maybe walking the streets of London in the late summer evening, enjoying a pint of beer at the end of the day. Or going on a day hike around the Rocky Mountains. Or maybe enjoying the ski slopes of Queenstown in New Zealand. Or even heading to the MONA in Hobart.
All of those things sound pretty good from our home office in suburban Sydney - where at least we can get out and enjoy the splendid winter sunshine. For our friends in Melbourne who are still in lockdown, even that is a challenge.
But it made us think about where we'd like to be at the moment - as we start to slide away from winter, head into spring, and are only a few weeks away from another school holiday break. Things have certainly been different this year.
Being a publishing company that focuses on football books, we don't have much to offer by way of travel escapes, but we do have books on offer that take you to different places in the world.
David Picken's The Time of My Football Life is about how he spent his long service leave in 2006 travelling to Germany for the World Cup, following both England and Australia. It's a jaunty and quick read that helps transport you back to those wonderful weeks.
Antony Sutton's Support Your Local League is another read that is part travelogue, part social commentary and lots of football in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Matthew Hall's If I Started to Cry goes to all sorts of places. From King Tom Stadium in western Sydney, to Marrakech, Dili, Istanbul and New York City, it's a 'must read' for anyone who doesn't know the recent history of football in Australia.
In a different vein, Texi Smith's Jarrod Black books see our fictional Aussie hero, Jarrod Black, plying his football trade in largely regional England. There's three in the series! Introducing Jarrod Black; Jarrod Black Hospital Pass; and Jarrod Black Guilty Party (out this year).
Also published this year is George Tsitsonis' Achieving the Impossible which recounts the remarkable story of Greece's win at the 2004 European championships held in Portugal.
Jorge Knijnik's The World Cup Chronicles plants us firmly in Brazil before, during and after the 2014 World Cup against the backdrop of what was going on in Brazilian society and the impact the World Cup had on the country economically, politically, socially and culturally.
Finally, there is Bonita Mersiades' Whatever It Takes, the only insider account of the 'problematic' (to be kind) 2018/2022 World Cup bid contest: part memoir, part incredible investigation that knits everything together with detail, precision and objectivity. This book roams from Australia to Zurich to Doha to New York City to London to Seoul to Cape Town and a range of other points.
So while you're at home, with more hours than you might normally have to think about where you'd like to be, join us on a journey through one or all of our books.
We know it's not quite the same as being there yourself, but we hope it will help take your mind somewhere else and thinking about other things.
You can purchase all these books directly from us or via good bookstores or Amazon, as well as e-books directly from us or the entire collection from the usual outlets for all devices (other than the Encyclopediae).
On another note
If you can get to Sydney on November 21 and 22, we're holding the Football Writers' Festival at Manly Pavilion - suitably socially distanced in accordance with NSW Government guidelines for conferences. Check out the program, the wonderful list of speakers and moderators, and buy tickets soon! Manly is 20-30 minutes by ferry from the Sydney CBD.
