Running is the new slow

It is difficult to capture the theme of this book as there is none. Murakami writes a journal while training for a marathon. In this process he talks about life as a novelist, life as a runner and life as a person who is living it.

Sometimes he takes you running. You are there alongside him when he runs mile after mile next to rivers while being passed by college runners and 70 year old ladies. He will build you up on the run, let you feel the ache and the pain and then in the next sentence you are sitting at his desk, just breathing.

I am not a runner so not much of this book resonated with me. Talking of the smoothness and battle of running 26 miles is exhausting to someone who is athletic in spurts, but everyone has something that takes them into that zone where the thing you do hurts and is necessary and wonderful. And everyone has put of doing something that they should be doing (oh hello article with a deadline for tomorrow).

This is the book that is either very small or much too big. Murakami talks about talent for maybe half a page and it led to a long discussion on whether I believe that talent is innate or not. And this book is filled with these oddities of small slivers of life, because it is a small sliver of someone’s life. Whether novelist or not it should be allowed to stand alone as exactly that, this is a book to read and let wash over you. And when you put it down go for that run, write that novel, call up that person, find that love and then give it your all. Failure is not an option.