Books To Get You Ready For The Olympics!

Here’s a list of books to get you ready for the Summer Olympics starting Friday.    I’ll definitely be watching and probably posting some about them.  What events are you excited about?  I love the gymnastics and swimming.  I’m especially excited because one of the gymnasts, Shawn Johnson is from Iowa.  Go Shawn!!

With the summer Olympics’ return to Athens, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and lets the Greek Games begin again. The acclaimed author of Pagan Holiday brings attitude, erudition, and humor to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle.

Using firsthand reports and little-known sources–including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the Greeks–The Naked Olympics creates a vivid picture of an extravaganza performed before as many as forty thousand people, featuring contests as timeless as the javelin throw and as exotic as the chariot race.

Peeling away the layers of myth, Perrottet lays bare the ancient sporting experience–including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros, and history’s first corruption scandals involving athletes. Featuring sometimes scandalous cameos by sports enthusiasts Plato, Socrates, and Herodotus, The Naked Olympics offers essential insight into today’s Games and an unforgettable guide to the world’s first and most influential athletic festival.

The Olympic Games, summer and winter, transfix humanity every time the torch is lit. With athletes from every country in the world eligible to compete in up to 300 athletic events in as many as 28 different sports, the potential for human drama is endless. Episodes outside of the competition – the scandals, international incidents, political maneuverings, and the occasional over-the-top costume during the opening ceremony –only add to the richness and lore of this spectacular tradition. With so much information to process, and so many events to track each time the Games are staged, the scale of it all can be overwhelming.

The Olympics For Beginners provides clear, concise and amusing assessments of the key elements of the Games. It travels back in time to look at the original Greek Games, leads the reader on a brisk tour of the modern Olympic movement, simplifies the rules and regulations of the summer and winter competitions, and shines a spotlight on many dazzling high points, such as Jesse Owens’ triumph in the 1936 Berlin Games. The book also replays infamous low points, from the tragic – the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich – to the downright pathetic: Tonya Harding.

Author Brandon Toropov and illustrator Joe Lee showcase the Olympics’ remarkable hold on the global imagination in a fun, accessible and memorable illustrated format. Whether you’re one of the billions who is obsessed with this one-of-a-kind spectacle, or you’re simply curious to learn what the fuss is all about, The Olympics For Beginners is for you.

A fascinating, intimate portrait of Beijing through the lens of its oldest neighborhood, facing destruction as the city, and China, relentlessly modernizes.

“The epitaph for old Beijing will read: born in 1280, died in 2008…what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn’t eradicate, the market economy is,” writes Michael Meyer. A longtime resident, Meyer has, for the past two years, lived as no Westerner ever has—completely immersed in Beijing’s oldest neighborhood, living on one of its famed hutongs and recording the drama as century-old houses and ways of life are increasingly destroyed around him to make way for shopping malls, the capital’s first Wal-Mart, high-rise buildings, widened streets for cars instead of bicycles, and other symbols of today’s urban life. Beijing has gone through this cycle many times, as Meyer reveals, but never with the kind of dislocation and overturning of its storied culture as is now occurring.

The Last Days of Old Beijing is, at once, an invaluable witness to history, a parable about what is lost and gained when a city restructures, and a human portrait of ordinary lives in the balance, as only someone on the inside could relate. With uncommon insight into Beijing’s past and present, with crystal prose, and at a climactic moment when the world’s attention is on Beijing during the Olympic year, Meyer brings the ebb and flow of daily lives on the other side of the planet into shining focus.

The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.

Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet—unto itself.

Maarten Troost brings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining andinsightful armchair travel companions around.

Jack and Annie are off on another adventure! This time they are sent to ancient Greece, where a very important event is taking place. Join them as they race against time and witness the very first Olympic games!  

Down the muddy waters of the Yangtze River and into the seedy backrooms of “The Hall of Eternal Splendor,” through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution: this novel tells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talented—and provocative—Chinese artists of the twentieth century.

Jennifer Cody Epstein’s epic brings to life the woman behind the lush, Cezannesque nude self-portraits, capturing with lavish detail her life in the brothel and then as a concubine to a Republican official who would ultimately help her find her way as an artist. Moving with the tide of historical events, The Painter from Shanghai celebrates a singularly daring painting style—one that led to fame, notoriety, and, ultimately, a devastating choice: between Pan’s art and the one great love of her life.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

You can buy any of these books by clicking here!