A refreshingly frank book about the marathon trainer’s mindset.
Riedesel chases readers from the couch to the finish line in just 20 weeks in this fitness primer.
Distance running is one of the simplest activities known to humankind, one that our bodies have evolved to be good at. Early in this book, the author jokes that this volume contains, fully within it, a second book called The Self-Actualized Runner’s Step-by-Step Guidebook for Living, which reads, in its entirety, “Step One: Start running. Step Two: You’ve already taken it. Step Three: Repeat steps one and two until you understand exactly who you are and why you do what you do.” Even so, for most people, distance running is more aspiration than reality. How can something so simple be so difficult? According to Riedesel, running really is that easy, but becoming a person who runs regularly can be incredibly hard, as millions of health-minded would-be runners discover each year. It’s a pursuit that requires determination, time management, and a fair amount of psychological work, especially during those first runs, when the practice has not yet become a habit. With this book, the author coaches his readers through the steps toward becoming a runner—specifically a marathon runner, since Riedesel uses his own experiences training for the Disney Marathon to structure the guide. Beginning 20 weeks out from marathon day, the book dedicates one chapter to each week, assuming that the reader is more or less starting from scratch; topics include building a training plan, selecting the necessary gear, food, sleep, and even what to listen to while running. Riedesel’s voice is both conversational and refreshingly direct, avoiding motivation-speak in favor of everyday language: “Do not let the simple, important thing fade into the under-appreciated background like it’s the air or the sun. This is true for anything you wish to prioritize, and it’s true for running. Here’s the simple and important idea: Get out the door.” The author’s humor and matter-of-fact tone make this the perfect primer for anyone who really wants to run but just needs that little extra push to get going.
A refreshingly frank book about the marathon trainer’s mindset.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781732125513
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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