Holy moley, I'm a few weeks behind on reviews. I read this before the Tour and it's almost Vuelta time…

Anyway, yeah, I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Like crack it is.

This is a very readable book. This should come as no surprise as it's a best seller and has spawned movie franchises on two continents (I'm assuming the American version will be enough of a success to see the two sequels through to completion,) but just how good it is surprised me. It's an intense, surprising story full of great characters- the kind of book I'd stay up until 4:00 to finish (which is exactly what I did.)

So, yeah, check it out.

Me? I've got this queued up on Netflix. Got to start in on the movie versions.

I'd never read any of Murakami's work before What I Talk About When I Talk About Running . I'm not sure what kind of introduction to his work the book is. I'll learn that when I get into his fiction…

Anyway, this is a phenomenal book about life and running. I've trained for two races over the past year (a full marathon and a half) and I've run regularly on one of the routes he talks about in the book (the Charles River path) so I was an easy mark for this one. Still, he delivers in an easy, conversational style. He's passionate about running clearly, and takes it very seriously, but he never strays into fetish territory where running takes on improbable import, so the book has a nice, pragmatic balance.

My favorite bits, maybe surprisingly, were the anecdotes about total suffering. The description of his impromptu Athens to Marathon "marathon" and especially his chapter on his ultramarathon (a metric century- 100KM/62miles) were especially engrossing. My enjoyment stems from a little bit of empathy (running long distances hurts- sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) and a whole lot from his ability to get the pain (and in the case of the ultramarathon, slight madness) onto the page. His descriptions are vivid. They bring the heat, pain and suffering to life.

Definitely worth checking out. It's a slim volume, but it pays off in a big way.

Nerd Alert!

Read all about it here…

Reading Dennis Lehane's The Given Day made me realize I don't know much about Boston history between the revolution and maybe the 1950s. I know bits and pieces, sure, but the full narrative is beyond me. Case in point, the Boston Police Strike of 1919. I just had no idea of any of the details or the breadth of the thing.

Now I do.

Beyond the historical bits, this is a Dennis Lehane book, set in Boston (even if it was a Boston of 91 years ago,) so I was basically destined to like it. It's a sprawling book. Clearly ambitious. To my mind it was mostly successful. It's maybe a little longer than it needed to be (it feels like nothing happens for the first 300 pages) but beyond that it's a cracking read. Violent, peppered with historical figures and driven by Lehane's relentless prose, The Given Day has a lot to offer. I was pleased to hear that Lehane plans two more books in this series. While it's a satisfying book by itself, I felt like there was a lot more story to tell.

I'm looking forward to it.

Apparently, I read The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters just in time for some sort of insane endgame in North Korea. I'd like to say that after reading this book I have a complete understanding of the motivations behind the recent sinking of a South Korean ship. I don't. To be honest, the internal mythology is just so weird I have a hard time fully wrapping my head around it when focused on an event as bold, and plainly dangerous, as this one is for the regime. If you have any interest at all in the politics of the Korean peninsula, or even just have a hankering to read about some bizarre/unique ideas/propaganda, you should check out this relatively short, incredibly well written and researched book.