User Profile

I was listening to this really interesting interview between gymnast Katelyn Ohashi about her struggles with performance and elite level and collegiate level, athletics and gymnastics in the United States. (I can't find the link to it now and if I find it, I'll come back and edit this post.) What was especially interesting to me, was her relationship with her coaches, and in particular, it was her relationship with her coach Val, Miss Val, at UCLA, that really allowed her to heal her own relationship to her sport, and consequently with her own body and mind after a traumatic childhood becoming a world-class gymnast. So I looked up a couple of interviews with Kondos-Field, aka Miss Val, and discovered that she had actually written a book about her career as a coach and how she got there from professional ballet (it's funny how ballet is showing up everywhere in my life these days). The book is undoubtedly better than I was expecting. Of course, a lot of it does lean hard into standard self-help fare. There were one or two chapters that I just decided to skip about a third through because, frankly, I didn't need to read them. But there were also several chapters that I found riveting! I particularly like Kondos Field's discussion of her struggles in her career and her failures (the dreaded F word!). Maybe it's because of where I am in life right now, but I often find that kind of story more interesting than accounts of success and victories. I never attained the level of athleticism or prestige that these people attained in their pre/professional sports careers, but I definitely experienced my fair share of abusive coaches, teachers, and adults in my life, who refused to put the health of the human being ahead of the score, or the championship, or the athletic performance. I actually lack personal positive experiences with coaches in my own memory, so it was really interesting for me to read about the mindset of a coach who specifically cares about the whole person and not just the athlete. All that to say, even though I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to many people, I'm still pretty glad I read it. It has giving me a lens through which to examine my past that I've never really had before: The lens of a coach who actually gives a shit!

I've been excited by Susanna Clarke's writing since I first picked up Jonathan Strange, and when I first heard this book was coming out, I was suddenly aware that I hadn't heard about her in a long while! Some Googling revealed that she'd been suffering from severe health issues for years now, and this book was the result of more years of hardship than I could fathom. I preordered it immediately, and read it the moment it arrived.

Wow. So different, so quiet, and so, so good.

I've read plenty of reviews that disparage the book (usually because they felt the plot was thin or easily deduced, or because the narration was too simple or unrelatable), but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I was surprised when reveals came, I was drawn into the narration and worldbuilding, and I found the narrator endearing, if a bit alien in perspective. It even holds up to rereads!

All told, I found it delightful, and hopefully you will/have too!