Swimming Studies
Winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, Swimming Studies is Leanne Shapton's hybrid memoir of life in and out of the pool. Shapton, a Canadian artist, illustrator, and former competitive swimmer who twice qualified for Canada's Olympic trials, writes in short essays and fragments about predawn training, the particular smell of chlorine, the bodies of teammates, and the strange afterlife of an athletic identity. She intersperses her prose with her own paintings of bathing suits, swimmers, and pools, and with sketches that read like field notes from a swimmer's brain. The result is less a sports memoir than a study of practice, perception, and the way water shapes a life. Reviewers compared it to the writing of Joan Didion and the photography of Sally Mann, and the book has become a quiet touchstone for readers interested in how artists and athletes pay attention.
What you might want to know about Swimming Studies
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A former Olympic trials swimmer and visual artist's meditative essay collection on water, training, and time.
Not at all. The book is really about attention, practice, and identity, and is widely read by non swimmers.
Yes. Shapton's paintings and drawings are integral to the book and run throughout the text.
Swimming Studies was written by Leanne Shapton, published in 2012 by Penguin Books, Limited.
Swimming Studies is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Swimming Studies takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Swimming Studies is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.