Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I don’t often pick up fiction books, although when I do I usually enjoy them. They are much more fast-paced and typically easier to digest than a textbook, and they give creative perspective. I stumbled upon The Road by Cormac McCarthy while reading a blog called The Art of Manliness. The blog by Brett McKay has a ton of helpful tips for men that often are passed from father to son (but not always) like how to tie a Windsor knot or how to make conversation with others. It’s a great blog by the way, but that is content for another post. J Brett had written a post about The Road, and said that he has read it every year as a bit of a tradition. His post inspired me to check out the book.

I probably should have been more aware of the book long before Brett’s post though. The book was made into a movie in 2009, and it also won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Reading this book evoked images for me of something like a Mad Max or Book of Eli post-apocalyptic world. The land was cold, and the people left on earth were struggling to survive.

The story is one of a journey of survival for a father and son through a wasteland. A journey filled with people who were bent on evil—robbers, cannibals, and many other unsavory and untrustworthy people. The father had made it his mission to protect his son and keep them both alive for as long as he could.

He used a metaphor with his son to emphasize character, “Carrying the fire.” People who carry the fire, are not cannibals, they are the good guys. The father and son reminded one another regularly that they were the good guys as they struggled to survive, and struggled to do the right thing as they traveled the road.

For me, the book, while a sobering look at love for one’s family, and the hard choices many people have to face for daily living, was more of a book about character and love. How will I raise my child to be a person of good character? What kind of person am I becoming by my own routines? How am I making the most of the limited time I have on this earth to care for others?

I recommend The Road, but I don’t think I’ll make it an annual reading. It is a dark and gripping story of a world that has largely lost its way and lost hope, but through the love of this father and son, a cold and unrelenting post-apocalyptic world seems like cannot hinder the power of virtue to shine forth through the darkness.

Whatever the darkness that may encompass our own lives, may we ever be mindful that faith, hope, and love abide, and even more so, may we, as we are able, seek to push back the darkness and live as ambassadors of hope.

Review: Becoming A Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett

In a recent blog, I mentioned the discovery of a website called The Art of Manliness that was developed by a guy named Brett McKay. I discovered the website when looking online for exercises to undo the damage caused to our bodies by sitting. While on Brett's site, I read a post on seven exercises focused on undoing the effects of sitting. Within the post, Brett gave a strong review and recommendation for Becoming A Supple Leopard. I decided to investigate further.

After reading a few reviews and learning a little more about the author, Kelly Starrett, and his methodology, I decided to take the plunge and buy the book. The book isn't exactly a simple book on fitness, but it seems like it is highly popular in the CrossFit community. I have seen a few copies in gyms and my sister even has a copy. The book is written as a more academic treatment of mobility and injury prevention. I could see a text like this making its way into a variety of Physical Therapy and Exercise Physiology programs.

The book is huge (like a textbook or coffee table book) and it is filled with page after page of mobility exercises to help improve range of motion, resolve pain, and optimize performance. Dr. Starrett strongly encourages readers to make their way through the book before jumping into the exercises so one can understand the principles that the mobilities are built upon. I heeded his instruction and found myself reading from cover to cover.

The book is extremely helpful for thinking through functional movement and strength, and for equipping people with tools to do self-maintenance to reduce incidence of injury. Starrett explains that the human body is highly adaptive, and he believes that the leading cause of joint pain and injury is poor mobility which the body then adapts to, and subsequently becomes injured through weaknesses and instabilities created by the adaptation.

Fundamentally, I found myself nodding yes throughout the book as I learned more about Starrett's background and framework for addressing preventive care. The thought that our bodies become injured through a lack of mobility and strength in different muscle groups just made sense to me, and the idea of doing self-maintenance to reduce or prevent injury just seemed like a smart thing to do.

Since reading the book on July 5, I've attempted to cultivate a daily habit of 10-15 minutes of mobility exercises and I can tell a marked difference in my mobility as well as my resilience after workouts. I highly recommend Dr. Starrett's book, and I also recommend reading the whole way through to think through the why of his book, and the why of the mobility exercises contained within. What I love the most about the framework is that it gives a sensible and practical pathway for improving mobility, functional strength, and injury prevention. Having been sidelined by injuries in the past, any tools I can use to reduce my risk of injury are tools I want to deploy with consistency.

May we all become supple leopards, always ready for whatever physical challenges come our way.