Teresa Letizia

“Let the Games Begin” is an aptly named book in Smiley Library’s new fiction collection, given that the exciting opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris takes place today — magnifique! You may want to enhance your Olympic games viewing experience by sprinting into this debut rom-com novel by Rufaro Faith Mazarura. Taking place at summer Games in Greece, it sparkles with romantic glances, accomplished Olympians, underdog heroics, and well, the brilliant sand, sea, and skies of glorious Greece!

More books on the world of sporting out this year in non-fiction include “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports.” Named a Most Anticipated Book by Esquire, Town & Country, and Electric Literature, author Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the separate stories of Zdeněk Koubek and Mark Weston, both high-achieving athletes in the 1930s who were assigned female at birth and began to live as males as adults. The news of their transitions was carried by global media outlets and they became celebrities only to be quickly forgotten. Waters’ research discovers other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era, as well as what he has identified as Nazi influence on and misdeeds by the International Olympic Committee that have had lasting consequences for the trans community.

Learn more about the Games and two modern Olympians in the memoirs of Caster Semenya, a South African middle-distance runner and winner of two Olympic gold medals, and Kara Goucher, two-time Olympian, and winner of the silver medal at the 2007 World Championships in the 10,000 meters. Each has a unique story of challenges that they finally felt ready to share.

Semenya in “The Race to Be Myself” recounts the progression of her talent and success which has been overshadowed by criticism and speculation about her body, and how gender plays out in sports, our expectations of female athletes, and the right to compete as you are. Goucher’s memoir, “The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team,” was a New York Times bestseller; in it she shares how she was lulled into the abusive doping world by her coach, distance running legend Alberto Salazar, and how she became a crusader for female athletes and a key witness helping to get Salazar banned from coaching at the Olympic level.

Reaching the Olympic level of competition is not for the faint of heart — even for our rom-com characters, and that is probably why we enjoy watching Olympians compete, because we know their top-level dedication is beyond what most of us could do, so we celebrate their hard-won victories and feel for them in their devastating defeats. Cheers to each of those participating in the 2024 Games!

Look for an extensive list of the Library’s Olympic-themed books and movie DVDs posted here on Smiley Blog earlier this month.

I recently lost a friend who had been in poor health for quite a while—a delightful lady who made me smile. This week (May 19-26) is National New Friends, Old Friends Week, a time set aside to remember how vital friends are to our emotional and physical health and well-being. Celebrating friends of any and all kinds seems an appropriate way to honor my friend, especially in the form of books, because she loved them and our library so.

The month of May, a time when we strive to bring awareness to our mental health, furthers the theme of the connection between friendship and health. At one time or another, most of us are in need of some kind of special care with life’s challenges and illnesses. Whether we are suffering from the effects of (in no particular order) grief, a broken heart, stress, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, addiction, autism, ADHD, OCD, schizophrenia, etc., we need, at the very least, some kind of guidance and kindness to get us through. Though we need to be aware that professional help may be required, the concern of a friend or a friendly stranger, or just a sincere smile on a face can often make all the difference.

Visit us, your friends at Smiley Public Library, if you need to locate resources for help, including finding some helpful books in the area of concern, even it’s just to hear another’s story. Here is a small sampling from our new book collection.

“The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” is a dramatic, yet unfortunately, an increasingly common version, of how mental illness can spill over from the sufferer to those around him. The memoir, a Pulitzer Prize finalist of 2023, recounts author Jonathan Rosen’s investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend from success and great potential to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand–and fail to understand–mental illness.

On a lighter note, another memoir, “I’ll Just Be Five More Minutes: (and Other Tales from My ADHD Brain),” is a collection of heartwarming and humorous essays by Emily Farris. Using her own experience as a woman diagnosed with ADHD at age 35, she addresses the topic of neurodivergent thought processing and the emerging discovery of its previously undiagnosed effects on girls/women. At its core, Farris’s account is about not quite fitting in and not really understanding why–something we’ve all felt whether we’re neurodivergent or not.

“Stand By Me: A Guide to Navigating Modern, Meaningful Caregiving” focuses on the very special friends we find in unpaid, untrained, usually family, caregivers. Author and clinical psychologist Dr. Allison Applebaum is the founder of the only devoted Caregivers Clinic in the country, as well as someone who has been on a personal journey as the primary caregiver for her own father, composer Stanley Applebaum. With this volume, she empowers caregivers to provide their loved one with the best quality of life and care possible, while promoting their own well-being.

Ultimately, in whatever we’re going through, we usually have to get to know ourselves better in order to begin healing. You may remember Julia Cameron’s 1992 classic “The Artist’s Way,” designed to provide tools to access artistic creative recovery. This year Cameron has released a supplement, “Living the Artist’s Way: An Intuitive Path to Greater Creativity: A Six-Week Artist’s Way Program.” In it she shares an additional technique, ‘writing for guidance,’ as a way to connect with the intuitive power within ourselves and trusting the answers we receive. Cameron details how writing for guidance can help readers quell anxiety, “slow down” amid life’s stressors, and surrender control. As if to bring our discussion full circle, she describes how she and other artists use the tool in practice by grounding her meditative guide with chapters “Believing Friends” and “The Inspiration of Friends.”