DEAL OR NO DEAL: Just finished The Second Mark, Joy Goodwin’s terrific book ostensibly about the Salt Lake City Olympics pairs skating scandal. Its actual subjects include, among many other things, the rocky transition from the Soviet Union to the “new Russia”; a brief history of modern China, as told by small children in a cold climate; the ways culture and politics affect our aesthetic judgments; the messiness of skating judging at the best of times; and the ways–good, bad, and very much both at once–in which women understand, accept, and adjust to suffering.

All of this in fluid and unobtrusive prose. I checked it out of the library because it promised background on Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, the Chinese pairs champions, but I’d recommend it even to people with no especial interest in figure skating. (But if you want to know why Shen and Zhao are so great, try this, this, and this!)