In this strange season of self-isolation, with an annoying amount of additional time, have you felt yourself fumbling through your bookshelf, with the urge to find something to read? To distract yourself and hopefully become lost in another world. Or maybe you just want somewhere to share your thoughts, feelings and emotions at what you’ve just read. We at the Beehive have got your back. As of today, we are excited to introduce The Beehive Book club. Once a week we’ll recommend and review a book for you to escape into. Drop a comment of your thoughts and opinions and what other books you have on the go. We’d love your input, so please share your own recommendations!
To kick off, we start with the wonderful ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’ by Haruki Murakami. The author who brought us ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Men Without Women’, now brings us something very different, a memoir on running. With gyms shut and people itching to get out of the house to do some exercise, has anyone else felt themselves keen to go for a run? Murakami, on top of writing, runs an average of 6 miles a day, 6 days a week. He has completed more than 20 marathons and even finished a 62-mile ultra-marathon. Makes me tired just thinking about it… Murakami was born and raised in Japan, spent many years in Hawaii and then went on to teach at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, he picked up many funny and fascinating stories, many of which feature in this book. The majority of this read focuses on his training for the New York marathon. This, however, is far more than a guide on running. Murakami uses frequent connections between running and writing. He adds his own thoughts, comments and philosophy and his own amusing anecdotes. This marvellous little memoir is really about life. Murakami teaches us about the balance between mind and body in all pursuits. I am obsessed with quotes. So, I can’t talk about a book without including my favourite snippet from this book. Let’s finish with this: “So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.”