Each January, I resolve to get fit again and return anew to running--and by that I mean jogging. Physical exercise is a good break from reading. Jogging forces you to breath, to air out, to pace yourself. While running, you can mull over what you have read, sort things out, draw connections. Or you can go inward, meditate, concentrate on your breath, empty your mind for a while. I've never been able to meditate in a lotus position, but doing so while running comes naturally. At least for this runner. Plus it helps regulate your weight and promotes cardiovascular fitness.
If you need to be inspired, you might like George Sheehan's Running & Being: The Total Experience, which I have reread often down through the years. I also recommend Lawrence Block's memoir, Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir
. Block is a competitive runner/walker who tends to overdo it--and who kept saying that he was quitting. He also said he was done writing novels, but the news is that a new Scudder novel is scheduled to be released in the spring. I'll be reviewing it here.I was delighted to read Haruki Murakami's memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International), when it first came out. He also talks a lot about his writing life.
I've not yet read Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
, which appears on many of the non-fiction best lists for 2010. They say it is also very inspirational.I enjoyed Roger Robinson's Running in Literature: A Guide for Scholars, Readers, Runners, Joggers and Dreamers
as well as Garth Battista's The Runner's Literary Companion: Great Stories and Poems About Running.And if you've enjoyed these, you might like some of the others on my list at Amazon at the link, here.
That's me, by the way. A literary jogger who takes it easy on his body and often can be seen walking up hills. Still moving, after all these years. I am grateful for the day.
, which 
, although there ought to be clowns.
. My copy is the 1957 first American edition, the first and most autobiographical in a series of novels which became famous in Europe. The author, under his real name, was a reluctant conscript in a German penal company, fighting for his life with the Nazis against the Russians in the dead of winter. This seems like the best month to read such a novel.
has a wonderful dustjacket, a falling down barn, gothic and surreal, with almost metalic blue floral designs in its title font. A southern gothic novel with social satire and reincarnation, it says. We'll see.
has been on my to-be-read shelf for a long time. January seems like the right time to read this snowy novel that seems to include thoughtful mystery and heartbreaking longing.
for January. It comes highly recommended by Emerald Noir novelists Declan Burke and Adrian McKinty, whose blogs I follow almost daily. They say it's a paranoia novel that reminds us once again of the corrupting influence of bureaucracy.
, off of this review, 
. A thriller-of-conscience and a dog story too.
once again. Other running, fitness, and diet books will no doubt follow, most of them with literary nuances.
through Valentine's Day itself. But that involves next month's reading, so more on that later.