Friday Night Lights: A team, a town, a dream is the story of the 1988 Permian High School football team in Odessa, Texas. The book covers a year in the life of the team, from the ending of the 1987 season through the conclusion of the 1988 season. It displays the fanatical behavior of the entire town towards high school football, along with the incredible amount of pressure placed on the teenaged boys to perform at a superstar level, and how they reacted to the pressure. Many important issues such as race relations, parent-child relations, the self-image of the kids of whom so much is expected, and what happens when you fail to achieve a goal.
The first reason I like this novel, is because the way the writer talks about football, it reminds me of our football team at Las Cruces High. This book has a lot of excitement and a definite plot. The narrator of the book is H.G. Bissinger; he talks about all the ups and downs the football team goes through on and off the field. One of the main topics that Bissinger writes about is the Watermelon Feed. The watermelon feed is like our booster club meeting, first they talk about the new business the booster club has to take care of, then they introduce all the players to the hole town of Odessa. This book is great on making you fill as if you were at every game during the 1988 season. The narrator gives you all the exciting moments and explosive hit during the game. .
The things that I did not like about the book was, the book kind of got boring when it started to talk about Odessa. In the beginning of the book, the narrator talks about how Odessa became a town and how it started its love for the game of football. Another reason that I did not like the book is because there were a lot of racial phrases, such as the wordNigger?. Even though this helps the book get across its point of racism, it is still a very offensive term. .
In addition to being a good book, there are a lot of phrases that give me goose bumps when I read them, it reminds me of my football team.