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Why We Swim
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An immersive, unforgettable, and eye-opening perspective on swimming—and on human behavior itself.
We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned ...more
We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned ...more
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No spoilers....
I shared my own relationship with water....
Thankful to Bonnie Tsui for writing this perfectly beautiful book....
A tribute to water, and swimming.
Audiobook...narrated by Angie Kane.....
I was in heaven for six hours and 35 minutes.
Author Bonnie Tsui is an author I’d like to meet...'in the water'.
I’m a water baby. My kids are water babies. ( one of them was on the TV news with me at 2 weeks old as I demonstrated how she was 'water safe'), from swim teams, master swim classes, lots ...more
I shared my own relationship with water....
Thankful to Bonnie Tsui for writing this perfectly beautiful book....
A tribute to water, and swimming.
Audiobook...narrated by Angie Kane.....
I was in heaven for six hours and 35 minutes.
Author Bonnie Tsui is an author I’d like to meet...'in the water'.
I’m a water baby. My kids are water babies. ( one of them was on the TV news with me at 2 weeks old as I demonstrated how she was 'water safe'), from swim teams, master swim classes, lots ...more
The book started off well. There were several real-life stories that were interesting to me and I enjoyed learning about the achievements of several people I hadn't heard of before. I wish topics like the science of how swimming impacts our mind and our body were discussed more than the personal life of the author, her family etc. I lost interest for the last 30% of the book because it started to feel repetitive and like a dreamy memoir.
...more
In "Why We Swim", Bonnie Tsui introduces us into the magic of water, the possibility of quasi amphibious lifestyle of humans and the flow we ride in total mindfulness when swimming 🏊♀️.
I loved reading this non-fiction book for I have been swimming on a regular basis during my pregnancy and am eager to have my baby participate in swim courses, provided my idea resonates with him ;)
Bonnie Tsui does not only share private moments of her journey that shaped her into a keen swimmer, but also a wel ...more
I loved reading this non-fiction book for I have been swimming on a regular basis during my pregnancy and am eager to have my baby participate in swim courses, provided my idea resonates with him ;)
Bonnie Tsui does not only share private moments of her journey that shaped her into a keen swimmer, but also a wel ...more
An exploration of a swimmer's relationship with water. The zone. The psychological effects. The health benefits. Water as a rehabilitation medium bordering on miraculous. Water as a source of inspiration, profound insight and unity with the world. That's quite a lot of discourse to shoulder but Bonnie Tsui pulled it off gracefully.
Q:
I swam through the divorce. I swam through college. I swam from Alcatraz, on a dare. I swam as rehab from knee surgery. I swam across a lake at my wedding. I swam t ...more
Q:
I swam through the divorce. I swam through college. I swam from Alcatraz, on a dare. I swam as rehab from knee surgery. I swam across a lake at my wedding. I swam t ...more
This was an interesting read. Probably more philosophical than scientific but it had some scientific elements. A meditation. There is definitely a peace or calming effect to water. The act of swimming has a unique effect on me, more than other forms of vigorous exercise. I can spend time with myself, the water lifts the burdens both physical and emotional for those moments in time. This is really a good expression of the writers love for water and swimming. I wasn't in the right mindset to recei
...more
This book is beautifully. written. It’s lyrical.. It’s meaningful to me as someone who loved to swim (though I had a rocky road learning) and who has always loved the water. Water and trees, in my case. Even if swimming was not something that appeals to me I would have enjoyed this book.
It's a book to savor.
The structure of the book works well: the chapters, sections, text within chapters, literary and other references, people’s stories.
As a vegan I could have done without the present day aba ...more
It's a book to savor.
The structure of the book works well: the chapters, sections, text within chapters, literary and other references, people’s stories.
As a vegan I could have done without the present day aba ...more
This book isn't much what I thought it would be from the trailer. It's all about effusive feelings and almost romantic notions of our Earth's water. Of course there is some science and reality but it's minority of the whole.
This is memoir, happenstance story heard, memory type of celebration for a survivor of shipwreck, and numerous other cultural brand directions going on with the seas/ swimming being the focus. And the human affinities for sea close living and swimming within seas or various ...more
This is memoir, happenstance story heard, memory type of celebration for a survivor of shipwreck, and numerous other cultural brand directions going on with the seas/ swimming being the focus. And the human affinities for sea close living and swimming within seas or various ...more
3.5 ☆
Why We Swim is a broad survey of both the why and how humans swim. It is also a memoir of Tsui's personal and family experiences in the water and as such becomes her paean to swimming.
Swimming is the second most popular recreational activity in America, outranked only by walking.
Why We Swim is a broad survey of both the why and how humans swim. It is also a memoir of Tsui's personal and family experiences in the water and as such becomes her paean to swimming.
The body is engaged in full physical movement, but the mind itself floats, untethered....more
We skip from thought to thought, and then there's a momentary nothingness. In that brief interlude, we are entirely li
Beautiful, insightful, if occasionally a bit slow and redundant. Really resonated with me, as a former competitive swimmer.
Full review coming soon :)
Full review coming soon :)
4.5 rounding up because I loved every wet moment! I used to swim daily, I adore being in water, albeit not the same wild waterways she pursues. I was lost in every drop of time.
3.5 stars rounded up.
The pandemic has stopped me and many others to swim in our usual spots. The loss is felt until now. I swim not only for fitness but also the feel of water surrounding me, the way it buoys you, the sense of freedom and weightlessness, untethered from technology (!) I could go on.
This book is a love letter to swimmers. Either you are one of those athlete-like swimmer swimming in lanes and could go lap after lap, or like me, a lazy swimmer who just enjoy the immersion and play ...more
The pandemic has stopped me and many others to swim in our usual spots. The loss is felt until now. I swim not only for fitness but also the feel of water surrounding me, the way it buoys you, the sense of freedom and weightlessness, untethered from technology (!) I could go on.
This book is a love letter to swimmers. Either you are one of those athlete-like swimmer swimming in lanes and could go lap after lap, or like me, a lazy swimmer who just enjoy the immersion and play ...more
A personal and historical tour of swimming. This book really touches on why we swim, and surprise, the reasons are many. From survival to competition to therapy to health... even for creativity, Bonnie Tsui really reminded me why I wish I was swimming right now instead of being quarantined in my room.
But I've always been a terrible swimmer. It started with swimming lessons as a kid, but it never came intuitively to me as it did so many others. I saw them zip through the water with barely a motio ...more
But I've always been a terrible swimmer. It started with swimming lessons as a kid, but it never came intuitively to me as it did so many others. I saw them zip through the water with barely a motio ...more
I won an Advance Reading Copy of Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui from Goodreads.
Pardon the pun, but the writing in Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui is so fluid that the reader feels as if he is slipping into the prose as a swimmer slips into water. Tsui takes readers to waters around the world, including oceans, lakes, pools, and more. She ushers the reader through time, stopping at a desert to visit an ancient sea and reliving the final seconds at Olympic meets. She speaks with amateurs, professionals, sc ...more
Pardon the pun, but the writing in Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui is so fluid that the reader feels as if he is slipping into the prose as a swimmer slips into water. Tsui takes readers to waters around the world, including oceans, lakes, pools, and more. She ushers the reader through time, stopping at a desert to visit an ancient sea and reliving the final seconds at Olympic meets. She speaks with amateurs, professionals, sc ...more
These are swim stories from around the globe and even through history. Most involve the personal involvement of author Bonnie Tsui. She is a life-long swimmer that understands how swimmers think and feel.
The first major story about an Icelandic survivor of a fishing boat that went under was inspiring. His couple other crewmates drowned, but this humble guy with literally thick skin made it through very cold water back to shore. (6 hours, 3+ miles, 28 deg water) He became a hero in Iceland, and m ...more
The first major story about an Icelandic survivor of a fishing boat that went under was inspiring. His couple other crewmates drowned, but this humble guy with literally thick skin made it through very cold water back to shore. (6 hours, 3+ miles, 28 deg water) He became a hero in Iceland, and m ...more
What a beautiful book! An original idea, and the writing style is fluid and sparkling - like water. She explores the significance of swimming across many cultures and times (samurais, Icelandic fishermen, prisoners escaping from Alcatraz) as well as the physiology and psychology of it. My one complaint is that the chapter on who gets to swim felt like an afterthought, although it was in the middle of the book. I would've liked a bit more on segregation and the reasons Black Americans have lower
...more
I expected more “Born to Run” and less “Beethoven to his Immortal Beloved” but found myself pleasantly surprised by the latter. This is not about why we swim. This book is a love letter to swimming. A swooning note to a hobby, a sport, a state of mind.
There are books about baseball and cricket and football and golf, but books about swimming are not many. Here, Bonnie Tsui tells us of her lifelong love of the sport while also providing a history of our fascination with water, along with some of swimming’s oddities.
Swimming is, by our human definition, a constant state of not drowning.
Life came from the water and perhaps this is why humans are always drawn to blue seas. Even in a time of flooded coastlines and climate change, we still want to b ...more
Swimming is, by our human definition, a constant state of not drowning.
Life came from the water and perhaps this is why humans are always drawn to blue seas. Even in a time of flooded coastlines and climate change, we still want to b ...more
As an avid swimmer, I’m always in search of books that will capture the feeling of being in the water. Tsui beautifully touches on all of the elements that water evokes for humans, in a style that is prose, memoir, and biography of some of her swimming heroes. What I liked is that it highlights both the collective and individual experience of swimming and how we simultaneously both belong in and are foreign to the water. Especially poignant are the scenes of open water swimming, with all of its
...more
I absolutely loved this book! Being in "Shelter-in-Place" and my pool closed - plus having a broken arm so I couldn't go in the pool anyway - loved remembering what I love so much about swimming.
I was on a swim team from age 5 to high school, then Masters swimming in my 30's, now old lady water aerobics with some lap swimming. She really captures so much about the experience. Also loved reading all the information about various big name swimmers. Bonnie Tsui lives in San Francisco - my turf - I ...more
I was on a swim team from age 5 to high school, then Masters swimming in my 30's, now old lady water aerobics with some lap swimming. She really captures so much about the experience. Also loved reading all the information about various big name swimmers. Bonnie Tsui lives in San Francisco - my turf - I ...more
It was just all right.
Well-researched but nothing new. It was like she collected what everyone ever said/wrote about swimming and put it neatly in a book. From greek gods, through Aristotle and Neruda, all the way to Clintons and Michael Phelps. Touched some society views on swimming and added a few contemporary stories of friends and her family, but again - well known. Lacked creativity and personality.
Well-researched but nothing new. It was like she collected what everyone ever said/wrote about swimming and put it neatly in a book. From greek gods, through Aristotle and Neruda, all the way to Clintons and Michael Phelps. Touched some society views on swimming and added a few contemporary stories of friends and her family, but again - well known. Lacked creativity and personality.
This a wonderfully researched and beautifully written tribute to water, swimming, and the human spirit. I read riveted, full of admiration for its author, Bonnie Tsui, and the many survivors, adventurers, and heroes the book salutes. I finished feeling inspired, and aching to swim, and wondering how I could live a bigger, bolder life.
It's an odd thing, when you examine it, how humanity is drawn to water -- and not only the water's edge, but into it. Across it. Under it. Deep in it.
Here is a delightful and informative examination of that impulse, less about deep sea diving or big wave surfing than the ingredients of swimming and how they contribute to emotional and physical well-being, how water is an unfriendly habitat we nonetheless can mostly master, and what sort of people become the champions of swimming.
Charlotte Epst ...more
Here is a delightful and informative examination of that impulse, less about deep sea diving or big wave surfing than the ingredients of swimming and how they contribute to emotional and physical well-being, how water is an unfriendly habitat we nonetheless can mostly master, and what sort of people become the champions of swimming.
Charlotte Epst ...more
May 03, 2021
booklady
marked it as possible-purchase
Thanks to my GRs friend, GoldGato for her marvelous review which led me to this book! Although I am trying very hard these days not to impulse-buy, I do want to make note of this book because I think it is something my daughter and son-in-law would greatly love. They have a full-sized outdoor pool which my SiL cannot resist diving into even when the water is still very cold. Besides that, they both go on float trips and other vacations which lead them to water sports, among other things.
...more
One of my favorite books of 2020.
This book was a birthday gift from a friend who knows me well enough to know how much I love to swim, and as it turns out, it was the perfect literary companion to an initially impromptu (and then very intentional) 100-day swim streak this past summer-into-fall.
Why We Swim is a wonderful book, for swimmers and non-swimmers and would-be swimmers alike, with chapters I expected (How do you write a book about swimming and not talk about Kim Chambers? If you haven't ...more
This book was a birthday gift from a friend who knows me well enough to know how much I love to swim, and as it turns out, it was the perfect literary companion to an initially impromptu (and then very intentional) 100-day swim streak this past summer-into-fall.
Why We Swim is a wonderful book, for swimmers and non-swimmers and would-be swimmers alike, with chapters I expected (How do you write a book about swimming and not talk about Kim Chambers? If you haven't ...more
What a captivating, beautiful book. I want to love something as much as Bonnie Tsui loves swimming, as much as she adores and yearns to be in the water and contemplates her place—and our collective human place—in relation to it. There are many interesting facts woven through the tapestry of the author’s lifelong love affair with being in the water to make this lovely, specific, meditative book. I learned a lot and feel moved by her passion for swimming.
If you think you don’t care about swimming, ...more
If you think you don’t care about swimming, ...more
The thesis of this book is essentially this: humans, for all our land-bound state may be, are (metaphorically) amphibians. We are drawn towards the water, and we adapt to it.
For instance, in the Philippines, an ethnic group known as the Bajau are so closely involved with water that even toddlers are expert divers. Interestingly, science has shown that they have spleens that are 50% larger than average people, which is significant: when humans dive underwater, the spleen contracts as part of the ...more
For instance, in the Philippines, an ethnic group known as the Bajau are so closely involved with water that even toddlers are expert divers. Interestingly, science has shown that they have spleens that are 50% larger than average people, which is significant: when humans dive underwater, the spleen contracts as part of the ...more
Fascinating! I learned so much about swimming. The only trouble with this books is that now I really want to go swimming.
listened to as an audiobook so definitely didn’t take in as much as if i had actually read it. i liked all the stuff about open water and cold water swimming, learning about the health benefits and why people find it so meditative. the stuff about competitive swimming was boring to me and her swimming metaphors got a little out of hand. but overall made me want to start swimming again more and maybe even get into open water stuff
As many others have noted, this book is a love letter to the buoyancy one feels in the sea, the thrill of flipping and propelling yourself back to the other side of the pool, and all the other feelings of excitement, trepidation, and stimulation that come with being immersed in and surrounded by water. Though a bit dramatic at times, I thought the writing of Why We Swim was beautiful and captured all of the aspects that have always enchanted me about swimming, but I was also quite upset by Tsui'
...more
A love letter to swimmers, especially open water swimmers.
I found it very inspirational - I don't swim enough! I need to do more open water swimming! And go for as long as I can without a wetsuit in the SF Bay, maybe all winter.
Why We Swim mixes memoir with the science of the benefits of swimming, especially cold water swimming, and the psychology & physiology that swimming promotes.
Her book isn't too kind to competitive swimmers - she gives it a mixed review. It's beneficial as a physical disci ...more
I found it very inspirational - I don't swim enough! I need to do more open water swimming! And go for as long as I can without a wetsuit in the SF Bay, maybe all winter.
Why We Swim mixes memoir with the science of the benefits of swimming, especially cold water swimming, and the psychology & physiology that swimming promotes.
Her book isn't too kind to competitive swimmers - she gives it a mixed review. It's beneficial as a physical disci ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play Book Tag: Why We Swim - Bonnie Tsui - 4.5 stars | 4 | 15 | Jun 18, 2021 09:50AM | |
| Book Club Discussion points | 1 | 3 | Mar 25, 2021 02:42PM | |
| Non Fiction Book ...: Feb/March 2021 Mod's Pick - Why We Swim | 65 | 59 | Mar 23, 2021 08:46PM | |
| Books & Banter: August 2020 - Nonfiction | 1 | 12 | Aug 03, 2020 11:28AM | |
| Mt. Lebanon Publi...: Why We Swim | 1 | 6 | Jun 09, 2020 01:05PM |
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Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and longtime contributor to The New York Times. She's the author of AMERICAN CHINATOWN, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Her new book, WHY WE SWIM, was published by Algonquin Books in April 2020; it was a TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2020, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Boston Globe bestse
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“You don’t have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benefits of sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.”
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“For many swimmers, the act of swimming is a tonic, in that old-fashioned sense of the word: it is a restorative, a stimulant, undertaken for a feeling of vigor and well-being. The word tonic comes from the Greek tonikos, “of or for stretching.” About a dozen people”
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