Hello! I’m Cheryl Dunn in Lincoln, NE for HPPR’s Radio Readers Fall Book Club.
The book Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall was for the most part a very light-hearted book that was easy to sit and enjoy. I would caution you that Chapter 17 does go into some very dark material related to suicide and depression, but it provides you with an understanding that I hadn’t thought about.
In summary, athletes that train a lot can become depressed if they don’t keep that regimen up. It is interesting how working out consistently day in and day out can boost your sense of feeling good and happy, but eventually that can all come crashing down if you don’t keep that pace. Exercise is good and necessary, but there is something to be said about having too much of a good thing. So, if you don’t want to read that chapter, that is the summary for it. I think the twists and turns of this book might throw some people off, but you learn a lot not only about rescuing and rehabbing animals, but also about Amish life, ultra running, the importance of animals to improve your mental well-being, and little nuggets of how to improve your health and life.
One of my favorite quotes relates to patience and kindness. The author says “Patience and kindness don’t show up on demand; they’re disciplines that require constant practice…”
Now while the author speaking in relation to how he needed to care for Sherman the donkey who very much had a mind of his own, I was thinking about how this is so true not only for being human, but also as a parent. As my daughter navigates the beginning of middle school, I have seen her go through a lot when it comes to unkind kids. Now this is a child that couldn’t stand even some kid movies because the characters weren’t being kind enough to each other and now she is in a situation that wasn’t something she could just “turn off.”
I was always taught to “kill ‘em with kindness” but sometimes it takes so much time and effort to do that and to keep it going when you don’t have much left to give. So, I have taught my daughter a lot on resilience, positivity, and just sometimes being a hard, impervious rock to words and actions. I appreciated the care the author took in really trying to understand Sherman’s world in the same way. He learned what might be scary to Sherman and how following through with actions and teaching makes all the difference, while still letting Sherman be Sherman. And he also taught us humans how to care for ourselves in various ways.
The book strays away from Sherman, but I just assumed that was because Sherman was doing well. It does come back around closer to the end of the book when they start heading off to Colorado for the burro races.
Before this book I was already familiar with these burro races in Colorado because my dad would time his hiking to coincide with one of the races in Leadville, Colorado. My husband had the joy of attending this with him, but I had not. However, with this book the author does such a wonderful job describing the race that you feel like you are right there except you are actually there for the whole race, not just a spectator on the side watching everyone with their burros go.
And then you are left with just wanting a donkey of your own.
I’m Cheryl Dunn for the H-P-P-R Radio Readers Book Club’s 2023 Fall Read – Wisdom of the Natural World.