Your enjoyment will depend on how interesting you find the myriad subjects touched upon over the course of the book but Dyer is nothing if not an affable and amusing host who manages to convey interest in things you might not have thought yourself interested in. That said, there are definitely some subjects Dyer is unable to do that to (ie. jazz - the only thing worse than reading about jazz is listening to it), but all told I found this book to be fairly entertaining and enlightening even. When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? As our bodies decay, how do we keep on? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who've mattered to him throughout his life. With a playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he recounts Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, J. M. W. Turner's paintings of abstracted light, John Coltrane's cosmic melodies, Bjorn Borg's defeats, and Beethoven's final quartets--and considers the intensifications and modifications of experience that come when an ending is within sight. Throughout, he stresses the accomplishments of uncouth geniuses who defied convention, and went on doing so even when their beautiful youths were over.

Geoff Dyer hates Anthony Powell and "A Dance to the Music of Time" more than anything in the world. It was harder for fans to grow weary of Federer winning titles, big or small, when Nadal had reminded them that winning was not a givenThe other issue is the date of publication, which can’t be held against the book in itself, but does leave some huge gaps. Federer is now tied for the most tennis Majors with Nadal and Djokovic, but by the end of this book, Nadal was well behind and Djokovic had barely joined the tour and they had only played each other a couple of times. This isn’t the book’s fault, but if you do want to read something about Federer, something more recent, even if it is no better written in terms of the feeling, would be a recommended way to go.

I feel like such a grump for not liking this more, because I can see that if it's something that's objectively just more up your street than it was mine then it would be a four or five starrer. The parts of this I enjoyed the most had to do with Dyer's own personal adventures and misadventures, whether his long-running mission to never pay for shampoo again or his frustrated attempt to complete "A Dance to the Music of Time." Even when I didn't completely relate to the enthusiasm Dyer shows to things like jazz, I always enjoyed the writing. And when Dyer turned his attention to people and things I am enthusiastic about — films, novels, Christopher Hitchens, Federer, etc — I was enthralled. I didn't know that Roger left school at 16 with a lot of financial support from his parents that few others could rely on. The comparison to Agassi could have been expanded as he, unlike Federa, did not choose tennis. This lead to all sorts of problems, many psychological, which is understandable, yet Federa too did not escape psychological challenges. This is another big gap in the book. The Master is an engaging and thrilling biography about one of the best tennis players to ever play the game. Christopher Clarey is both concise and intriguing with his balance of facts/stats and intimate conversations with Roger Federer. This is a form Dyer has largely devised for himself, a mutable hybrid of criticism, fiction, autobiography and what’s come to be called, regrettably, the “personal essay.” Within this style, he has written about film (“ Zona”), photography (“ The Ongoing Moment”), jazz (the sublime “But Beautiful”) and his global wanderings (“ Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi,” one of this new century’s finest novels in English). Now 63, he has matured into prestige — widely translated, a National Book Critics Circle prizewinner, writer in residence at USC, an influence to younger writers — while remaining impish and unpredictable in his writing.I mean it's Roger Federer. that's worth 4 stars as it is. All in all I really enjoyed reading this - even though I have a tough time reading biographies of those who are still "active" (whether still alive or still playing their sport) because it's almost like the story isn't really finished.