Useful insights into how to run and why one woman does so for sport and for its life-enhancing effects.
With humor and honesty, Elle UK books editor Heminsley details the anxiety and exhilaration she felt when she decided to try running in her mid-30s.
Like most children, the author had enjoyed running around and playing, but over the years, she writes, she had forgotten she could run: "Somehow I had lost sight of the fact that not being a runner and being unable to run were not one and the same." Her first run quickly turned into a walk, and she didn't lace up her shoes for another three months. Then her brother announced that he was entering the London Marathon, and Heminsley decided to sign up, too. Months of training and proper eating ensued. The author takes readers on the emotional ups and downs of that first race as the miles passed slowly by and Heminsley reached and pushed past her limits. The author’s supportive family, including a father who had run marathons and a brother also in training, encouraged Heminsley to finish that first marathon and sign up for many more. Each time she finished a race, she experienced the high of accomplishment followed shortly thereafter with the question, now what do I do? As the years and miles passed underfoot, Heminsley spent increasing amounts of time questioning this need to run. Finally, she realized she didn't need to run for a cause, although she did; she didn't need to run for weight loss or exercise, although the benefits of running were evident in her new, more streamlined body. She could just run for the sake of running. For anyone contemplating running, Heminsley provides valuable insight into the mechanics and emotions inherent in the sport. The author also includes information regarding proper gear, physical ailments and preparing for a marathon.
Useful insights into how to run and why one woman does so for sport and for its life-enhancing effects.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9712-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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