Swim Memoir

Ian Karmel has weighed eight pounds and he has weighed 420 pounds and right now he’s almost exactly in between the two, but this book is not a weight-loss book. It’s about being a fat person in a skinny world. It’s about gym class and football practice, about chicken wings and juice cleanses, about airplane seats and roller coasters, about fat jokes and Jabba the Hutt, about crying in the Big and Tall section and the joys of being a sneakerhead, about prediabetes and gout, and about realizing that you actually don’t want to eat yourself to death and hoping it’s not too late.

"It's a meditative act," they said. But it's far from meditative for Alexandra Heminsley when yet another wave slams into her face. It's survival. When she laced up her shoes in Running Like a Girl, all she had to do to become a runner was to get out there and run. But swimming is something else entirely. The water is all-consuming, confusing her every move, sabotaging every breath. Determined, Alexandra will learn to adapt, find new strengths, and learn to work with the water.

For swimming champion Nancy Stearns Bercaw, the pool was a natural habitat. But on land, she could never shake the feeling of being a fish out of water. Starting at age two, Nancy devoted her life to swimming, even qualifying for the 1988 Olympic Trials in the fifty-meter freestyle event. But nearly two decades later, when she hung up her cap and goggles, she was confronted with a different kind of challenge: learning who she was out of the lanes.

Despite the tensions of a world still recovering from World War I, during the summer of 1926, the story that enthralled the public revolved around four young American swimmers - Gertrude Ederle, Mille Gade, Lillian Cannon, and Clarabelle Barrett - who battled the weather, each other, and considerable odds to become the first woman to conquer the brutal waters of the English Channel. The popular East Coast tabloids from New York to Boston engaged in rivalries nearly as competitive as the swimmers themselves.

With everything happening on Helen Peppe's backwoods Maine farm - ferocious sibling rivalry, rock-bottom poverty, feral male chauvinism, sex in the hayloft - life was out of control, even for the animals. Despite the chaos, in telling her family's story, Peppe manages deadpan humor, an unerring eye for the absurd, and a touching compassion for her utterly overwhelmed parents. While her feisty resilience and candor will inevitably remind listeners of Jeannette Walls or Mary Karr, Peppe's wry insight and moments of tenderness with family and animals are entirely her own.

Written as an engaging parable, Swim!: How a Shark, a Suckerfish, and a Parasite Teach You Leadership, Mentoring, and Next Level Success brings to life real-world challenges (and their solutions) and presents them in simple, yet powerful terms. The book explores the vital importance of networking, explores the steps that lead to successful networking, and explains why we need it.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt best summaries the spirit of Seeking ValhallaSo, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT President, USA Inaugural Address 1933 ***** In life, Warriors go with what is, not with what should be. Adopt fear. Embrace chaos. Confront the battle. There are two keys in your Warrior battle to confront fear and chaos: First, allow “you” to be yourself by following your own, unique ...

This engaging memoir shows women how to live—and how to age—with grace and gusto. Lynda Beth Unkeless has explored five continents and thrived on the kindness of strangers. Life, she says, is meant to be an adventure. In "Stronger in the End: My 70 Year Swim from Chaos to Calm" she recounts her risks in various countries with good humor, encouraging her listeners to live without guilt and shame. Lynda Beth has much to say about resilience.

Plunge into the water, accompany Antonio Argüelles on his Oceans Seven adventure, and, along the way, find out how to achieve your own dreams and goals. On August 3, 2017, Antonio Argüelles swam 35 kilometers from Northern Ireland to Scotland. When he arrived on the Scottish shore after a swim of nearly 14 hours through hypothermic currents wearing only a speedo, cap, and goggles, he became just the seventh person ever to conquer the Oceans Seven, an aquatic achievement on par with the Seven Summits.

Swimming one mile takes me about an hour, and for a long time, I gaged my experience by how many laps I had swum. Once I got to 36, the mile mark, I would quit swimming. I talked to a lifeguard who is a veteran of the Iraq war and was touched by his humility. He said if I want motivational advice not to talk with him. But he told me his routine involves swimming at whatever pace he feels like for about an hour. I began wondering if I could do that, to swim like I did when I was a child, just for swimming's sake. Just because it feels so wonderful.

Climate change is alarming and complicated. Governments are acting too slowly or not at all, and not enough people feel informed or empowered enough to demand action. But ignoring a catastrophe of such magnitude is a certain path to disaster. The Big Swim puts forward the idea that personal growth arises from facing both inner tensions and threats to the biosphere.

Our son Harry died in my arms when he was 10 months old. He had actually survived far longer than experts had predicted. Cared for by Acorns Children's Hospice, his support had cost over £100,000. Years later, inspired by another bereaved parent, I decided I would undertake a sponsored physical challenge that would take me well beyond my personal comfort zone: Having never swum further than around a mile, I decided to attempt swimming the infamous English Channel.

The Swim is not one of my usual mysteries featuring former police detective Michael McLaren. It's a prequel novella giving a picture of his life from teenager to the strong man he is today. He's real to me, and I want you to understand him. I want you to understand a man whose need to help others find justice became his incitement in a world like today. He's been through a lot from his ordeal beginning with the "swim", his move from the Force, and his cold cases. He's made enemies, friends, and he has loved and lost. Like many of us.

It may have been because she could run. It may have been because she wanted to swim, or perhaps because she only ever did 10 minutes of breaststroke at a time. But, as she learned one day while flailing around in the sea, she really couldn't. Believing that a life lived fully isn't one with the most money earned, the most stuff bought or the most races won but one with the most experiences experienced the most fully, she decided to conquer her fear of the water.

Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between "naive" poets-who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously-and "sentimental" poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft.