What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Personal belief: 90% of memoirs are made just to be quoted. I felt that way with this one. It was more boring than most! But it definitely gets more interesting as it goes. Murakami gets honest about failure (despite never truly failing anything?) and getting older, which was cool to read.

This is such an unserious comment but it almost felt like I was being gaslit the entire time that he didn't care about competition and meeting certain times/markers. The entire book is about beating every marathon and it's so nonchalant about it that it honestly made me annoyed.

If you're a runner this might be motivating. If you're a writer, there are select moments of interesting introspection/analogy/commentary from Murakami. If you're interested in his life, go for it. But generally this was not easy to get through.