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Diana Nyad puts her reading to good use

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Four times long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad failed at her ultimate goal — to swim from Cuba to Florida. Finally at age 64, after 53 hours in the water, Nyad fulfilled her longtime dream in 2013. She recounts how in her memoir “Find a Way.” Nyad, also a prominent sportscaster, speaks at Symphony Hall on Feb. 17 as part of the Boston Speakers Series presented by Lesley University.

BOOKS: What are you reading currently?

NYAD: While I was writing my memoir I turned to memoir, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Jane Fonda, to get an idea of what the genre was like. I just love Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography. Now I'm getting ready for my next project, which will be walking from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and I'm reading about the anthropology of walking. There's a book called "Wanderlust" by Rebecca Solnit, which is a wonderful long look at why we started doing long walks. I also have "A Million Steps" by Kurt Koontz, which I haven't started. He walked 500 miles on Spain's pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago. He wound up a different person at the end.

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BOOKS: Did reading play a role in preparing you for your long-distance swims?

NYAD: I guess you could call it inspiration, but most people call it lay astrophysics. I've always been interested in the cosmos. When I was a kid it was Carl Sagan. There are wonderful scientists and writers, explorers of the infinite.

BOOKS: Did you read anything to help you settle into Los Angeles when you moved there from New York City?

NYAD: When I first moved here I read all of Dashiell Hammett, mostly to get into the look of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s. I also read all of Raymond Chandler's books, too.

BOOKS: What other kinds of books do you read?

NYAD: I read mostly nonfiction. I have a pretty good background in the classics. I went to graduate school to study comparative literature, mostly late-19th-century work, especially in Germany and Russia. I was going to earn a PhD and teach. Then I swam around Manhattan Island, and my whole life changed in a hurry. I never finished my PhD. Now it's been years since I've read fiction. I don't have the time. Years ago I took the Evelyn Wood speed-reading course, but it still takes me forever to get through anything. An 800-page novel might take me close to a year.

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BOOKS: What other nonfiction topics do you read about?

NYAD: I don't think of myself as a true sports person. I don't want to read the history of the Green Bay Packers. I enjoy the Everest climbing books like Ed Viesturs's "The Mountain." You get sucked into the world of climbing. My friend Erik Weihenmayer wrote "Touch the Top of the World." He's absolutely blind. There's a beautiful line in the book about when he got to the top of Everest and took off all his head gear. He wrote that the view was the most beautiful sight he ever saw. I liked Billie Jean King's "Pressure Is a Privilege." Tennis is the vocabulary of the book, but it's about her life lessons.

BOOKS: Do you read poetry?

NYAD: I am a person who cannot understand poetry. I always say to myself: Why are they hinting around at what they are trying to say? But I have given books of Mary Oliver's poems to a few people, particularly the one with "The Summer Day" in it. She has a line in another poem that talks about how, when she was very young, she apparently was abused by her father who "wanted a body/ so he took mine.'' I've talked about my own sexual abuse as a child by my stepfather. I sat there stunned. You can't say it any better.

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