My lit review roundup concluded with Ekaterina Gordeeva’s My Sergei: A Love Story (with E.M. Swift). If the Russian pairs team of Gordeeva and Grinkov weren’t famous enough with two Olympic gold medals, Grinkov’s sudden, premature death in late1995 during routine training in Lake Placid would’ve been enough to seal their fame forever. My Sergei ( Read more... )

The fourth book I chose to read was A Skating Life: My Story, by Dorothy Hamill. After the inanity of the Lipinski book, anything would likely have seemed better, but I dare say Hamill’s book is actually quite good, and I enjoyed reading it quite a bit.

I should begin by saying: I have no emotional investment in Hamill’s skating career. She had ( Read more... )

My next installment (and least favorite of these books) is Triumph on Ice by Tara Lipinski. Like Kwan’s book, it should likely be read with a grain of salt given the age of the “author” and the intended audience. A mere 101 pages in the same oversized font as Heart of a Champion, Triumph also includes (surprise!) a skating glossary and scoring ( Read more... )

Next, I read Michelle Kwan’s Heart of a Champion. The Kween, as I like to call her, was 17 when this was published. She’s the Kween because she’s won the World Championships 5 times and the US National Championships 9 times. Despite these successes, I was heartbroken to see her fail to win an Olympic Gold both in 1998 and again in 2002. I feel like ( Read more... )

When I heard that Johnny Weir had signed a book deal for an autobiography, I can’t lie: I got really, really excited. By the time the thing is published in January 2011, I’ll be lucky if my long-suffering coworkers haven’t killed me for talking about it non-stop. I even have a working title for it in my mind: Our House Had Electricity: Growing ( Read more... )