athlete – ~*LunaSea*~

Fraser, Graeme. Summit Visions. Self published, 2024.

Reason read: every now and then, I receive a book to read for the Early Review Program from LibraryThing. I never know what I’m going to get…

If you were to think of Summit Visions as a journey, the number of pages would equal the number of miles to travel on said journey. Imagine setting out on this trek of more than five hundred miles and every two miles there is a diversion, a speed bump of superfluous information or comments about something you will read more about later. I wish Fraser kept his examples grounded in the Nashua Millennium Big 5 Challenge instead of delving into diamond mining ventures or the the struggles of being a corporate lawyer. I know I would have enjoyed Summit Visions more if it did not morph into a preachy self-help book. Fraser toggled between his personal career goals as an entrepreneur and lawyer and the athletic goals of an elite athlete. The narrative became unfocused with side stories about the eating habits of the Arsenal team, yacht racing, climbing Thaba Ntlenyana, tax lawyer quotations, information surveillance, what climate change means for the Maldives Islands, a mini memoir about Fraser’s experiences crossing the finish line at every event, lots of disparaging comments about his physique, a plug for reading the Bible, and a myriad of analogies. I lost track of the number of parenthetical statements (there were a lot!). All of the stories are inspiring but a bit longwinded. So much so that I had to chuckle when Fraser cautioned against information overload. His humor was and fascinating stories when on-topic were not enough to keep me engaged. I gave up after 300 pages.

Abramsky, Sasha. Little Wonder: the Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Superstar. Brooklyn, New York: Akashic Books, 2020.

Reason read: as a member of LibraryThing, I was chosen to review this for the Early Review program.

Charlotte Dod. If you don’t know her name, you don’t know the history of women in sports. Don’t feel bad though. Despite being a multitalented athlete, her fame as a star burned bright in many arenas, but faded from all of them just as quickly. First known as a tennis sensation at the age of fourteen, Lottie (as she was known), only played competitively for five years. In that time she became the doyenne of tennis, winning five Wimbledons. The only years she didn’t win she didn’t even compete. Sadly, it was as if she grew tired of smashing the competition and needed new thrills. She left the sport…at twenty one years of age. After tennis, Dod set her sights on field hockey. She helped pioneer the sport for women. Then came skating. Obsessively training for hours on end, Dod was not only able to pass the rigorous women’s skating test, she passed the much more difficult men’s test as well. When she was done with ice skates and cold weather , she moved on to golf and mountaineering and archery and Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing and choral singing. She climbed mountains in support of women seeking equal rights and won a silver medal for archery at the 1908 summer Olympic games.
While Abramsky does a great job detailing Lottie’s life, he has to fill in the gaps with speculation because sadly, much of her correspondence was lost or deliberately destroyed. Expect words like “maybe” and “perhaps” and “might.” The photographs are fantastic.
Arabella Garrett Anderson, Agatha Christie, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Nelly Bly were contemporaries of Dod’s.