Top 8 Ways Reading Is Like Running

I spent last Sunday running through my beautiful city of Chicago. More than a million spectators showed up to cheer on the 53,000 runners at the 2025 Chicago Marathon. When you're out on a marathon course for a little over four hours (not my ideal time, but as I've gotten older, speed is now longer the priority), you have a lot of time to think. And one of the things I thought about a lot on Sunday, other than how lucky I am to be able to do this, is how much two of my favorite things in the world -- reading and running -- have in common.

There is no shortage of articles on the web -- including by big-name writers like John Green -- about how writing and running are similar. But not many about how reading and running are. But they are! Here are the eight ways reading is a lot like running. 

1. Both are anxiety-busters

If you only read one item on this list, read this one. This is so important. Reading and running are both ESSENTIAL for my mental health. Without these, I'd be an anxiety-addled mess curled up in a ball and literally not able to function. In Michael Clune's brilliant novel Pan, a character suffering from anxiety stays up all night immersed in reading a book because as long as he's reading, his mind is occupied and not free to roam and catastrophize. I've never read something that so closely matches my experience for one of the reasons I love reading. And running is the same -- not only does it keep my mind occupied in the moment, but also it keeps me focused on a goal, which for me, helps reduce anxiety. Though this is a whole essay on its own, "running therapy" has even been prescribed as a treatment for anxiety instead of pharmaceuticals for some cases. Living with anxiety can be difficult. Finding things you love to do helps. Finding things you love to do that themselves can be treatments is invaluable. 

2. Both, when going well, can bring about an intense feeling of well-being

Running and reading, though, aren't just about combatting the negative. They also both can make you FEEL AMAZING! Yes, the "runner's high" is REAL, but it is honestly pretty rare. When it happens though, it's intense -- a feeling of euphoria like nothing can hurt you and nothing can ever go wrong again. I haven't done a lot of drugs in my life, but I imagine that's what the drug-induced high must feel like. Even without a runner's high, running still just makes you feel great. My mood is almost always improved when I'm back from a run. It may take a crowbar to pry me out the door, but I never regret it when it's done. Similarly, when you're reading something really good, and you're in the flow state, and you suddenly forget you have a body, and you are so connected to the page, it's as if you've stepped outside yourself. That feels amazing, too!

3. Both, when not going well, are susceptible to slumps

Look, it's not all sunshine and magical unicorns. Runners and readers both slump, and when you do, it feels like you'll never do the thing again. Or if you are doing the thing, you're taking no joy from it. Always important to remember: This too shall pass. Slumps are temporary. My advice on busting slumps is always do the thing, but shorter. Do a series of shorter runs. Read a short story. Ideally, this'll kickstart your running/reading habit...and more importantly help you remember why you love doing the thing.

4. Both are, and help reinforce, healthy habits

The simple key to creating a healthy habit is to find something you love to do, and continue doing it. I'm not trying to be glib. But that's just a fact. When people tell me they're trying to get into running, my first question is always "How do you like it so far?" and if they say "I hate it" well it's probably not a habit that'll stick. That's totally fine! But if you find a way to do it in such a way that you don't hate it, soon that not-hate grows into like, and soon after that, before you even know it, you'll love it. Again, I can't emphasize this enough, because I've learned this the hard way: It's a lot easier to form a healthy habit when the thing you're doing is something you love! It's the same with reading -- when someone comes into the bookstore and says they're trying to get back into reading, and ask for a recommendation, I always trying to give them something light and fun -- an on-ramp to further investigation of their reading interest; a gateway. Related to this discussion and absolutely worth mentioning is that both reading and running are also addictive. Addiction, by definition, is not healthy in any form. Not to make light of addiction, but if you're going to be addicted to something, it could be a lot worse than reading and running. This is also a whole essay on its own.

5. Both include impossibly ambitious lists

How's your To Be Read pile? Mine -- which is literally a pile of books -- is teetering to the point of collapse. I'm just praying I'm not caught underneath it when it does, or I'll be like Principal Skinner in that one Simpsons episode. How's your marathon / half marathon goal list? If you had infinite funds, time, and health, would you be able to run a race in all 50 states, do all seven of the World Marathon Majors, or any other ambitious running goal runners set for themselves?

6. Both lead to greater empathy

The empathy benefits to reading are self-evident: Reading helps you walk a mile in someone else's shoes. It helps you see the world through someone else's eyes; understand their worldview, challenges, joys, sorrows, and so much more. This is a good thing. You may not have thought that running can do the same, but it totally does. I'm a middle-class, middle-aged white male: My life is not difficult or painful. Running sometimes can be difficult and painful. Running is a reminder, no matter how small, that many other peoples' pain and difficulties are 10 million times worse than mine. That helps me not to become complacent about or desensitized to the state of the world. And not being desensitized is crucial to continuing to take action to fight back against (gestures at everything). 

7. Both lead to annoyed friends because all readers and runners want to do is talk about is reading and running😅

If you've met and talk with me in person, you know within five minutes about my next race or what I'm currently reading. That's not unique to me: All readers and runners are like this. We just love to talk about what we're passionate about! I've gotten more mileage than a 1982 Toyota Tercel out of this dumb joke: How can you tell someone is training for a marathon? Wait five seconds and they'll tell you. It's funny because it's true. 

8. Both lead to new lifelong, life-changing friendships

I have not found two more close-knit, supportive communities than the running and reading communities. I have met people I never would've without these hobbies -- people who are now close friends. I really, really love that about these two things.

Kaplan's Plot, by Jason Diamond: A Big-Shouldered Debut

You won't find a more Chicago-ey novel published this year than Jason Diamond's debut, Kaplan's Plot. In fact, Kaplan's Plot is actually two Chicago novels in one -- which makes it as overstuffed with Chicago goodness as a Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza or a walk-off home run at Wrigley Field or a double char dog from the Wiener's Circle. (Sorry, I'll stop now.) 

I got to see Diamond at the Chicago release party for Kaplan's Plot a few weeks ago, at which mentioned he always has trouble with his elevator pitch for this novel when someone asks him what it's about. Though he does it very well, I know what he means now. There is a lot going on this book, and it's not easy to summarize succinctly. 

But here goes: Kaplan's Plot is about a disgraced tech bro named Elijah who returns to Chicago from the Bay Area after his partners were indicted and his company folded. His mother Eve, a semi-famous poet, is dying of cancer and Elijah decides there's no better time than the present to dig into his family's past. That past? A grandfather (Eve's father) named Yitz Kaplan, a Chicago gangster in the 1920s and 1930s operating from Chicago's famed Maxwell Street. So these two stories intertwine -- Elijah learning about Yitz and his secrets, and Yitz's escapades happening in-scene. 

The alternating past-and-present scenes, especially when a character in the present is trying to learn the secrets of the past, is a risky structure. It's difficult to parse out information in a way that makes it still seem surprising and fresh both to the characters and the readers. But Diamond pulls it off here. One thing he does well is make each alternating chapter similar in length -- this may be a personal preference thing, but when I'm reading alternating timelines, and we spend 20 pages in one and then 10 in another, I naturally start caring more about the longer section (and it's a subtle signal the writer does too!). But here both stories are given equal weight, and I think doing so helps make the novel successful. 

Plus, compelling characters, a drama-rich plot with secrets and twisty turns, and getting so many great Chicago details in two separate timelines all make this just a lot of fun to read. Not that Diamond's Chicago cred is in question (he grew up in Evanston), but this post on the Chicago Literary Canon on his popular Substack, the Melt, should quell any concerns. 

So yes, if Chicago novels are your thing -- or you're just a fan of well-written family dramas -- this one's for you. Highly recommended! 

Thomas Pynchon Is Having A Moment. Let's Have One with Him

Happy Thomas Pynchon Day to all who celebrate! Today is the day Pynchon's probably last novel, Shadow Ticket is out and in the world. My review of the novel is up at Chicago Review of Books. Here's a little preview:

Thomas Pynchon would prefer not to be introduced. Which is fine, because by now, on the occasion of the publication of his ninth novel, Shadow Ticket, the 88-year-old famously reclusive writer needs no introduction anyway.

Pynchon is one of only a few members of the pantheon of writers whose names are also adjectives. Orwellian (dystopian). Kafkaesque (surreal). Dickensian (includes orphans?).

Please click over and read -- I had A LOT of fun writing this one. My editor called it "a banger." 😅

So yes, Shadow Ticket is out in the world. And woah boy, this is A MAJOR Publishing Event! 

Here is how I know this is Major Publishing Event: First, a couple bookstores around the city, and in Milwaukee (hello, Boswell Books -- one of my favorites!) where the novel is partially set, had midnight release parties last night. When is the last time you can remember midnight release parties for a tricky literary fiction novel?!?

Second: Let me tell you a quick story about just getting an Advanced Reading Copy to be able to review it. Normally, the process is very easy -- you email the publisher, tell them you're reviewing for a publication, and they send you the ARC. This time, I had to prove the assignment, which meant getting the Chicago Review of Books editor to email the publishing team to assure I had indeed been assigned the review. When the ARC arrived, it was an individually numbered copy. Mine is No. 101 of 192 -- which, what an odd number of ARCs to make! I've been writing about books on the internet for almost 20 years, and I've never seen that before. I thanked the team profusely and told them I'd guard it with my life. 

Thirdly, the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday 10/9, and Pynchon is one of the favorites. NicerOdds -- a British bookmaker -- has him at 11/1 odds (the same as Haruki Murakami, by the way -- either of those two winning would make my week!). Can you imagine our boy Tommy pulling down a Nobel on top of everything else? Would he attend the ceremony?!? 

BUT ALSO! Have you seen One Battle After Another??? The Paul Thomas Anderson film has been making huge waves in the cinephile community -- and it's "inspired by" Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. I have not read Vineland, but I saw the movie last weekend. Verdict: It's worth the hype...and then some. I'm far from an expert film reviewer, but it gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. 

Finally, all this chat about Pynchon has renewed interest in Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow. I spent six months tangling with that novel way back in 2010. I felt like I survived GR, more than read it. Here was a conversation (made up, of course) I had with my boy Tommy on the occasion of finishing that nearly impenetrable novel. 

Now I'm off to rewatch The Simpsons, Episode 10, Season 15 for the 782nd time. "Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!' Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!" 😂

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan: A Sweeping but Intimate 20th Century Epic

Both of my grandparents on my mother's side were born, raised, lived their entire lives, and died in Tiffin, Ohio -- a small town in the northeast about an hour from Toledo. Dick and Dorothy Puffenberger were front and center in my mind as I read Patrick Ryan's debut novel, Buckeye.

Covering a half-century of the lives of two couples and their families, Buckeye is set in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio (though real places I know well from visiting my grandparents, like Findlay, Fostoria, and yes, even Tiffin make appearances). Margaret and her husband Felix, and Becky and her husband Cal are the same generation as my grandparents, so it felt like I was reading a sort of fictional version of the lives of their friends and neighbors.

But even if you're not lucky to have had grandparents who lived in a small town in Ohio, if you enjoy a good multi-generational saga chock-full of secrets, lies, regrets, deception, and drama, you'll dig Buckeye. 

At once sweeping and intimate, Buckeye is about how life even in small town America is not insulated from the effects of massive world events. Beginning with World War II and ending in the 1980s, Ryan tells us the story of the uniquely American 20th century through the eyes of these two couples who become inextricably intertwined. 

One of things that Ryan does well here is making it possible for readers to continue to empathize with good people who make bad decisions. That's such a difficult thing to pull off in fiction -- and especially given how we're programmed these days to write someone off for a single indiscretion. Sometimes good people do bad things. How they respond to those poor choices is the meat of this novel, and Ryan seems to be saying, how they really should be judged. 

My biggest complaint about this novel is that, even at 450 pages, it feels too short. We spend more than two-thirds of the novel on just a few years. But then we sort of do the "fast forward montage" thing and skip ahead too quickly. It felt like there was opportunity to really flesh out the relationships between the couples' kids and give them more room to grow on the page. I'm probably in the minority on this -- no one likes long books anymore. But I felt like this could've been a 900-page masterpiece in the vein of David Wroblewski's Familiaris or Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water. 

Still, what's here is fantastic -- and it's already become a huge word-of-mouth hit. Grab your drink of choice, your coziest sweater, and lose yourself in this story. 

Playworld, by Adam Ross: Parents Just Don't Understand

Playworld, by Adam Ross, is a long, often dense, sometimes directionless novel about a teenage actor’s coming of age in early 1980s NYC. But more so, it’s about adults being constantly and consistently disappointing.

I should’ve loved this — it feels like a throwback novel. There are some Dreiser vibes here, especially An American Tragedy (so it’s likely not a coincidence our character here is named Griffin, which is close enough to Griffiths?). Griffin is tossed along on an ocean of circumstance (naturalism, anyone?), and dealing with issues not of his making and far above his maturity level — a gross wrestling coach, an affair with an older woman, paying for his own schooling, a small amount of notoriety from his acting, etc.

This should’ve worked splendidly, but…it just felt aimless. None of Griffin’s individual issues, which are HUGE DEALS, ever really felt like they were given the weight they deserved. Instead, we spend a ton of time on Griffin’s first age-appropriate crush — which, had that been the novel, would’ve been fine (and the book would’ve been about 200 pages shorter).

The biggest issue in Griffin’s life, however, is how every adult he wants to rely on — teachers, coaches, his fellow actors, and most notably his parents — lets him down. It feels to him like every adult in his life is just playacting at being an adult. Others have compared this novel to a slightly more modern The Catcher In The Rye, but Griffin is not nearly as adept at Holden Caulfield at identifying the phonies. So it’s no wonder Griffin struggles. 

Look, Ross is a magnificently astute writer -- he's really good at crafting long (again, often dense) paragraphs teasing out a single idea. I loved these and often looked forward to them more than the next plot point. And I will definitely read whatever it is he does next (though it's been 15 years between novels, so who knows), but this was a miss for me.