THE MISERY MEMOIR is, literally and otherwise, a dying art. Suddenly, after years of Kleenex, the public is fed up with dogs getting cancer and owners having suspect relations with the village priest. Misery is, well, depressing. Unless you are in the sport section, where woe and grief are alive and kicking. Three cheers for the cheerless.

This hints at the addictive power of sport. Foolishly, we think we are in it because we love success, but that is fleeting ephemera for the likes of Chelsea fans. Failure is what sport is all about, from English football to Paula Radcliffe, from tears at bedtime to puddles on the pavement.

Andrew Kaufman knew this when he created the Frog-Kisser in his novella All My Friends Are Superheroes. The Frog-Kisser is a woman with the power to transform geeks into winners, but who tragically finds that she is no longer attracted to them post-alchemy. It is the same with us. Give us a flawed genius or a tortured soul any day, but especially at the weekend.

Give us Marcus Trescothick's Coming Back To Me (HarperCollins, £18.99/£17.09). This is the story of how one of England's most accomplished batsmen has had to fight depression. It is a surprising tale, not because depression is unusual but because we do not normally associate it with quasi-superheroes. Sportsmen have generally got to the top because of their mental strength, but Trescothick gives a candid assessment of his depression and we can only hope that it exposes sport's inherent machismo and hubris; it is embarrassing, really, that a footballer can drink too much and wear silk shorts but not be depressed or gay.

The sports star who has had it worst of all is Roy Race. A bland figure whose nose was modelled on Cliff Richard's, the Melchester Rovers striker had his foot amputated, got kidnapped and then spent time in a coma after being shot. His misery is recalled in Roy of the Rovers: The Unauthorised Biography by Mick Collins (Aurum, £14.99/£13.49), a deft examination of the comic-book hero and the men who created him. The truth hurts even more, though, which is why they should never have signed half of Spandau Ballet and made Geoff Boycott chairman.

This is evident from Brian Reade's hugely enjoyable 43 Years With The Same Bird (Macmillan, £12.99/£11.69). Reade is a diehard Liverpool fan and has proved that there is life in the fan's memoir post-Fever Pitch. If any football club highlights the light and shade of sport then it is Liverpool, and Reade captures the duality with wit and wisdom. “If I hung around them (footballers) too long and allowed cynicism to peel back my eyes and see what football is really about, it would inevitably lose its spell,” he writes after Kenny Dalglish, his hero, shatters years of idolatry. Jeremy Whittle has his eyes peeled back and fights a battle with his own cynicism in Bad Blood: The Secret Life of the Tour de France (Yellow Jersey, £12.99/£11.69), an illuminating account of the Times cycling correspondent's transformation from fan to sceptic.

These deep issues concern Ed Smith in What Sport Tells Us About Life (Viking, £15.99/£14.39), a series of essays on matters such as cheating, the free market and when Swansea feels like Cinema Paradiso. I began as a sceptic - I believe that you can explain Zinedine Zidane being sent off by a cursory look at his record of red cards - and wondered whether this was going to be a dressed-up statement of the bleeding obvious. I ended up a fan because Smith has an erudite touch and the chapter “When is cheating really cheating?” is the best thing you'll ever read on the subject.

It is not all gloom and doom, of course. After the harrowing first instalment of his memoirs were dominated by the Munich disaster, Sir Bobby Charlton's My England Years (Headline, £20/£18) deals with World Cup glory and completes one of football's best autobiographies, brilliantly ghosted by James Lawton.

Inverting the Pyramid (Orion, £18.99/£17.09) by Jonathan Wilson is similarly definitive when it comes to football tactics, taking the reader on a rollicking ride from an age when chaos reigned to a time when Steve McClaren did.

Sport really matters when it crosses its own boundaries, as it does in Playing the Enemy (Atlantic, £18.99/ £17.09), John Carlin's analysis of how Nelson Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to soothe the passage to a post-apartheid South Africa. It also had restorative powers in 1948 as postwar Britain warmed to Fanny Blankers-Koen, a woman who could “darn socks with great artistry” and win four gold medals. The Austerity Olympics (Aurum, £18.99/£17.09) by Janie Hampton is a nostalgic treat in an age of £9 billion budgets.

Misery, though, will out. Carl Hiaasen usually writes crime novels about crocodiles, Florida and loud shirts, but takes on golf in Fairway To Hell (Bantam, £14.99/£13.49). Why is he drawn to a sport that he often hates and commands him to stay a geek? “I'm one sick bastard,” he concludes. Aren't we all?

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