The year was 1992. I was in fourth grade and my teacher was obsessed with the Olympics. She, in one of the craftiest and most pleasing self-care style lesson plans I’ve ever been taught, used the Albertville Winter Olympics as a way to teach us about the world. And that’s what she did.
She passed on her Olympics obsession to me.
My love of the Olympics has admittedly waned some in the years since, a thing I attribute to the ridiculous way the broadcasters pick four or five ‘ones to watch’ and mostly only talk about them for two weeks. But I’ll still watch the Games and, apparently, read about them.
Total Olympics: Every Obscure, Hilarious, Dramatic, and Inspiring Tale Worth Knowing is, let’s be honest, an awfully long title for a book. It is also the only appropriate title for Jeremy Fuchs’ collection of anecdotes that make up this book. The stories are short, to the point, and delivered in a conversational style that makes it easy to read for ten minutes, take a break, tell your friends the random facts you just learned, and then go back to reading.
You don’t even need to fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes to find out more about the athletes and stories Fuchs highlights because, after you check one or two things at Wikipedia or elsewhere, you realize he’s already done all the research you need to know for you and you can sit back and have a good time while you wait for the Paris Games to start.
As it is a collection of short things, it’s hard to pick out favorites so we’ll just leave it at… if you love the Olympics and want to know more stories from them, the ones NBC broadcasters (if you’re American) skim over or don’t mention at all, this is the book you should have around.
- My rating: 4 stars
- Genres/Topics: history, sports, nonfiction, collections, Olympics
I received a copy of Total Olympics through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest & original review. All thoughts are my own.
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