"What I talk about when I talk about running" by Haruki Murakami

This is one of the few Murakami books that I have in hardcover, print, not electronic or audio book.  It is a short book (less than 200 pages), but I waited a long time to have enough spare time to read it in one or two go's.  Finally the time came.  I finished it in two days.  It consists of 5-6 chapters, each written over a 15 year span, at one place or another on the globe.  The book title is borrowed from a short story writer Murakami translated, but that's the least interesting part.

It is much more interesting how Murakami decided to become a writer when he was 32 and already had a successful Jazz bar in Tokyo.  With no writing experience, or even time to write, he finished his first book (on baseball) in the little breaks he had around the 24/7 obligations of running a restaurant/bar.  He was even more surprised when his first book won a prestigious 'New Writers' award. 

At about the same time he started writing - he also started running.  Gave up smoking after a little while, then started putting his body in shape, eventually running more than 25 full marathons and even one ultra-marathon (65 miles) where he had a spiritual experience (and almost got permanently injured).  For him writing and running go together, and are based on similar principles, discipline and methodology.  Many writers around the world (both living and dead) would disagree with him and fall more into the 'classical' write stereotype of heavy drinking, intoxication, vagrancy, loose women and other sins.  But it worked for Murakami.

Besides running and writing, the book is also Murakami's meditation on aging and mortality.   The book covers his life from his late twenties to late fifties and he's more than noticed the changes in his body, his stamina, his constitution and predominantly in his psyche that come with age.  He is not afraid of aging, or raging against it, but finds more of a challenge to continue doing what he was doing, the way he was doing it, as years progress.  The book has that subtle, warm coziness that all his novels have, making the reader feel that it is all OK, whatever it is - it's OK.