Category: Read Run Write

week forty four

Books Read:
54. H is for Hawk — Helen Macdonald

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 66.32
to date — 1,702.77

I started reading H is for Hawk and I was not expecting anything. It’s good. It’s very well written and I like the author’s voice but I didn’t read the back of the book and I didn’t know that it is a memoir and a depressing one. I guess true stories of someone’s personal experience dealing with grief are interesting. I guess. Maybe interesting isn’t the correct word. It’s probably not the word I’m looking for. I don’t remember where this book came from. It may have been a gift. Not a wrapped up with a bow gift but more of the hey here’s a stack of books that I was just going to give to goodwill and you like to read do you want to have them I mean I was just going to give them away anyway so you should take them and then if you don’t want them then you can do whatever you want with them kind of gift. You know the kind. If you’ve ever known anyone that reads a lot and if you also read a lot then you know that kind of gift pretty well, I’m willing to wager. I wrote reads a lot there and that’s sort of subjective because I really haven’t been reading a lot. I haven’t been reading much of anything lately. Maybe it’s the weather. But I think that the consensus is that this is actually pretty fine reading weather.
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This is pretty fine running weather, though. I think anyway. This is the second most distance covered in a week since I started keeping track 44 weeks ago. I was thinking about doing the Fall Classic right up until I saw the course and was turned off by it being two 10 kilometreish laps. I realize that I have basically two routes that I mentally flip a coin between and I do have a couple subtle variations but it has been years since I’ve run laps. When I first started running I would run laps at China Creek Park and did not like it at all, which is probably why early attempts at being a runner were a unmitigated failure. But I’ve also contemplated running laps of Stanley Park. So maybe I’ll regret skipping the Fall Classic. But I signed up for the Vancouver First Half in February, so there’s that.

week forty three

Books Read:
53. Once in Blockadia — Stephen Collis

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 37.62
to date — 1,636.45

I picked up this copy of Once in Blockadia from the Talonbooks table at Word a few weeks ago and then flew away for a bit and forgot about it and then picked it up around the same time that the Standing Rock stuff was happening and just starting to get attention from the lamestream media, giving the sexual predator that’s running for the White House about a minute less free campaign ad airtime. And it’s really good and frustrating. I’m in the midst of half a dozen books right now and I somewhat doubt that any of them will get completed before the end of week forty four but maybe. It could happen.
week-forty-three
I was sick most of this week (which makes my reading all the more patheticker) and didn’t do a whole lot of running but did get out three times but it was Saturday morning that was the kicker (literally) when I was coming along the Seawall by the Second Beach pool, right there near the 8 km marker and there’s an older woman up ahead and she has an umbrella because it’s raining but not pouring but wet and she coming toward me and I’m about to pass and she darts towards me and kicks me on my shin in what I guess was an attempt to trip me and shouts “get out of my face” and some other inaudibles and that’s a first. It was such a weird encounter I’m still not sure how to process it except that this person is probably either having a really bad day or is not right in the head and those are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And there were (surprisingly) quite a few other people running that morning and I wonder if anyone else got the galoshes greeting that I did.

weeks forty + forty one + forty two

Books Read:
52. Tropic of Cancer — Henry Miller

Kilometres Ran:
week forty — 24.48
week forty one — 21.52
week forty two — 40.22
to date — 1,598.83

I started reading Tropic of Cancer while I was in Barcelona in the spring and I didn’t finish it and so I picked it up again while I was in Scandinavia and still didn’t finish it and it looks like I’m probably going to Ireland in the spring so maybe I’ll finish it then. I read a lot of stuff, just not books. Probably the most interesting was the exhibition on housing in Stockholm at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. So many problems that Vancouver shares, and so many solutions that Vancouver would never think of let alone even attempt to implement. In many ways it was a frustrating exhibition. Unfortunately there was no catalogue, but I photographed the entire thing as best I could. With ten weeks to go it look very unlikely that I’ll get to 95 books this year.

Wind farm out in the Øresund in Copenhagen
Wind farm out in the Øresund in Copenhagen

I didn’t run all that much but I did really enjoy running in another place and trying to figure out running routes and new scenery and weather to contend with and it was really great. I ran more in Copenhagen than I did in Stockholm but enjoyed running in Stockholm more. We were lucky in both cities because the flats we rented had excellent trails right outside their doors. Stockholm was chilly but Copenhagen was really windy. I don’t much mind wet, but I’m not a big fan of wind. With ten weeks to go I need to run about 40 km per week to make it to my goal. I can do it.