I am completely obsessed with the Olympics. I’m on this kind of overdrive where I can’t miss a minute of the swimming or the gymnastics. It’s crazy and I love it. But there is one (one?) unfortunate side effect of this obsession—I’ve been reading a lot less. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still slogging through at least 50 pages a day (accumulated over more than one book). But my torrid pace has slowed to a trickle. And this blog has become about my fascination with Michael Phelps. For that, I am sorry and I offer a brief respite from those who have a more literary persuasion.

One of the things I’m reading at the moment (nearly finished) is the manuscript of ones the books that will be published by the press I work for. The book is about sports injuries in minors and then lengths we go to make our kids the best athletes in the world. (well, not me, considering I have no kids, but you knew what I meant) It’s part cultural deconstruction and part memoir, infused with the kind of perspective you can only get by going through the things you want to write about.

When I first got into writing, I desperately wanted to be a sportswriter and so this book speaks to me in a lot of ways. I also was a three sport varsity athlete my senior year of high school (which totally weird because I’m not at all athletic but I went to a school that required us to play three sports a year and it kind of stuck). So I know a little bit about the drive and fire of wanting to be the best, wanting to succeed. I know what Michael Phelps’s couch is talking about when he describes practices but I went through a similar thing (though much scaled down) when I was on the swim team.

I hope this book gets a lot of attention when it comes out. It’s fabulously written, well reported and it hits a critical issue that is too much ignored in our search for guts and glory.