Letters to a Young Gymanst by Nadia Comaneci

Letters to a Young Gymnast is the story of gymnastics legend Nadia Comaneci's life. When I first started reading the book, I had no idea the what kind of detail it would go into. I figured that the autobiography would mostly be about her gymnastics career, but I was way off. Not only were there personal stories about her career and her training with Bela and Marta Karolyi, but there were in-depth stories about how life was for an elite athlete living in communist Romania under the rule of Ceausescu, as well as her defection from Romania. I found these stories about her life in Romania to be particularly interesting, because it's just so different from what I'm used to. The story about her escape from Romania was very interesting, as well as very dramatic. I had no idea what life was like, and it was interesting to read about it from a first hand account rather than from a textbook. Nadia wrote the stories in a narrative voice that made it seem as if she was telling the stories to a very close friend, and I was really drawn in by everything she wrote about. I found a lot of things in the book easy to relate to, being a gymnast myself. I have always found Nadia to be an incredible athlete, but after reading about her tough life in communist Romania and the circumstances she lived under, her victories seemed even more impressive. I found the book extremely interesting, and it really contradicts the pretenses people often have about such talented and well-known athletes. Nadia Comaneci's autobiography was really worth reading, and even though it was so short it gave so much detail and interesting information about her life, covering topics from her career, to her education, her life in Romania, and even her wedding to American gymnast Bart Conner. Even though I am generally not a fan of biographies, I enjoyed this book a lot.