Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Can you tell I’ve been listening to “South Pacific” in the car lately?  Anyway…

I don’t always do two reviews in a row on a 31st/1st calendar combination, but since I missed on the 29th AND I just finished The Boys in the Boat:  Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, you get another review today.  Assuming, of course, that you want a review other than I LOVED THIS BOOK, which I did.  How could you not love it?  (Unless, of course, you’re my 15-year-old niece who read it for school and most emphatically did not.  To be fair, I didn’t enjoy nonfiction at that age, either.)  It’s a thrilling, come-from-behind sports/Olympic story, a poor-and-working-class-kids-win-out-during-the-Great-Depression story, a kid-from-a-hard-childhood-finds-belonging story, and an Americans-showing-up-Hitler story all in one.  The nice guys finish first–and in front of the Nazis, to boot.  The writing is compelling, the story is amazing, and I learned more about rowing crew than I possibly knew there was to know.  Go read this, folks–or listen to it. Either way, you won’t be disappointed.