It was okay. I listened to the audio version. While her feats are impressive, the book was not. It was difficult listening to her talk about her sexual abuse at the hands of her father and then her high school swim coach.

After reading this memoir, I seriously would rather climb Mt. Everest than attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida.

Diana Nyad relates her multiple attempts to complete this swim, and it certainly is inspirational. Talk about tenacity and energy. Honestly, I felt like the mental effort to simply organize her attempt(s) were equal to the physical effort of the swimming. I was exhausted merely reading about it.

Her message is one she encapsulates toward the end of her book in the following quote:

Whatever your Other Shore is, whatever you must do, whatever inspires you, you will find a way to get there.

Well, it really makes me want to get going on some long held life goals toward which I've made little progress (that novel isn't going to write itself, Anita).

So five star message!! And five stars for inspiration! The read itself was good - - especially if you like outdoor adventure stories (and I really, really do), but there's a repetitive quality to her tale that was probably unavoidable, and her Team is huge, so it was hard to get a real sense of who they were, even though they contributed tremendously to Diana's success.

The cool thing is Diana is speaking in Baltimore tonight, and I have tickets so looking forward to hearing her inspirational message in person! ( )

I know authors are supposed to suspend modesty a bit when they write a memoir, but something about Diana Nyad really rubbed me the wrong way in this book. Like, she couldn't just relate an anecdote about which ocean is her favorite without name dropping a major actor who came up to her and asked at a gym. She couldn't talk about getting through her marathon swims without bring up her perfect pronunciation of words in four different languages. It just rubbed (like salt water?) after a while.

That said, I didn't really know anything about Diana Nyad, and she did some impressive stuff. The narratives about the Cuba to Florida attempts are the best part of this book. ( )

The story is amazing. The will, the effort, it makes you want to dig a little deeper on your own adventures. ( )

Diana Nyad is a swimming machine with incomprehensible mental ability to withstand sleep and sensory deprivation, pain, and year after year of arduous training leading to her successful swim from Cuba to Key West in 2013 at the age of 64. “Find a Way,” details her path to success and the obstacles she overcame to become a superhuman open-water swimmer able to complete the goal of swimming 110 miles in 53 hours.

Personally, I find Nyad to be intelligent, obsessive, and articulate. I would say “inspiring,” but, to me, her dedication to achievement and exploits exceed “inspiring” and enter the category of “amazing” and “astonishing.”

Part of the memoir was difficult to read. She suffered from the trauma of sexual assault by both her father and her high school swim coach. Her mother failed to protect her and her coach continued to become an Olympic coach, despite his continued sexual abuse of many teenage swimmers. Some people overcome hardship and become stronger through survival. Nyad seemed to do so.

Even Nyad describes her lifestyle as fanaticism. At the age of ten she would waken at 4:30 each morning and execute 1,000 sit-ups and 50 chin-ups. This routine occurred 365 days a year, without exception. The day included four hours of swimming and training, before and after school. In her sixties, Nyad still subjected herself to a brutal discipline with a regime of 10 - 30 hour open-water swims.

To my surprise, I learned that box jellyfish exist in the Atlantic, as well as the Pacific. Nyad suffered from dangerous stings in the four attempts to swim to Key West prior to her success. She invested a great deal of time, energy and resources in designing equipment and finding experts and treatments to protect her during the risky nighttime swimming through jellyfish-infested waters. Her ultimate success was largely due to discovering methods to defend her from this hazard.

I can’t say that “Find a Way” was an enjoyable read, but it was educational and gave me new respect for Nyad’s amazing accomplishments. However, a few photos of Nyad would have improved the memoir. ( )