by Madalene Fetsch
Madalene is the SWE RMS Treasurer, and has served in this role for the last two years. She loves opportunities to share interests with other SWE members, and looks forward to seeing you at SWE RMS events this summer!
One of my favorite things about SWE is the opportunity to meet inspiring women who have faced some of the same challenges I have, and who take assumptions every day and break them apart.
This appealing part of SWE is also something I look for in books, and wow, there have been some great ones lately! I’d like to share a couple here with you so you have some fun summer reading that will hopefully inspire you as well.
Diana Nyad’s Find a Way is something of an autobiography, but mostly focuses on her amazing accomplishment of being the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida (about 100 miles!) without a shark cage. She was 64 that summer, and succeeded only after several failed attempts in the previous years.
The book was truly fascinating: from her rigorous training schedule and how much she LOVES swimming for hours at a time while counting strokes in different languages (I would guess this is the only way one could swim 100 miles at a stretch), to accounts of the awful jellyfish stings she suffered and what her team did to protect her from them in each successive attempt. Nyad is an amazing athlete. Like many of us in SWE, she credits a strong network of friends who support her through her swimming career and who advise her. The focus of the book is the drama that comes from hearing about what the actual record-setting effort is like, in the open ocean and fatigued to the point of hallucination, going for a goal you can’t even remember why you cared about it in the first place. I think we can all identify with that kind of drive and difficulty!
Nyad also gives you the backstory of what she has overcome in her past, and fair warning: some of her background may be rough reading for those with family abuse in their backgrounds, although her outlook is very positive because of what her friends and swimming have done to change her life for the better. On the whole, it’s amazing to imagine what goals you yourself can accomplish, even later in life, even if no one else has done it before. It makes for a great read or listen for these hot summer days.
Madalene is the SWE RMS Treasurer, and has served in this role for the last two years. She loves opportunities to share interests with other SWE members, and looks forward to seeing you at SWE RMS events this summer!
One of my favorite things about SWE is the opportunity to meet inspiring women who have faced some of the same challenges I have, and who take assumptions every day and break them apart.
This appealing part of SWE is also something I look for in books, and wow, there have been some great ones lately! I’d like to share a couple here with you so you have some fun summer reading that will hopefully inspire you as well.
Diana Nyad’s Find a Way is something of an autobiography, but mostly focuses on her amazing accomplishment of being the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida (about 100 miles!) without a shark cage. She was 64 that summer, and succeeded only after several failed attempts in the previous years.
The book was truly fascinating: from her rigorous training schedule and how much she LOVES swimming for hours at a time while counting strokes in different languages (I would guess this is the only way one could swim 100 miles at a stretch), to accounts of the awful jellyfish stings she suffered and what her team did to protect her from them in each successive attempt. Nyad is an amazing athlete. Like many of us in SWE, she credits a strong network of friends who support her through her swimming career and who advise her. The focus of the book is the drama that comes from hearing about what the actual record-setting effort is like, in the open ocean and fatigued to the point of hallucination, going for a goal you can’t even remember why you cared about it in the first place. I think we can all identify with that kind of drive and difficulty!
Nyad also gives you the backstory of what she has overcome in her past, and fair warning: some of her background may be rough reading for those with family abuse in their backgrounds, although her outlook is very positive because of what her friends and swimming have done to change her life for the better. On the whole, it’s amazing to imagine what goals you yourself can accomplish, even later in life, even if no one else has done it before. It makes for a great read or listen for these hot summer days.
At the other end of life experience, I just finished Lucy Knisley’s Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride. This is a graphic novel from a fairly prolific and yet modest cartoonist I’ve been following for a while. Her background, which is detailed in the first part of this latest book, is of a romantic comedy nature that you will enjoy if you like happy endings. The rest of the book is all about how she planned her wedding as an artist, feminist and a very driven DIYer. One of Knisley’s strengths is in giving the benefit of the doubt to those around her, illustrating with subtle notes that she may have learned a lesson with each conflict.
Overall, though, this is a fun telling of preparing for a wedding that will read well for anyone who recently planned their own wedding or are getting ready to do so, including (and especially? driven SWE members). She has good advice for those who are wanting to do some creative touches of their own, with useful illustrations throughout. She’s careful to show how friends took other routes, so you won’t feel left out if you took a different path for your own wedding. And keep note that this is the author of “Relish”, so she loves to talk about food, its preparation and what she loves about it, which may make you hungry. Overall, it’s a quick read and a heart-warmer that will leave you smiling.
Last note: both of these books should be available from most bookstores and your library, as they are recent releases. If you however do decide to buy either from Amazon, don’t forget you can use their smile.amazon.com program to send a percentage of your purchase to your own SWE RMS for future programs!
To shop at AmazonSmile simply go to smile.amazon.com from the web browser on your computer or mobile device. You may also want to add a bookmark to AmazonSmile to make it even easier to return and start your shopping at AmazonSmile. To select SWE-RMS as your charity of choice, search for this ID number when prompted to select an organization: 84-1127067.
Overall, though, this is a fun telling of preparing for a wedding that will read well for anyone who recently planned their own wedding or are getting ready to do so, including (and especially? driven SWE members). She has good advice for those who are wanting to do some creative touches of their own, with useful illustrations throughout. She’s careful to show how friends took other routes, so you won’t feel left out if you took a different path for your own wedding. And keep note that this is the author of “Relish”, so she loves to talk about food, its preparation and what she loves about it, which may make you hungry. Overall, it’s a quick read and a heart-warmer that will leave you smiling.
Last note: both of these books should be available from most bookstores and your library, as they are recent releases. If you however do decide to buy either from Amazon, don’t forget you can use their smile.amazon.com program to send a percentage of your purchase to your own SWE RMS for future programs!
To shop at AmazonSmile simply go to smile.amazon.com from the web browser on your computer or mobile device. You may also want to add a bookmark to AmazonSmile to make it even easier to return and start your shopping at AmazonSmile. To select SWE-RMS as your charity of choice, search for this ID number when prompted to select an organization: 84-1127067.
RSS Feed
