Tomorrow I leave for Baltimore for a flight to Nashville for the summit. I was looking online for places to run in Nashville and on letsrun I found someone who described the hotel that I'm staying at as Las Vegas meets Hee Haw. After doing some research online I found that this place is massive and fun times...oh INDEED! Hopefully I have a good times.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new month and I'm ready for the next book that I am going to read in the month. In July I read The Sun Also Rises. This was probably my third or fourth time reading this book, but there were some points that I was able to get that I hadn't seen before. One of the main themes that I found in the book is masculinity, or better yet how one views it and a perceived lack of one. The main character suffered an injury in the war that has caused him impotence. While his injury has certainly caused a physical limitation to his manhood, there are mental and psychological impacts that factor in a lack of masculinity. I think most of the male characters suffer from some sort of confusion from masculinity. From Mike's drunkenness and debt, to Bill's wording of the Civil War, to Cohn's lost little puppy affection to Brett where we see the characters wondering like lost souls. While they may have a large group of friends, they don't appear close to each other and mainly use each other.
The far larger theme of being lost looms over the characters. The impact of the first world war has caused damages to the psyche that still haunts them. The reluctance to open up about shows that these characters represented those who experienced the first hand horrors of the war and how they dealt with them afterwards.
One thing from the book that I really would like to read more about is the anti-semitic language used against Cohn. Is this Hemingway's own views? Or the views of the character? Either way reading it now it seems awkward and known what happened later on, a big sore point in the book. Cohn comes off as a ninny.
The book I'm going to read for this month, is Running with the Buffaloes. A book that honestly isn't that great. But to me the first week of August is the return of cross country, when you can have mandatory practices. And for that reason is why I decided to read the book. It does a great job of detailing a first hound account of what happened everyday at practice and at meets, but it does a poor job of any analyzing of training or of Wetmore. The fact that it solely focuses on the men's team and ignores the women's team (who placed better at nationals) is a point that makes the book hard to read. I kinda wished that the author would say something along the lines of "you know three or four guys have a stress fracture, maybe you should change the training a bit". Sadly this doesn't happen. As a sports book it's not great, it's pretty bad when compared to other books that chronicle a team's season. But then again running books are quite poorly done.
Once a Runner is an awful book. It meander's around for so long. Character's come and go without any real reason. The indoor track season comes and goes. You think it will last a bit longer, but it doesn't. The running parts are great if you are a runner, but if your not then your lost. The end isn't that bad, but honestly if you've read that far then you'll want to see what happens. But that's a big if. And that really leads me to wonder what is worse: Once a Runner or the running subplot in Forrest Gump. In Gump it has to be the worst subplot in movie history. It does nothing to add to the story, it literally is a waste of time for the audience. You don't learn anything new from the character and it doesn't lead to anything significance. But that's for another day.
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