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white_hart ([personal profile] white_hart) wrote2021-08-15 05:34 pm

Reading: Wild Woman Swimming (227/365)

Wild Woman Swimming is a collection of Lynne Roper's journal entries describing her swims near her home on Dartmoor and off the Devon coast. Originally published in blog form (the blog is still available online), after her death from a brain tumour in 2016 her swimming friends gathered the entries together in book form, and the result is a gloriously lyrical piece of nature writing which celebrates water and the joy of being immersed in it in all weathers and at all times of year, as well as the friendships of fellow-swimmers. I read it because I love swimming, but I think that non-swimmers would also enjoy the writing and the pictures Roper's writing paints*.


*The original blog posts have photos, but I think that the photoless prose paints better mental images.