"It's a Book Club" Goes to the Gym

Now, I am just not a gym person. The tromping in unison, the smells, the tendency of my face to get frighteningly red when my heart rate rises, all mean that I usually like to do my physical activity hidden from sight, on back trails or else deep in my basement. But a combination of cold weather plus emotional depression plus (technical term alert) "2 pregnancies-related jelly belly" meant that I cautiously ventured into the public gym today. I did not bring a book, or even a magazine. If I'm going to publicly humiliate myself, I might as well go one step further and do it to an internal soundtrack of Green Day.

But I did observe many people reading, which got me thinking. What is the ideal reading matter for the exercise machines? Something with easy to turn pages, something interesting enough to keep you motivated, something impressive to other exercisers? In any case, I'm pretty sure the ideal is not, as the woman in front of me seemed to think, 500 Clean Jokes and Humorous Stories: And How to Tell Them

(Note absence of Braudel-related comments here. Sigh.)