The Boys in the Boat
1 journaler for this copy...
This one looks interesting. I picked it up at Costco -- it's Judy Blood's recommendation for my 12 (25) in 2024 Facebook reading challenge.
I knew a little bit about the history of the Pacific Northwest…
I knew shamefully little about the dust bowl or the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam…
I knew absolutely nothing about competitive rowing…
I learned a powerful lot about all of them in the last four days.
Nine boys from working-class families arrive at the University of Washington in the early 1930s, beaten but not broken by the depression and its aftermath – and spend the next four years training to row for gold in the 1936 Olympic events in Berlin. It’s a real life Cinderella story with better than a fairy tale ending. I’m so glad I took the time to get to know coach Ulbrickson, master shellmaker and sage George Pocock, scrappy Joe Rantz and the rest of The Boys in the Boat. So far, it’s the best book I’ve read in 2024.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"There were a thousand and one small things that had to be learned, mastered, and brought to bear in precisely the right way to propel a twenty-four-inch-wide cedar shell, carrying three-quarters of a ton of human flesh and bone, through the water with any semblance of speed and grace."
"Home, it was beginning to seem, was something you couldn't necessarily count on."
"If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk by and leave it behind."
"Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment."
"Like so much in life, crew was partly about confidence, partly about knowing your own heart."
"Perhaps the seeds of redemption lay not just in perseverance, hard work, and rugged individualism. Perhaps they lay in something more fundamental - the simple notion of everyone pitching in and pulling together."
"It takes energy to get angry. It eats you up inside. I can't waste my energy like that and expect to get ahead."
"There were too many days when they rowed not as crews but as boats full of individuals."
"No other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does."
"Joe, when you really start trusting those other boys, you will feel a power at work within you that is far beyond anything you've ever imagined. Sometimes, you will feel as if you have rowed right off the planet and are rowing among the stars."
I knew shamefully little about the dust bowl or the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam…
I knew absolutely nothing about competitive rowing…
I learned a powerful lot about all of them in the last four days.
Nine boys from working-class families arrive at the University of Washington in the early 1930s, beaten but not broken by the depression and its aftermath – and spend the next four years training to row for gold in the 1936 Olympic events in Berlin. It’s a real life Cinderella story with better than a fairy tale ending. I’m so glad I took the time to get to know coach Ulbrickson, master shellmaker and sage George Pocock, scrappy Joe Rantz and the rest of The Boys in the Boat. So far, it’s the best book I’ve read in 2024.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"There were a thousand and one small things that had to be learned, mastered, and brought to bear in precisely the right way to propel a twenty-four-inch-wide cedar shell, carrying three-quarters of a ton of human flesh and bone, through the water with any semblance of speed and grace."
"Home, it was beginning to seem, was something you couldn't necessarily count on."
"If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk by and leave it behind."
"Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment."
"Like so much in life, crew was partly about confidence, partly about knowing your own heart."
"Perhaps the seeds of redemption lay not just in perseverance, hard work, and rugged individualism. Perhaps they lay in something more fundamental - the simple notion of everyone pitching in and pulling together."
"It takes energy to get angry. It eats you up inside. I can't waste my energy like that and expect to get ahead."
"There were too many days when they rowed not as crews but as boats full of individuals."
"No other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does."
"Joe, when you really start trusting those other boys, you will feel a power at work within you that is far beyond anything you've ever imagined. Sometimes, you will feel as if you have rowed right off the planet and are rowing among the stars."
