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RUNNING HOME

Name: RUNNING HOME
Author: Katie Arnold
ISBN: 978-0-425-28465-0

A MEMOIR

by Katie Arnold ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

A contemplative, soul-searching account of the death of the author’s beloved father and how she used long-distance running...

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A female runner learns more about herself with each race she runs.

Arnold, a Santa Fe–based contributing editor at Outside magazine, shares the specifics of her childhood and the relationship she had with her father, a photographer for National Geographic, a profession she respected even as a child (“just the thought of this gave me a little shiver of pride”). When he fell terminally ill, the author embarked on a search to find out who he really was and why he left her mother when she was a young girl. In meticulous detail, Arnold recounts the many times she and her sister visited their father over the years and the ways in which he pushed her to do more than she thought she could. The first example was a six-mile race she ran at the age of 7, an event that set the author up to be a dedicated runner for life. She used running to deal with her father’s death, to overcome her doubts as a mother, and to find herself in each phase of her life. Inviting descriptions of the surrounding countryside, the natural highs of extreme exercise, and the pursuit of a peaceful existence balance the monotony of learning how Arnold prepares for each race, each one seemingly longer than the last. She describes setting personal goals prior to each race and how she pushed through the pain and self-doubt to finish. Interwoven with stories of her father and running are the author’s reflections on being a mother of two girls and life with her husband, who also runs but who gives Arnold the space and freedom to pursue her own goals. Although overlong, Arnold’s memoir will appeal to runners of all types, whether they participate in short-distance races or ultralong endurance tests.

A contemplative, soul-searching account of the death of the author’s beloved father and how she used long-distance running as a way to heal from the grief.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-425-28465-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | SPORTS & RECREATION | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.