Book Log 2013 #4: How to Watch the Olympics by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton

I picked this up thinking it would be like The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, but it's actually a reasonably straightforward guide to each of the sports on the program for the 2012 Summer Games. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I wonder how many people picked up the Thinking Fan's Guide expecting actual soccer talk - but it's not particularly useful for sports you're familiar with (though it does provide some trivia and details that make a skim of those sports worthwhile).

The tone is light and it's pretty well written, but it's more of a browse than a straight through read. It can be surprisingly entertaining when you read about a sport you know well; the average American would find the chapter on basketball pretty funny. It'll still be reasonably useful for 2016 (though there won't be chapters on golf or rugby), so keep it mind when Rio rolls around and you want some clarification on dressage.