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A review by alexblackreads
Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui
3.0
This book combined the history of swimming, the science of swimming, and memoir of the author's personal experience with swimming into a lovely book that is basically a love letter to swimming.
I found so many of the topics interesting. Tsui interviewed Olympic swimmers, open water swimmers, paleontologists, shipwreck survivors, scientists, and religious leaders. This book contains basically the breadth of swimming in the human existence. I especially loved the interviews with swimmers. The different people she met, who all swam for different reasons, were really fascinating. I found myself wishing there was a bit more of that.
Sometimes I think Tsui was trying a little too hard to be overly meaningful. The information itself was great, and I really enjoyed hearing about her personal history, but it felt kind of pretentious at points. I kind of wanted this to be more journalism focused than it was.
If you like swimming, and I mean really care about swimming, I would recommend this book to you. I'm not really a swimmer so I struggled a bit, but I do think it was well done.
I found so many of the topics interesting. Tsui interviewed Olympic swimmers, open water swimmers, paleontologists, shipwreck survivors, scientists, and religious leaders. This book contains basically the breadth of swimming in the human existence. I especially loved the interviews with swimmers. The different people she met, who all swam for different reasons, were really fascinating. I found myself wishing there was a bit more of that.
Sometimes I think Tsui was trying a little too hard to be overly meaningful. The information itself was great, and I really enjoyed hearing about her personal history, but it felt kind of pretentious at points. I kind of wanted this to be more journalism focused than it was.
If you like swimming, and I mean really care about swimming, I would recommend this book to you. I'm not really a swimmer so I struggled a bit, but I do think it was well done.