Welcome to our Book Bouquet series! Here we take some time to look at a collection of books, all grouped by a theme. You can use these ideas to add books to your own To Be Read pile; or use them as a foundation to build a book display in your library.

Do you have book themes you enjoy? Send them in to us, and we will make a Book Bouquet of them to share with everyone!

Have you tuned into our book group podcast: Reading With Libraries? We have tons of great book suggestions, material on recommending books across all kinds of genres, beverages matching the genre theme, and some super-fun Guest Hosts. Join us!

 

I love to watch the Tour de France!!

If you have never watched pro cycling, this is a three-week long race. Nearly 200 riders start the race, and not all of them make it to the last day in Paris. They cover over 2,000 miles on their bikes in this time. This is a team sport, with different teams aiming at different goals, all working to help individual riders in achieving goals.

• At the end of the race the yellow jersey is awarded to the rider who has the fastest time to Paris. (Sometimes this is a few minutes of difference to 2nd or 3rd place; sometimes it is a couple of seconds!)
• The green jersey is given to the rider who gets the most points, generally earned by sprinting in the stages where that is possible.
• The polka dot jersey is called the King of the Mountains, and is worn by the rider who earned points by getting to the top of the mountain climbs first. (They ride their bikes all over the Pyrenees and the Alps!)
• The white jersey goes to the rider under the age of 26 who finishes the fastest.

Lots of skills required on the team, so everyone has a role to play. There is a lot of strategy, and working to exploit the weaknesses of other riders and other teams. It’s like watching a chess game, that takes three weeks to play!

What books could we add to our bouquet? You could take this is a few different directions, so let your own imagination go wild!

(Links go to Amazon, and the book descriptions are from there!)

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, by Tim Moore “French Revolutions gives us a hilariously unforgettable account of Moore’s attempt to conquer the Tour de France. “Conquer” may not be quite the right word. He cheats when he can, pops the occasional hayfever pill for an ephedrine rush (a fine old Tour tradition), sips cheap wine from his water bottle, and occasionally weeps on the phone to his wife. But along the way he gives readers an account of the race’s colorful history and greatest heroes: Eddy Merckx, Greg Lemond, Lance Armstrong, and even Firmin Lambot, aka the “Lucky Belgian,” who won the race at the age of 36. Fans of the Tour de France will learn why the yellow jersey is yellow, and how cyclists learned to save precious seconds (a race that lasts for three weeks is all about split seconds) by relieving themselves en route. And if that isn’t enough, his account of a rural France tarting itself up for its moment in the spotlight leaves popular quaint descriptions of small towns in Provence in the proverbial dust. If you either love or hate the French, or both, you’ll want to travel along with Time Moore.”

 

Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro, by Phil Gaimon “Presented here as a guide–and a warning–to aspiring racers who dream of joining the professional racing circus, Phil’s adventures in road rash serve as a hilarious and cautionary tale of frustrating team directors and broken promises. Phil’s education in the ways of the peloton, his discouraging negotiations for a better contract, his endless miles crisscrossing America in pursuit of race wins, and his conviction that somewhere just around the corner lies the ticket to the big time fuel this tale of hope and ambition from one of cycling’s best story-tellers.

Pro Cycling on $10 a Day chronicles the racer’s daily lot of blood-soaked bandages, sleazy motels, cheap food, and overflowing toilets. But it also celebrates the true beauty of the sport and the worth of the journey, proving in the end that even among the narrow ranks of world-class professional cycling, there will always be room for a hard-working outsider.”

 

Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France, by Max Leonard “Froome, Wiggins, Mercks―we know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider. We learn of stage winners and former yellow jerseys who tasted life at the other end of the bunch; the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn; the doper whose drug cocktail accidentally slowed him down and the rider who was recognized as the most combative despite finishing at the back.

Max Leonard flips the Tour de France on its head and examines what these stories tell us about ourselves, the 99% who don’t win the trophy, and forces us to re-examine the meaning of success, failure and the very nature of sport.”

In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist, by Pete Jordan “Pete Jordan, author of the wildly popular Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States, is back with a memoir that tells the story of his love affair with Amsterdam, the city of bikes, all the while unfolding an unknown history of the city’s cycling, from the craze of the 1890s, through the Nazi occupation, to the bike-centric culture adored by the world today

Pete never planned to stay long in Amsterdam, just a semester. But he quickly falls in love with the city and soon his wife, Amy Joy, joins him. Together they explore every inch of their new home on two wheels, their rides a respite from the struggles that come with starting a new life in a new country. ”

 

Eat, Sleep, Ride: How I Braved Bears, Badlands, and Big Breakfasts in My Quest to Cycle the Tour Divide, by Paul Howard “For Paul Howard, who has ridden the entire Tour de France route during the race itself—setting off at 4 am each day to avoid being caught by the pros—riding a small mountain bike race should hold no fear. Still, this isn’t just any mountain bike race. This is the Tour Divide.

Running from Banff in Canada to the Mexican border, the Tour Divide is more than 2,700 miles—500 miles longer than the Tour de France. Its route through the heart of the Rocky Mountains involves more than 200,000 feet of ascent—the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest seven times.

The other problem is that Howard has never owned a mountain bike—and how will training on the South Downs in southern England prepare him for sleeping rough in the Rockies?

Undaunted, Howard swaps the smooth tarmac roads of France for the mud, snow, and ice of the Tour Divide, fending off grizzly bears, mountain lions, and moose. Buzzing roadside fans are replaced by buzzing mosquitoes. Battling bad weather, drinking whiskey with a cowboy, and singing karaoke with the locals, Howard’s journey turned into more than just a race — it became the adventure of a lifetime.”

 

Faster: The Obsession, Science and Luck Behind the World’s Fastest Cyclists, by Michael Hutchinson “

For professional cyclists, going faster and winning are, of course, closely related. Yet surprisingly, for many, a desire to go faster is much more important than a desire to win. Someone who wants to go faster will work at the details and take small steps rather than focusing on winning. Winning just happens when you do everything right – it’s the doing everything right that’s hard. And that’s what fascinates and obsesses Michael Hutchinson.

With his usual deadpan delivery and an awareness that it’s all mildly preposterous, Hutchinson looks at the things that make you faster – training, nutrition, the right psychology – and explains how they work, and how what we know about them changes all the time. He looks at the things that make you slower, and why, and how attempts to avoid them can result in serious athletes gradually painting themselves into the most peculiar life-style corners.”

 

 Wheel Fever: How Wisconsin Became a Great Bicycling State, by Jesse J. Gant “On rails-to-trails bike paths, city streets, and winding country roads, the bicycle seems ubiquitous in the Badger State. Yet there’s a complex and fascinating history behind the popularity of biking in Wisconsin—one that until now has never been told. Meticulously researched through periodicals and newspapers, Wheel Fever traces the story of Wisconsin’s first “bicycling boom,” from the velocipede craze of 1869 through the “wheel fever” of the 1890s. It was during this crucial period that the sport Wisconsinites know and adore first took shape. From the start it has been defined by a rich and often impassioned debate over who should be allowed to ride, where they could ride, and even what they could wear.  “