The books a “cult classic”, that’s what they told me. It’s also out of print and hard to find, unless you want to spend $200+ on Ebay for a used edition. I was reading a formal book review for “Again to Carthage”, John L. Parker’s much anticipated sequel to “Once a Runner” when I decided to hop on Amazon, to read some other opinions about the book. I did a search for “Again to Carthage” and it also brought up “Once a Runner” with a listing for one used book. I clicked on the link and see a used edition for “Once a Runner” on sale for $21. I hit the buy button faster than Eliot Spitzer at the Emperor’s Club VIP.

When my copy of “Once a Runner” arrived, I noticed that the book looked brand new. The spine was in perfect shape, no creases, pages were white and crisp. My next thought was that I could sell this book on Ebay after I was done reading it. Thus, I tore into the book, not literally, after all I had to be careful as I was selling this book on Ebay once I was finished.

To preface, I do a decent amount of reading, around 40-50 books per year, all though this year is a down year. I read a bit of everything from fiction, non-fiction (classics), historical, and books on economics and business. Thus, I have some literary knowledge; I’m not one of those simpletons who wait for Oprah to tell them which book they should read, I can make my own decisions. Speaking of Oprah, does she really need to be on the cover of “O” magazine every month?

I’ve found that a lot of movies and books that are billed as classics never live up to their expectations. I read “Huckleberry Finn” last year, which I enjoyed, but I bet it was a lot funnier in 1884, with the colloquialism being easier to understand. I imagine if you handed a 14 year old kid a copy of “Star Wars” in 2020, he’s going to tell you that it’s not as cool as you told him it was going to be.

I’m not going to give you the recap of “Once a Runner” you can find it on wikipedia, or odds are that you have read it already. The book was 248 pages and I finished it in two days, not because it was an enthralling read, but because I was eager to sell it on Ebay. I thought the book was decent, definitley not a classic and I probably wouldn’t even recommend it. The book has its moments and I got a good laugh when he makes fun of Runners World, apparently it was lame even back in 1978.

If you look on Amazon, the book has about a 90%+ rating of five stars. Five stars, seriously? I’d probably give a total of less than ten books that I have ever read a rating of five stars, on a scale of five that’s perfection, this book was not perfect.

My guess is that the book is popular because runners are an odd bunch and there are few books written about running. Thus, the competition is not fierce. Compare that to a legal thriller, or a murder mystery, where there are probably thousands of non-fiction books in circulation and the market is saturated.

The climax of the book is when Quenton Cassidy shows up at the Southeastern Relays in disguise as a Finnish runner to battle the best miler in the runner who is from New Zealand. Disguise, ok, what kind of a disguise does one wear at a track meet, a home track meet, so that your teammates don’t know who you are? Right there, that knocks you down to a 3 star review Mr. Parker. It’s sort of like Lois Lane not being able to tell that Clark Kent is Superman, come on Lois, he changed his hair style and put on some glasses. Heck, I shaved my head two weeks ago and everyone still recognized me at the office.

I finished the book, I didn’t regret reading it, in fact I read the entire book which says something. In general, if I loathe a book in the first 30 pages, I won’t finish it. That didn’t happen, so if I had to grade it using Amazon’s scale, I’d give it 3 stars out of 5, mostly due to Mr. Parker’s superfluous writting.

Wait, the best part, wait for it… I put the book up for sale on Ebay and sold it a week later for $230! Boom, thanks Mr. Parker! Actually, I think Mr. Parker probably has an attic full of copies of “Once a Runner” and he is controlling the market, slowly selling them off, he is the De Beers of the publishing world.