What are the best books about swimming?
Start with Waterlog by Roger Deakin, a 1999 journey swimming through Britain's rivers, lakes and pools, then Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui (2020), a wide-ranging look at why people are drawn to water. For something more personal and artful, read Swimming Studies (2012) by Leanne Shapton, a former competitive swimmer.
Swimming is a strange sport to write about. Nothing much happens from the outside: a person goes up and down, or across, and gets out wet. The best swimming books know that the interesting part is what happens inside the swimmer, and in the water itself. These three come at it from very different directions: a wild-swimming journey, a reported history, and a memoir from the lane rope.
Waterlog, Roger Deakin (1999)
Subtitled A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain and published by Chatto and Windus, Waterlog follows Deakin as he swims his way across the country in rivers, lakes and other wild water. It was partly inspired by John Cheever's short story The Swimmer, and it borrows that story's idea of a journey made through water.
The book is about more than the swims. Deakin uses them to argue for open access to the countryside and its waterways, and to look at landscapes from the unusual angle of a person at water level.
Read it if: you love rivers, landscapes and slow, observant writing, or you are thinking about swimming outdoors yourself. Pair it with /movement/getting-into-open-water-swimming/ before you jump in anywhere.
Why We Swim, Bonnie Tsui (2020)
Tsui, a journalist, sets out to answer the question in the title, and travels widely to do it. Her publisher, Algonquin, describes a book that moves through evolution and mythology to survival, well-being, community swim clubs and competition. Along the way she meets Olympic champions, a swim club in Baghdad that met in a former palace pool, Japanese samurai swimmers, and an Icelandic fisherman who survived a six-hour swim after a shipwreck.
It is the most outward-looking of the three: part history, part reportage, part love letter. It is also the most likely to make a non-swimmer curious.
Read it if: you want the big picture, or a book to give a friend who still thinks swimming is just exercise.
Swimming Studies, Leanne Shapton (2012)
Shapton, best known for her art direction and illustration work for The New York Times, was a serious competitive swimmer as a teenager in Canada and reached the Olympic trials in 1988 and 1992. Swimming Studies looks back at those years of training and at how swimming lives on in her memory. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the autobiography category.
It is not a conventional memoir. The prose draws on memories of meets and practices, conversations with family and friends, and observations of other swimmers, and the book includes some of Shapton's own watercolours, so it feels like an object as much as a text.
Read it if: you swam seriously as a child, or you like books that are as much about seeing as telling.
Which one first?
- For outdoor swimmers: Waterlog.
- For the curious: Why We Swim.
- For former competitive swimmers and design lovers: Swimming Studies.
FAQ
Is Waterlog a guide to wild swimming spots?
No. It is a literary journey, not a guidebook, and conditions have changed a great deal since 1999. For safety, use current local advice and the guidance on our open-water page.
Do you need to swim to enjoy these books?
No. Why We Swim in particular is written for anyone curious about people and water. Waterlog works as nature writing even if you never get in.
Is there anything else by Roger Deakin?
Yes. Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees appeared after his death, in 2007, and follows journeys to meet people whose lives are bound up with trees and woodland.
Are there swimming novels too?
Plenty of novels feature swimming, but these three non-fiction books are the best place to start if the water is the point.
Sources
Written by the Zestasy editors. General information for curious adults, not medical, nutrition or training advice.