Customer Reviews

Ice Stars: A Celebration of the Artistry, Beauty, and Grace of the Ice Skating World

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Yes, this book has some nice photos, but many are labelled wrong. Skaters who represent asian countries have photos labelled as "1999 European championships". Sure. Every time I look in this book, I find more spelling and factual errors. Who is Tatyana MalAnina? Plus some of the photos are not flattering at all! I agree that most of the info is straight from different websites, magazines and articles.

This book supplied more of the same information that you can find in any magazine interview or other story about many of today's famous figure skating stars (and a few from the past). The pictures were of good quality, but there was very little insight or new information to be found in the text, and many of the pictures were similar to what you'd find in other magazines or books about figure skaters.

All in all, it felt like someone just trying to cash in on the figure skating craze.

Well, I know that, as a formerly HUGE ice skating fan, you have to have every book or movie that has ice skating even mentioned. And what better than to get a big, sleek illustrated book packed with glossy photos of all your favorite glamorous skating stars, right? Not-so-right. Sure, I liked the book when I first unwrapped it for my birthday and everything, and while the pictures are good, it doesn't seem that for such a sleek looking book that there was editing to match AT ALL. Here is an example of an error in the book, and believe me, there are PLENTY more to match: on page 14, it shows a picture of Tara Lipinski doing a layback spin and underneath the picture it reads 1999 European Championships. Well, if the person reading this book is a compulsive studier of figure skating, they will immediately recognize three critical mistakes:(1) Tara retired immediately after her victory at the 1998 Olympic Games and went pro (2) the picture is of her in her Olympic blue long program outfit with the Nagano logo imprinted on the ice visible to everyone's eyes (3) no American/non-European has been allowed to compete at the European Championships since 1948.
Anyway, while the book tries to be professional and even looks professional in some areas, the editing clearly reveals that if the people writing this book really knew and loved figure skating, they would have gotten such simple little mistakes straight without even taking a glance. That being said, overlooking the errors, it's generally a nice book that is fun to look at and flip through from time-to-time. Just don't recommend it to any newbie skating fan because, if they become a skating lover and read the book religiously, chances are what they think is right is going to be based on some of the book's poor editing. Okay, final thought: any ice skating fans out there, get this book, but if you ever had a choice between this and Figure Skating Now, opt for Figure Skating Now. It's perfectly edited and much more informative!