What I Read Recently? (November 2025)

I’ve almost completely forgotten about keeping my reading list up to date. Looking at the list here, it seems it was almost exactly year ago that I lastly updated it. I’ve kept on reading, although, probably not as much as I should, but still, haven’t just kept the habit of writing few words down about each of those. Well, let’s try reawakening that habit again with some recent readings that I read.

Mauno Saari: Juoksemisen salaisuudet

I’ve recently started to wake up my running practice again. Although, I’ve never been super into it, I always done at least a little bit of running as an auxiliary workout to other sports. Recently though, I’ve wanted to get better as a runner. I happened to be in Finland visiting my parents and happened to found this old book about Lasse Viren in my father’s library. So of course knowing who he was, thought that this is a great book to read since I’ve not started to take running more seriously.

The book worked because it exposed the machinery behind Viren’s results without mythmaking. The mix of training detail, physical strain, and the era’s competitive realities sharpened the respect I already had for him. Reading it clarified how much discipline and calculation sat beneath his calm public presence, and it made his achievements feel heavier and more deliberate.

Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

While I’ve never been too big of fan of Murakami, I’ve still read a few of his works, and happen to know he is a big fan of running, so in the similar theme as the last one, I was curious about this one. Not necessarily because Murakami is some great running influence, nothing like that. I was just curious how he put the discipline of running into his words, how he describes it.

The book functioned as a stripped account of endurance as a mental architecture rather than a hobby. Murakami’s framing of running as a daily discipline, a stabilizing ritual, and a tool for shaping attention made the narrative useful rather than decorative. His refusal to romanticize the effort aligned with the core appeal: a direct view of how steady practice builds a mind capable of long work.

Juha Numminen: En päivääkään vaihtaisi pois

This was also a book that I happened to found from my father’s library. It’s a memoir/life-story about Tapio Rautavaara. The book captured Rautavaara as a complete figure, not just an athlete or entertainer. Numminen’s account of his training, competitions, and artistic pursuits conveyed the weight of discipline and personal choice behind each achievement. Reading it strengthened my admiration, showing how a life balanced between sport, music, and performance could remain authentic and fully claimed, day by day.