the reading olympics

ft. Jean Baudrillard, Sarah J. Maas, David Goggins, and more!

Hi y’all,

HAPPY OLYMPICS!!!!!!!

It’s the most wonderful time of every two years! Do you cry during Opening Ceremonies? I don’t, but I do get a little misty eyed.

All those handsome young, and young-ish, people from all around the world in cool outfits parading around a stadium together (or, in this case, sail down the Seine together)! All of those people who have trained years—if not their whole lives—just to be in this room! It’s moving that the world comes together to watch these people run and swim and jump and perform unfathomable feats of strength and endurance. It’s moving to learn little fragments of these people’s lives, what they’ve endured to end up here. It’s moving to see someone like LeBron James—wildly famous, insanely successful, a billionaire, The King—walk in with his Team USA teammates, many of whom who are teenagers or twenty-somethings, many of whom are relatively unknown, many of whom play sports that most Americans don’t watch, many of whom are competing in the Olympics for the first time.

The journalists who cover the Olympics always do a fabulous job making the event come alive with stories about the athletes’ careers and lives back home. But one question is usually missing from all the coverage…

I’m sooooo nosy. Are you nosy? Do you need to know what everyone is reading, all the time? Do you look over people’s shoulders on the subway to see the title of their book? Do you feel personally challenged when you spot someone reading an NYRB whose cover you don’t recognize? Do you linger too long in the park trying to see what novel that very handsome group of men are book-clubbing?

Me too! And so, just for you, I reached out to the real It-Girls and -Boys of Summer 2024. The Olympians who responded represent a wide variety of sports and read a wide variety of books—everything from Emily Henry to Baudrillard, from David Goggins to James Comey.

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Evita Griskenas just graduated from Columbia with a BA in Psychology, speaks three languages (English, Lithuanian, and Russian), and will be representing the US in rhythmic gymnastics at her second Olympics. All of her routines are totally mesmerizing, but this video from the PanAm finals includes very cool overhead shots that show just how incredibly precise her tosses must be! Evita describes herself as a “total bookworm” and I have to agree! She “100% always” recommends the Mistborn series by Brian Sanderson, and just finished reading the Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan, which sounds soooo good! It’s the memoirs of the “world’s leading dragon naturalist.” NPR describes it as “blending Victorian pastiche and alternate-world fantasy with a distinctly pulp sensibility.” Evita also finished up Everything in Its Place by Oliver Sacks. She prefers memoirs when listening to audiobooks, because she likes to hear authors read their own stories, and just finished A Higher Loyalty by James Comey and The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. And finally, she also always reads the Bible.

Lily Williams (track cycling) is reading Jean Baudrillard’s Screened Out and just finished The Race to Be Myself by Caster Semenya. I could be wrong, but I’d be willing to bet five dollars that Lily is the only athlete on Team USA reading a book from Verso! Her Baudrillard pick makes sense given her background: she has a masters in journalism from Northwestern. Northwestern is also where she discovered cycling. She began riding as a way to commute to class, then started competing with her friends for fun and discovered she was a natural.

With that backstory, Lily is officially (imo) the urbanist’s Olympian!

Lauren Scruggs is reading A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Lauren is a 21 year old Harvard student from Queens, who apparently started fencing because her older brother loved lightsaber battles. Fencing the only Olympic combat sport in which contact with your opponent is not allowed—which is somewhat similar to her major at Harvard, Philosophy, in which I imagine you’re unfortunately not allowed to deck your (ideological) opponents.

Lexi Lagan (shooting) gave me two books, which she says she returns to often: The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Bullseye Mind by Raymond Prior, which she says is “specific to shooting sports and the mental game we NEED to have to be successful” but also is useful for any athlete. I don’t really read books about mental strength or fortitude (which I guess as a category is usually called self-help, but given how sport specific this book is, I’m not sure if it fits in), but I’m very curious about this book, which sounds very practical.

One year ago, 23-year-old Ivan Puskovitch was in a serious biking accident while working a delivery job to fund his swimming career. He suffered severe skull fracture that required emergency reconstructive surgery and prevented him from swimming for two months—only seven months before the Olympic Qualifier! It seems almost superhuman that he’s managed to recover and will now swim the open water 10-kilometer race, which will, as you may have heard, take place in the Seine. Ivan sent me a photo of what he’s reading: The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.

CJ Nickolas represents USA in Taekwondo! I am really very charmed by this week-in-the-life video on his YouTube, which includes a seriously insane training montage, cooking advice, a lot of dancing in the car, and ends with a music recording session. CJ just finished David Eagleman’s Sum, a collection of forty short stories, each a different vision of the afterlife, that some reviewers compared with Calvino’s Invisible Cities. He’s about to start The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and is also re-reading The Chimp Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters, which is a “mind management program to help you achieve success, confidence and happiness.” He’s also reading the Bible!

Mary Theisen-Lappen began competitive weightlifting at age 27, and now, just six years later, she’ll be repping the USA at the Olympics! Mary is reading books by Kristin Hannah. She just finished True Colors, and is now reading The Women.

When 3x3 basketball was introduced to the Olympics in 2020, the US women’s team took gold, but the men’s didn’t qualify. But this year they did! Before joining the national team, Dylan Travis played basketball professionally in Germany and Australia, and then retired to work as a special education teacher. He thought his professional days were behind him, until he joined a local 3x3 team at the recommendation of a friend. What started off as a weekend activity soon restarted his professional career. He’s reading The Lost City of Z by David Grann, and recently finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

Grant Koontz is competing in the Track Cycling Omnium, which, according to USA Cycling is “the decathlon of track cycling.” Grant is currently posting a “Journey Log” on Instagram, which includes excerpts from his journals over the years and chronicles his struggles with his career, his faith, his anxiety, his finances, his direction, and his ambition. I found his first post—a journal entry from 2018 in which he considers that his cycling career might not work out—quite moving: “The confidence I have, in the path I’ve chosen, is wavering. Dreams go from achievable to impossible. Goals turn from noble pursuits into childish dreams.” Honestly, all of his posts are worth the read, as an intimate account of sacrifice, doubt, and spirituality. He’s reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

So is Alev Kelter! Alev plays on the rugby team, but she also plays hockey and soccer, plus she surfs, rock climbs, and can hold her breath underwater for 4:05! Alev is also reading two books by Anthony Doerr: All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer in 2014, and Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Beach volleyball player Miles Evans is reading Relentless, but he didn’t tell me the author. I suspect it’s Relentless by Tim Grover, the physical trainer, but it could be Relentless by Luis A. Miranda, Jr., political consultant and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dad. [Ed. Note: He did follow up to clarify it is the Grover book!]

Megann Valzonis is a field hockey player from San Diego who has played with Women’s National Team for three years. My college roommate Bridget played on our school field hockey team, so I have a special place in my heart for the sport. I think many of my college friends would like Megann’s reading choices. Megann has just finished reading People We Meet on Vacation AND Book Lovers, both by Emily Henry. When I messaged her a few weeks ago, she was currently reading A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, but I see from her IG story updates she’s already well on her way through the series.

Hannah Roberts had one AirPod in during her Olympic Qualifiers, and I’m dyinggg to know what she was listening to. At age 22, Hannah is the five time BMX Freestyle World Champion—the commentators at the qualifiers describe her as having “dragged Women’s BMX kicking and screaming to where it is today.” She just finished Never Finished by David Goggins, and is half way through The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. Cierra Burdick (Basketball 3x3) is also reading The Boys in the Boat! In reading a few articles about Cierra, I learned that coaches do not stay on the court during games in 3x3 basketball, so players basically have to “coach [themselves.]”

Keana Hunter, who is on the USA Artistic Swimming Team, just finished The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart, which she says had really great plot twists! She also finished A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair, which she really enjoyed as well. Given their mutual love for fantasy novels and their sports that combine grace with incredible feats of endurance and strength, I think Keana should discuss books with Evita (the rhythmic gymnast)!

Jonas Ecker is majoring in Marine Biology and Chemistry at University of Washington—so I’d bet he’d have an opinion or two on whether or not the Seine is as swimmable as Paris’ mayor says it is! Jonas himself isn’t swimming in the river, but he will be kayaking in it. He just started reading Artemis by Andy Weir because he loved The Martian.

Steph Rovetti (rugby) gave me the coolest intel of all: the women’s rugby team read Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf together! It’s a self-help-in-a-novel book about a boy who moves to Japan to train as a samurai archer. She also loves The Body Keeps the Score, The Big Leap, The Compound Effect, and Atomic Habits.

Anita Alvarez, the artistic swimmer who you may recognize from the dramatic photos of her coach rescuing her after she fainted in the pool during a competition, also just finished Chop Wood Carry Water. She’s also reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which she likes to read whenever she travels. While browsing Anita’s Instagram, I learned how artistic swimmers keep their hair perfectly slicked back in the water: with two to three packets of Knox gelatin.

Bryce Ava Wettstein (skateboarding) is reading two of my absolute favorite books: Stargirl and Love, Stargirl by Jerri Spinelli! Like Stargirl, Bryce plays the ukulele, and she’s posted very cute music videos to YouTube, which often include skating. I like the attitude towards competitions that she describes on her website: “The best thing about the contests starting up again is getting to hang out with all my international skate friends again!!!”

Alena Olson (rugby) also sent me photos of her books: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben and Warming Up by Madeline Orr. Given her book choices, it’s prolly not surprising that Alena is part of EcoAthletes, an international group of athletes dedicated to leading the fight against climate change. Alena and the organization seem to do a lot of very cool advocacy and volunteer work. For Earth Day this year, Alena brought her team to visit a local bee sanctuary!

And finally, Stephen Nedoroscik (a Penn State electrical engineering grad and gymnast who specializes in the pommel horse) was very honest (and charming) in his response:

Since George also loves math, science, and chess, I asked him what he would he would recommend to Stephen: Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, the classic “romance of many dimensions,” or The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Personally, I’d recommend The Period Table by Primo Levi, a memoir by a chemist who also lived through Auschwitz.

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Best of luck to Team USA, especially to all of the athletes who shared their books! We’ll all be cheering you on from home!

USA! USA! USA!
Book Notes

PS. If you’re new here and liked this post, you may also want to read about my dream celebrity book club line up, or a review of the best book I read in 2024, a sci-fi about AI.

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