Reading a good book will make you ask questions and intuit answers. Some authors paint in broad strokes, while others like Robert Caro and Nicholson Baker can seem impossibly myopic. In either case, good writing exists within the realm of the qualitative, not quantitative. Good writing is not perfect; in fact it's rather imperfect.
I discovered Caleb Daniloff's "Running on Ransom Road" after biking to the library looking for a few books to read. I reckoned I wanted a few running books and a (non-athletically concerned) novel. Sure enough, nestled among books about the Boston Marathon, Haruki Murukami and runner biographies, was Daniloff's expository meditation. Part memoir, part diary, Daniloff takes us through his marathons against the backdrop of his boozing past, where bacon figured prominently.
I always enjoy hearing how people came to "believe" in running, and how they persevere despite injuries and other setbacks. That we all suffer in much the same way is a kind of comfort, I suppose. In Daniloff's book, I find a clear and well-defined universe of anecdotes and memories laid out in the symmetry of easily digestible chapters.
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