The Second Mark: Courage, Corruption, and the Battle for Olympic Gold (by Joy Goodwin)

Published in 2004, this book is about the pairs skating scandal at the 2002 Olympic games, and more specifically about three pairs - from Canada, Russia, and China - and their journey to the Olympic games.

I enjoy following figure skating and remember this year, and the book was an interesting read. I was hoping it would delve much further into the actual corruption - Goodwin seemed to just give up on digging particularly far, just reporting straightforwardly on the outcomes, after which the book ends. It's really more about the skaters themselves - growing up in communist China, the Soviet system, and the "free market" of Canada, and how different their paths were. 

I wasn't a particular fan of any of these skaters, but it definitely made me feel a lot of admiration for Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, who had an extremely difficult path to become Olympic contenders. It also kind of reinforced that Salé and Pelletier were slightly annoying, which was also my impression at the time. The Russians won the short program, Canada's silver was not a huge injustice, and it came off like bad sportsmanship to me then, and still kind of does. 

Anyway, fun to dig back into all of this drama! And rewatch all the skating on YouTube, of course. 

Adult Braces (by Lindy West)

I had to, y'all, I had to. It was in The Discourse and I am a Butt News subscriber and a Lindy West fan, and I have been fascinated by all the hot takes about this book and all the drama surrounding its publication. 

And if none of this means anything to you, go read this piece in Slate which gives a good overview of the book. In addition, if you read the response email from Lindy's husband Aham, calling the author a "shitty fucking person" and a "bitter, untalented, mean-girl" for not making his career sound fancier (?) in a review of his wife's book because she used the word "project" (??) to describe it, you will understand why this book is ultimately the depressing story of yet another woman tethered to yet another mediocre man. (Although in a fun twist, this time he's using white guilt against her because he's not white! Whee!) 

I want to be on Lindy's side and even during the awkward interview in their underwear when they came out as a throuple, I took a very "well as long as she's happy" stance about it all. But reading this book... I don't know, man. It's depressing. I hope my take is wrong. But that email, man. That gross, misogynistic email.