Den gule trøje i de høje bjerge

So July has been dominated by our vacation and watching various sports – especially Tour de France (and the Olympics now, of course). This has also influenced my reading – three books about professional cycling and Tour de France this month. Vacation time also meant a bit more time to read – in one of our three weeks of vacation at least – so I devoured Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. This means that I read 4 books this month. As always, I’m not completely satisfied with this.

So as it can be seen, I’m still on track for reading 52 books this year – especially since I have read 70 % of Clarissa as well. I’ve read 2054 pages which means that I’m back reading 2000+ pages/month like in the early months of this year and Im very happy about that.

As mentioned above I made it through 4 books this month:

Jørgen Leth: Den gule trøje i de høje bjerge. Denmark’s best cycling commentator writes about what he loves the most – Tour de France. Beautiful writing – but went a bit far back in history for me. 3 stars.
Lance Armstrong: It’s Not About the Bike. Interesting account of Lance Armstrong’s battle with cancer and his way back to professional cycling. 4 stars.
David Millar: Racing Through the Dark. Very interesting account of a young, rather idealistic rider’s descent into the dark side of professional cycling – and his way back out. 4 stars.
Ken Follett: The Pillars of the Earth. Excellent book about the building of a cathedral in the Middle Ages. Well-drawn characters that will stay with you. 4 stars.

I have almost finished the Mount TBR Reading Challenge. I challenged myself to read 25 books bought before January 1st, 2012 – and so far, I’ve read 24 so I will probably finish this one next month. I’m more or less on target with Clarissa and I am definitely going to get this done. I need to read at least one book by Neil Gaiman – but I have one book by him on my own challenge list so that will get done too. The challenge I’m struggling the most with, is the one I’ve set for myself (together with two friends – the one where my boyfriend has bet me a book because he don’t think I’ll finish it…).

This month, I only read one book from the list of books I’ve challenged myself to read this year. This means, that I still have 12 books to go – and 5 months to go. So in August, I have to get some of these read. I hope to read at least two from this list – hopefully three. This doesn’t sound like much – and it isn’t. Except that all the books – almost – I have left on the list are very long books – books like Les Misérables, Underworld and The Kindly Ones. So you don’t just fly through them in an afternoon. The other thing is that I have bought so many new books this year that I just want to sit down with and dive into. So I have to keep focus, get some of the challenge books read – and reward myself with some of my pretty new books!

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Do you love the Tour de France? If not, this book is not for you.

With that said, let’s talk about it anyway. In this book, he covers specifically the Tour de France but also other events in professional cycling. The book is originally published in 1995 so the amazing year (1996) where the Dane Bjarne Riis won the Tour is not covered, neither is the victories of Marco Pantani, Floyd Landis, Jan Ullrich, Alberto Contador – or Lance Armstrong. Well, except in a brief foreword to the 2009 edition for some of them. And this is my main problem with the book – I started following the Tour in the early 90s so I don’t know that much about the years before and while it is interesting and Leth writes it well, I would have loved to have read more about the riders I knew and know and the races I’ve watched. This is flashbacks to Leth’s personal highlights of the Tour, his thoughts on professional cycling, doping, food in France, working as a film director and a commentator and more. And it’s fascinating.

As I’ve written earlier, Jørgen Leth has a way with words. And even though this is a non-fiction book about a bike race, it’s wonderfully written. And I don’t think the beauty of it’s writing is only because Leth is a poet and has a way with words. It’s also because he writes about what he loves.

Jørgen Leth loves bike racing and he writes about this love, specifically about his love for the Tour de France. He writes about his heroes, how he in particular love the tormented riders, the ones who has a bit more to fight against than just the stages and the mountains. He is drawn to the underdog, the rider who has weak knees, who doesn’t believe in himself, who struggles against inner demons. He loves the riders who can attack and shake everything up. And maybe that is because of his poetic eyes which see the beauty in the struggle, the beauty in the lone rider struggling across the highest mountains pursued by a chasing peloton, the beauty in an attacker cheating the sprinters of their finish.

As he puts it: ‘Bike riders ride bicycles. They ride from one place to another. They ride up, and they ride down. The first to arrive at the finish, has won. Along the way, things happen. It’s as simple as that.’ (p. 303 – my translation). And it is as simple as that. But what he then goes on to point out, is, that out of this, people emerge, looking directly out of the pictures, trying to create something extraordinary. And when that happens, Leth is ready to see it and frame it. To spot the moment which steps out of itself to become something durable. Something to remember and look back on.

And that’s exactly what he does – both as a commentator and as a writer. He spots the extraordinary in the ordinary. He sees the beauty in the struggle, he praises the courageous and cheers the fighters. His sharp eyes separates the contenders from the pretenders – but praises the pretenders when they dare, even if they fail. As long as they fail in an epic way. And he frames it all in beautiful words for the rest of us – along with commentating on the landscape, the weather, the geography, all of which add that extra dimension to both the race and extraordinariness of it all.

Such a pity that this book hasn’t been translated.