A review by nightpath
Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui

3.0

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. It felt like flat pop journalism; interesting information recounted in a fragmented and boring way. I just didn’t feel captivated by it. A lot of the book was too much talk and not enough evidence-based data to get to the gritty science of swimming. The parts that did skirt around the edges of actual data, didn’t go much further into any real analysis. I had a similar experience trying to read Phosphorescence by Julie Baird.

I would imagine that the audience of this book would be primarily swimmers, but it didn’t feel like Tsui had taken that into account because a lot of the ideas discussed felt like things I already knew. This book didn’t feel novel, it just felt like a spouting out of bits of history and facts in a non-inspirational way. Each chapter also ended with a little box of fact snippets which were odd and not very interesting, except maybe to a child? One of the boxes was just a list of animals used in swim team names and a some fun facts about the animals. I guess it’s subjective, but I just skimmed/skipped those boxes.

I did enjoy the discussion about Nihon Eiho, as well as the chapters about Lynn Cox and other swimmers who push the limits.