Interview with Howard Means, author of Splash!: 10,000 Years of Swimming
Howard Means, author of Splash!: 10,000 Years of Swimming, this week shares a fantastic group of book recommendations! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Howard's book:
Review from Book Depository:
From the first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the recreational swimmers in your local pool, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all.
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Splash!: 10,000 Years of Swimming
Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then re-emerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at the modern Olympic Games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, revealing how its history spans religion, fashion, architecture, public health, colonialism, segregation, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory and much, much more.
As refreshing as jumping into a pool on a hot summer's day, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind's swimming history with an irrepressible enthusiasm that will make you crave your next dip.
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Book Depository €13.25
Waterstones £16.99
Wordery $17.96
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Perhaps because I invest so much time in researching my own books, a “smart thinking” book for me is one that carries me away to a place I’ll probably never go, set in a time I can only imagine yet so deeply realized that at the end of the book I feel I’ve been by the author's side through the entire journey. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s companion travel memoirs, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, had that effect on me. So did Julia Blackburn’s The Emperor’s Last Island.
Review From Book Depository:
In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary.
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The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing) Review From Waterstones:
The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here. It follows him through the eyes of those who lived with him, who guarded him, who managed only to catch a brief glimpse of him, alive or dead.
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A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople - from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube
It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies. His powers of recollection have astonishing sweep and verve, and the scope is majestic.
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Book Depository €9.69
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Wordery $12.09
Between the Woods and the Water
Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania.
The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges.
The concluding part of the trilogy was published in September 2013 as The Broken Road.
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Book Depository €8.83
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $10.49
The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St Helena
It is also a personal account: a description of Julia Blackburn's own journey to St Helena and at the same time a journey through the private memories and associations evoked by the telling of this poignant and curious story.
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Waterstones £12.99
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
Richard Power's The Overstory was my escape room this spring as the coronavirus spread and madness overcame the body politic in the States. It’s a novel of protest, imminent environmental disaster, and the secret life of trees. The last of those items – trees and their interconnectivity – is rich with both hope and tragedy.
Review From Book Depository:
For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do.
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The Overstory
Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.
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Book Depository €10.25
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $11.45
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
As a child, I fell in love with James Thurber’s Fables for Our Time. As a dad, I pivoted to another New Yorker writer, E.B. White, especially Charlotte’s Web. Now that I’m a grandfather, I’m partial to anything by Maurice Sendak for a bedtime story. When it comes to amusing the five-and-under set and yourself simultaneously, Mo Willem’s Elephant & Piggie series is hard to top.
Review From Book Depository:
These tiny stories, in which a wide variety of animals show us humans how we really are, are completely uproarious. --The Saturday Review of Literature
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Bestselling author Peter Mayle and acclaimed children's book illustrator Arthur Robins combine their talents in this delightful children's storybook. Once you've met Chilly Billy and heard of his adventures inside the refrigerator, you'll never open the fridge door in quite the same way again! Chilly Billy is a fun and lovable character you won't forget. Reissued exclusively through Escargot Books. Illustrated in black and white.
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Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
James Thurber has been called one of our great American institutions' (Stanley Walker) and a magnificent satirist (Boston Transcript). The New York Herald Tribune submits that he is as blithe as Benchley...as savage as Swift...surprisingly wise and witty, while the Times of London, out of enthusiasm and a profound regard for truth, proclaims that Thurber is Thurber.
In Fables for Our Time, Thurber the Moralist is in the ascendancy. Here are a score or more lessons-in-prose dedicated to conventional sinners and proving--what you will. The fables are imperishably illustrated, and are supplemented by Mr. Thurber's own pictorial interpretations of famous poems in a wonderful and joyous assemblage.
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Book Depository €11.14
Today I Will Fly! (Elephant & Piggie #1)
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Book Depository €6.77
Waterstones £7.99
Wordery $8.53
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
I take a book more seriously when I tackle it on paper although that might just be age bias. With Kindle, I’m forever highlighting passages that I don’t revisit, then scrolling restlessly forward, but the convenience is unbeatable. I love audiobooks for long car trips, but the better the story, the more inclined I am to drift to the edge of the road and beyond at critical moments.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Absolutely, although it might be a long trip for many smart-thinking devotees. Powell’s Book in Portland, Oregon, is a one-block-square mixture of new and used books ranging from children’s titles to avant-garde poetry to adult bestsellers and wise staff-picks that often highlight wonderful reading lingering in the shadows of the mass market. Like other great independent bookshops, Powell’s is in the process of reimagining its role in a retail world possibly permanently changed. Here’s hoping it’s not forced to change too much.
Many thanks to Howard for answering my questions and for his great recommendations! Please don't forget to check out his book Splash!: 10,000 Years of Swimming.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Atlantic Books (Splash), John Murray Press (A Time of Gifts, Between The Woods and The Water), Vintage Publishing (The Emperor's Last Island, The Overstory), HarperCollins Publishers Inc (Fables Of Our Time), Walker Books Ltd (Today I Will Fly).
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