Cafe Within-the-Cafe: The Bookshelf, Revisited

I don’t know exactly why, but … I just like words. In some ways this site’s roots were only tangentially about cycling and really was just a continuation of my literature studies. Yes, I was a lit major, and not a very accomplished one. Like, at all. The study of literature requires a dedication and focus beyond what regular people OMG A SQUIRREL!!! Where was I?

Oh yeah, literature. There are a lot of ways in which the Podium Cafe came along at the right time — post-Lance (whew!), but meeting the heightened interest in the sport with something there was not enough of: English language chatter. The situation was even more dire if you ventured into a bookstore, where even a solid attempt at a sports section would include a few token works on Cycling, mostly with Armstrong on the cover. By 2006 you could find more online, sportswriter books about a race or series of races with legendary names attached — Sam Abt! John Wilcockson! But the sport was due for a rise in book-length works… and boy did we get it.

I christened the Café Bookshelf in early 2008 as writers like Joe Parkin, Matt Rendell, Jeremy Whittle and Richard Moore saw their works break through in the US, even without Lance in the title. I started writing book reviews — something no other English website seemed to catch on to, and before long, I got an offer from a fella in Dublin, by the handle “fmk,” who shared my love of cycling books and writing about them. And the Cafe Bookshelf became what it is today: the most comprehensive assembly of in-depth Cycling book reviews, in English at least.

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I shouldn’t love reading about sports as much as I do, right? It wasn’t something I admitted to my lit profs, but when I was a bored and kinda lonely tween, following a move to a new town, I started haunting the public library, not for great works of literature but fun, readable sports books. Older me would undoubtedly turn his nose up at the one about the injured kid who threw the touchdown, or the other injured kid who hit the big home run (I am totally imagining what these books were actually about because… it doesn’t matter). Mixed in were a few biographies of great ball sports legends. They were fun reads and met up with my sports-obsessed imagination. I didn’t need any help or permission or even a device charger to pass a reasonably fun afternoon. So while I grew all the way from there into collegiate-level study of literature, and developed a fondness for a…