All Booked | Make a Splash

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Hello, fellow bookworms!

With the arrival of August, we’re entering into the dog days of summer. I hope everyone is spending it at the beach, at the pool, or in your own backyard — with a book in hand, of course!

This week, Christina McDermott brings us a few reads about the sport of swimming. I hope it encourages you to spend some time in the water — there’s really no better way to cool off during a hot summer day.

Be safe, and happy reading!

—Tessa, allbooked@independent.com

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On hot August days, evening swims take on a particular kind of pleasure. In pools, yellow late day sun filters below the surface and catches the edges of the bubbles that journey up around me as I submerge. On Santa Barbara’s coast, the ocean has tipped from chilly to refreshing. It washes the sweat and dust of the day from my skin as I wade into waves. 

For me, reading about swimming — from its history to its health benefits — feels especially appropriate this time of year. Whether you’re looking to dip your toes in the shallow end of a community pool or compete in one of Santa Barbara’s open water swim races, I recommend these two titles.

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Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui 

“This book is an investigation of what seduces us to water, despite its dangers, and why we come back to it again and again,” writes Bonnie Tsui in her 2020 book, Why We Swim. In the following pages, Tsui, a lifelong swimmer and journalist, takes us readers around the world, from a pool cut into Siberian ice to one in a U.S. compound in Iraq. Tsui’s prose, lyrical and personal, brings us into the lives of swimmers and water-experts of all types. 

There’s Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, for example, who, at 22 years old, swam six hours to shore one March day after the trawler he worked on flipped over into the frigid water off the coast of Iceland. Or there’s Midori Ishibiki, a master of samurai swimming, who, as Tsui describes, can move through water, barely creating a ripple. 

Tsui’s prose is punctuated by scientific anecdotes, historical information that puts swimming (and pools) in context, and philosophy. Her tone, ever lyrical, makes it easy to fall in love with the little things about swimming, from the way your body cools after leaving cold water to how it feels to float. 

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Splash! 10,000 Years of Swimming by Howard Means

Have you ever wondered about swimming’s popularity in ancient Rome? What about how the four modern strokes were invented? Means’s 2020 book has your answers. Means, another lifelong swimmer and journalist, tracks swimming over the past 10,000 years. The work overlaps with Tsui’s book, but like walking the same beach on different days, Splash! is a different experience.

Splash! pulls us down the river of time, focusing largely on the history of swimming.

From learning Greek naval clashes to reading about the feats of Gertrude Ederle, the first person to swim the English Channel using a crawl stroke, each time I put down this book, I’d learned something new, some way that swimming has enmeshed itself into the fabric of human society. Means also dedicates time to talking about how sexism and racism has impacted who, historically and today, has access to swimming water. Splash! is, all and all, the kind of read you want to tell someone about over a long coffee date, or maybe, during a Saturday at the beach. 

Happy reading! And remember to never swim alone. 

—Christina McDermott

FROM OUR PAGES

We’ve had some great author visits and interviews recently, so don’t miss out. Here is some of our book-related coverage from the last two weeks! Read all this and more at Independent.com.

“Carpinteria Writers’ Group Encourages Holocaust Survivor Michael Fryd to Share His Story Through Writing” by Ella Bailey

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UPCOMING BOOK EVENTS

Below, you will find a few bookish events coming up in Santa Barbara. If you are hosting a bookish event in Santa Barbara, be sure to submit the event to our online events calendar.

S.B. Library Fiction Book Club
Tuesday, August 4, 5:30 p.m. | S.B. Central Library

S.B. Library Social Justice Book Club
Wednesday, August 5, 5:30 p.m. | S.B. Central Library

Godmothers Gather: Jenny Walton, Jenny Sais Quoi
Wednesday, August 5, 6 p.m. | Godmothers

S.B. Eastside Library Bilingual Songs & Stories for Kids
Thursday, August 6, 11 a.m. | Eastside Library 

Between the Lines: Adult Literacy Book Club
Friday, August 7, noon | S.B. Central Library

Storytime at the Sea Center
Saturday, August 8, 10:30 a.m. | S.B. Museum of Natural History Sea Center

SBMM Book Club
Thursday, August 9, 10 a.m. | S.B. Maritime Museum

Godmothers Gather: Heidi Rose Robbins & Jennifer Freed, Ask Me
Sunday, August 9, 6 p.m. | Godmothers

Godmothers Grow: The Elsewhere Book Club: Jacqueline Harpman, We Were Forbidden
Tuesday, August 11, 5:30 p.m. | Godmothers

S.B. Library Comic Chaos Club
Wednesday, August 12, 4 p.m. | S.B. Central Library 

Book Talk and Signing: Jann Winford, Dating Under the Influence of Estrogen
Wednesday, August 12, 6 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books

S.B. Eastside Library Bilingual Songs & Stories for Kids
Thursday, August 13, 11 a.m. | Eastside Library

S.B. Library Book Talk & Art Show: We Are Resilient
Thursday, August 13, 5:30 p.m. | S.B. Central Library 

Storytime at the Sea Center
Saturday, August 15, 10:30 a.m. | S.B. Museum of Natural History Sea Center

Godmothers Storytime: Little G’s: Michael Bagdasarian & Adalberto Angulo, Sammy the Scaredy Cat and Milo the Miniature Horse
Saturday, August 15, 11 a.m. | Godmothers

Goleta Community Center Horror Book Club: Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs
Saturday, August 15, 1 p.m. | Goleta Community Center

Storytime at the Sea Center
Sunday, August 16, 10:30 a.m. | S.B. Museum of Natural History Sea Center

Goleta Valley Library Poetry Club
Sunday, August 16, 2 p.m. | Goleta Community Center

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S.B. SPOTLIGHT

We at the Independent get many books sent to us by area authors, sometimes too many! It’s practically impossible for us to read and review them all, but just because we are busy bees does not mean that they aren’t worth the attention. In an attempt to not completely drop the ball, we have compiled a list of books here that are either written by a Santa Barbara author, feature someone in our community, or have another tie to Santa Barbara. I urge you to look through this list. Perhaps you will find your new favorite read!

The following are the most recent titles that have been sent to us.

The Killing of Chuy Muro by Lance Mason

Yogi’s Story: The Meaning of Lives by Van Fleisher

Owl by Myself by Pete Oswald

If you are a local author and would like us to feature your book in this section, please email allbooked@independent.com with the subject line “S.B. Spotlight.”

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Book Reviews Courtesy of CALIFORNIA REVIEW OF BOOKS*

Thanks to the generous contributions of David Starkey, Brian Tanguay and their team of reviewers at California Review of Books, we are able to provide a steady stream of book reviews via our content partnership. Recent reviews at Independent.com include: 

Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots As Reclaimed Present by Andrea Gunraj; review by Brian Tanguay

Python’s Kiss: Stories by Louise Erdrich; review by David Starkey

*At the present time, all of the Independent’s book reviews are provided in collaboration with California Review of Books (calirb.com).