The 3rd of Bechdel’s nesting memoirs. The Secret to Superhuman Strength is sort a of memoir of her relationship with herself and her constant quest for self-improvement, partly told through the medium of her exercise habits. Full of many small and large asides. Bechdel also puts her self-improvement & fitness habits in context, chronicles the development of America’s current self-improvement movements & exercise fads, & drawing comparisons to the English Romantic poets with their “rambling” movement (see Solnit’s Wanderlust), to the New England Transcendentalists, & to the Beat Poets, especially Kerouac & Snyder. The Kerouac & Snyder parts also connected to Bechdel’s discussions of Buddhism. Sometimes The Secret to Superhuman Strength reminded me of Derf’s Trashed, which also used a personal story (his garbage collector career) as a vehicle to tell about a topic (garbage & landfills). All of that more than makes up for the book making me feel bad for not taking up running like I keep telling myself I mean to do. Secret to Superhuman Strength seemed like the most timely & of the moment of Bechdel’s memoirs; maybe it’s just because I’m reading it right as it’s come out, or maybe it reflects something about the present moment it’s of.