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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Focus on the accomplishment, not the pain, April 4, 2005
This review is from: Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer (Paperback)
Lynne Cox is such an inspirational writer that the reader concentrates on her exceptional accomplishments, both physical and mental, rather than the extreme pain and struggle it took to accomplish them. From her early teens, Cox has eliminated almost everything else from her life to dedicate herself to open-water swims in treacherous and freezing waters, including crossing the Bering Straight between Alaska and the Soviet Union, and swimming a mile in the Antarctic Ocean.
What I really loved about this book is the way Cox struggled not only with the physical challenges of the swims but also struggled to make the swims mean something more to the world at large. For example, the Bering Straight swim took something lik 16 years of meetings and negotiations to arrange, hundreds of donors and volunteers. But in the end that swim stood as a testament and metaphor for the improving connections between nations. Everywhere she goes, Cox seems to have inspired anyone fortunate enough to witness her. That this has come with a great deal of personal sacrifice--money troubles, social limitations, significant nerve damage--is humbly underplayed in the book. She has a kind of determination and self-confidence that transcends a particular athletic endeavour.
That Cox does not *look* like anyone's idea of an endurance athlete just adds to the inspiration -- she's 45 and she's swimming to Antarctica...so what's MY excuse?
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lynne rates as a modern Adventurer!, January 24, 2004
I started reading Swimming to Antarctica at 8 pm and I couldn't put it down till I finished it after midnight! Her book, her adventures, her swims, and especially Lynne herself - are all fantastic! Not only did she set and achieve personal goals, she did it keeping in mind her involvement with those around her - family, coaches, fellow swimmers, the community, and even those non-swimmers who cheered on her achievements! I can't stop using exclamation marks because I admire and am thrilled by everything Lynne has done! I wish the book had photographs! I wish I read Lynne's book or heard about herin high school - it might have inspired me to do more over the years. The writing is engaging and you feel you are right in the stormy, foggy ocean or in the murky slime of the Nile or in the icy, freezing water of Antarctica. Lynne rates as high as Thor Heyerdahl (Kon Tiki) as a modern adventurer. When I saw a photograph of her in People Magazine - it was wonderful to put that smiling face to the smiling voice that comes through clearly in her writing! I will read and re-read this book many times over the years.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very cold bath, September 22, 2004
As a chubby nine-year-old, Lynne Cox was the slowest kid in the pool. But she loved swimming, so she kept plugging away at it. When the coach ordered her class out of the water because a storm was brewing, she got permission to keep swimming. When hail started falling, Cox kept swimming-alone-in a pool full of ice.
Scientists would later determine that her unique ratio of muscle to body fat made her anomalously suited to swimming long distances in water so cold, it would kill an ordinary swimmer within minutes. At 15, Cox swam the English Channel, breaking the world record. The next year, she went back to England and broke the record again.
It would be a mistake to think that Cox's new autobiography, Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer, is of interest only to swimmers. In fact, the book has more in common with heroic literature of the ancient world-like Beowulf and The Odyssey-than with the typical athlete's success story. Like those ancient heroes, Cox isn't satisfied with races that have a designated course. Instead, she looks for unique athletic challenges that only she can overcome. That's why, at 17, she fell out of love with channel swimming and, instead, took on the unknown-swimming icy lakes, straits and channels that had been thought impossible for a swimmer to breach. Her famous 1987 swim across the Bering Sea from Alaska to the Soviet Union took 10 years to plan, and the water, in August, was barely above freezing.
Although Cox isn't a professional writer, she has a keen eye for details that turn an important life experience into an entertaining story. Readers will be amused, for instance, by the English cab driver who told Cox she was too fat to swim the Channel-as he was driving her to the beach for that express purpose.
While other athletes were wooed by corporate sponsors, Cox had to finance her own projects. Her story is a powerful account of clinging hard to a bigger dream.
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