Category: Read Run Write

week forty eight + forty nine

Books Read:
57. Yellow Dog — Martin Amis

Kilometres Ran:
week forty eight — 42.67
week forty nine — 38.98
to date — 1,933.8

Seems that a lot of people did not like this book and then it went on to get long-listed for the Man Booker so what. I’m an Amis fan, though it’s been a long, slow slog through his library. And I still like his memoir Experience the best. Maybe I should reread that. You know, since I’ve nothing to read or anything. In spite of the warmth from the roaring flames of the CanLit Dumpster Fire 2016 I decided to go to the Real Vancouver Writers Series year end party and as usual bought a bunch of raffle tickets and expected to not win anything as I’ve been going to RVWS events for years and always buy raffle tickets and never win anything but this time I won (Sad Mag subscription) and then I won again (a pair of very hipster, ahem, artisan ceramic cups) and then I won top bid on the Chuck Tingle t-shirt for his Hugo Award nomination, which if you don’t know the back story then read it and hilarious.

I bought myself Christmas presents and Christmas came early in the form of a new Garmin Vivosmart HR+ and a couple pairs of Adidas Adizero Boston 6 runners and everything is better. I’m still getting used to the Garmin interface and the iPhone app, but I’m already much happier with its distance and tracking accuracy. New shoes are really great. After logging 1,145 km (oops…) on my Nike Air Pegasus 33s it was time for something new. To say the least. The Boston 6s are lighter and fit my narrow feet better than the Nikes. So far, no complaints. Which is weird for me. I complain about everything. I’m a marathon and a half or so away from my goal of 2,000 km for 2016 and with three weeks to go to cover 67 km I think I’m going to make it, barring illness or injury and I better not have just jinxed it.

week forty seven

Books Read:
56. Wenjack — Joseph Boyden

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 41.68
to date — 1,852.15

I accidentally read a book about running when I really just wanted to read the new Boyden book that I picked up at Paperhound the other day walking around in the rain that has been the predominant weather for the past weeks as if the pathetic fallacy is waiting for someone to say we fucking get it now knock it off for fuck sake fuck. Or something. I read this thing in that Canadian monthly that I disdain such that I dare not type its name, but I’ll link to the article here, so I guess that’s just as bad. I have a story about how much I hate said publication that only a very few people will ever know because they were sequestered in the same jury room as me at the CC and I’ve been sworn to secrecy upon pain of no further grant funding or something. Seriously, I don’t know what the consequences are anymore, and yet my lips are sealed. Mostly sealed. Anyway, Aguirre’s lips are not sealed and she says many things that really need to be said, and I’m happy that some middle-aged straight white dude wasn’t the one to say them.
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I was honked at in a crosswalk. Do people in cars, and on bikes for that matter, think that not walking negates the rules of pedestrian? What are the rules? Am I in the wrong here? Because I’m seriously going to start running with a pocket full of rocks or maybe some steel ball bearings and start busting up windscreens. I know there are bigger things to worry about, but the number of times I’ve nearly become a hood ornament whilst in a crosswalk is getting a bit worry some. The law of averages must be catching up, no matter what my pace is. Middle finger isn’t working. Maybe spidered window will? What’s the CCC on vigilante crosswalk enforcement anyway.

week forty six

Books Read:
55. You Are Not So Smart — David McRaney

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 51.36
to date — 1,810.47

I read You Are Not So Smart when it first came out in 2011 and I was reminded of it when I came across an article by David Ignatius in the Washington Post back in August called “Why facts don’t matter to Trump supporters” so I thought that McRaney deserved a revisit. My mother cancelled Christmas. It came via email the other day. Seems that she got into a bit of a squabble with my sisters when she announced that she was/is a Trump supporter. Is “squabble” racist? I don’t think my sisters have read Ignatius or McRaney. I don’t think it would have mattered. A couple Christmases ago my mother gifted me a copy of Steven Galloway’s first novel Finnie Walsh, while lamenting that she wished that she could have gotten him to sign it for me, alas. I asked her if she read it and what she thought and she said it was fine but she really found the foul language off putting, as if she imagined Steven and I were still seven years old playing K9 cops with his two pure-bred german shepherds back in Kamloops in his yard that neighboured my grandparents’ pink house on Parkcrest Avenue. There’s nothing better than a conversation without room for any nuance. Like everything is black and white. Zero shades of grey. You’re either with us or the terrorists. Or the racists. Or the child pornographers. Or the apologists. That copy of Finnie Walsh is my signed copy that I lent my mother to read. Too bad Christmas is cancelled. I guess that war’s over.

I ran, and I’m tired.