I just finished reading…
April 14, 2010
What I Talk ABout When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. And I think you should read it too. It’s about running, writing, being human, being machine, and simply being. I’ve never really read anything like it before but that doesn’t surprise me coming from Murakami.
A friend has suggested reading a different title by Murakami which wasn’t available at the library yet so I grabbed this one, which I’d never even heard of. A small, unobtrusive yellow book of few pages. Reading felt like having a conversation with someone very wise, well-meaning and no non-sense. It felt like having a conversation with someone’s grandmother…if their grandmother knew a whole lot of first hand information about long distance running.
I feel like this book may have changed my perspective on life in a drastic way and when I closed the book (after reading the final 20 pages or so twice) I wanted to immediately share this change with an expectant world! But then, as now, I don’t have the words to explain the difference. It’s like watching a travel program about some foreign land vs. visiting some foreign land vs. living in some foreign land vs. adopting citizenship in some foreign land and calling it foreign no longer. Something like that…but not quite.
I’ll keep mulling…if I get a cleaner grasp I’ll try to pass it on. You go out and read this book!
