Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
When Kyle McCray gets word his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown, where he doesn’t expect a warm welcome. Kyle left suddenly two and a half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his friends―not to mention Casey, his wife of sixteen years. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again, especially after Casey makes it clear she wants him gone. From Tracey Lange, the New York Times bestselling author of We Are The Brennans, What Happened To the McCrays, will break your heart, and then put it back together.
Ah, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Nothing brings people together quite like professional sports. Whether they’re rooting for their favorite teams or watching a contested match, people love to invest in the outcome. There’s something so exciting about seeing an athlete in their prime breaking records or beating the odds, and it’s also so human to feel devastated when an Olympian fails or your favorite team loses. With all the emotions that sports bring us, you can imagine how the athletes must feel. Luckily, some of them have chosen to tell us—you can hear all about those clutch moments, big wins, and devastating losses with these eight great recent sports memoirs!
The athletes behind these books have logged millions of hours training, traveling, and competing, and they have hundreds of awards between them to show for it. But behind the matches, the endorsements, and the media attention are real people who have worked hard to get where they are. They have given up their bodies, time with their families and friends, and, in one case, even their freedom to compete. So get ready to be riveted by these true tales of sacrifice, success, injury, loss, and knowing when it’s time to throw in the towel.
One Jump at a Time: My Story by Nathan Chen with Alice Park
Figure skater Nathan Chen is a three-time World Champion and Olympic gold medalist. This is his story of how his family made sacrifices to ensure that his talent for skating, apparent at a very young age, didn’t go to waste. It follows his path from grueling physical training and the mental toll sports can take on an athlete’s mind, to his disappointments, to his win in the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, where he became the first Asian American man to win a gold medal in figure skating.
OutOfShapeWorthlessLoser: A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out by Gracie Gold
In this brutally honest memoir, Gracie Gold, one of America’s figure skating sweethearts, talks about how she was suffering in private while she was all smiles in public. Gold recounts her fight with disordered eating and suicidal ideation, and her recovery from sexual assault, while she spun on her skates as an American Olympian. It’s a sadly all-too-common story of the pressures of celebrity and competition sports, and Gold should be commended for her bravery.
Coming Home by Brittney Griner with Michelle Burford
While Brittney Griner is an award winning WBNA player and Olympic gold medal winner, this compelling memoir is about a dark period in her life when she couldn’t play basketball. In February of 2022, Grinner traveled to Russia to play basketball during the WNBA offseason. Instead, she was arrested and imprisoned for mistakenly carrying medically prescribed hash oil. For the first time, she recounts what it was like to lose her freedom and become the first American woman sent to a Russian penal colony, and how she stayed strong and didn’t lose hope of getting home.
All In: An Autobiography by Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is one of the winningest athletes in tennis, with an amazing twenty Wimbledon championships and thirty-nine grand-slam titles. She also inspired generations of young women, as she broke barriers in a sexist sport (most notably by beating Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes”) and paved the way for other LGBTQ+ athletes. This is a fascinating, fierce memoir by a legend, one whose name will never be forgotten.
Just Add Water: My Swimming Life by Katie Ledecky
Everything is going swimmingly: Katie Ledecky has penned a charming, inspiring story about her love of swimming, which led to her becoming the most decorated US female Olympian in history. It follows her from her start in pools in Maryland, where she took like a fish to water (someone had to say it), to her competitive trials and joining the Olympic team—and winning—at fifteen, to what it means to be a champion and how she has persevered under the public eye and keeps challenging herself and planning for the future.
One Life by Megan Rapinoe
The inspiring reads keep on coming! Soccer star Megan Rapinoe is an Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women’s World Cup champion. But her time on the field didn’t just stop at being everyone’s purple-haired favorite player. Rapinoe also used her time in the public eye to speak about equality for queer people and was the first white athlete to take a knee during to national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality. In One Life, Rapinoe talks about her younger years, her early love for soccer, and the highs and lows of playing the game, as well as the importance of speaking up and using her platform for change.
The Race to Be Myself: A Memoir by Caster Semenya
This is an important memoir about overcoming adversity and the toxicity of the public eye. Caster Semenya is a world champion runner whose win at the Berlin World Championships was tarnished when the media and the internet began to spread false claims about her body. Semenya bravely recounts what it has been like to be the center of public scrutiny, the legal battle she had to go through in order to be able to compete again, and the toll it has taken on her. It is a courageous memoir about being forced to give up the thing she loves by haters who wanted her to fail and how she is getting back on her (very fast) feet.
I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography by John Thompson with Jesse Washington
Last but not least is this posthumously published memoir from the legendary John Thompson, an NBA star who became more famous as a coach. A young star of college and NBA hoops, Thompson went on to be the coach of the Georgetown Hoyas and the first Black head coach to win an NCAA championship. Here, he shares the stories of his early life and all the challenges he and his family faced living in America, how he fought against the racist views of Black players in sports to become a center alongside Bill Russell for the Boston Celtics in the 1960s, and his renowned years as a coach.
If you want to learn about more great sports stories, check out these posts about historical sports novels and nonfiction books about basketball. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast about all kinds of new books, All the Books!
English (US) · 