Category: Read Run Write

week twenty one

Books Read:
36. The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery (in progress)

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 39.56
to date — 692.69

I’ve slipped into this routine of snoozing away my morning Skytrain commute, which has seriously hampered my reading. I’m enjoying this book, but I’m not really into this book. Yet. Maybe it’ll come. I’m not very interested in Renée Michel; I find her to be a bit too, I dunno, French? There’s something about her that I don’t really care for. Perhaps that will change. But for now I’m far more interested in angsty preteen, self described genius Paloma Josse though I have a feeling that she is going to get rather annoying quickly. I especially dislike the condescending decision to have Renée in serif and Paloma in sans serif, as if the reader is so daft as to not be able to figure out which one of the two first-person narrators is narrating. Rude.

No photo and quote this week; maybe next week if/when I finish this book.

It looks like I’m going to break 200 kilometres in May. That makes me happy but I’m a bit behind in my goal. Not insurmountably so, though. I wonder, though just how accurate my tracking is. I’ve lamented Fitbit and Strava in previous posts for their inability to maintain my confidence in their accuracy. Then the other evening I went to Ballet BC for Program 3 and while applauding the performance of Bill my Surge vibrated congratulating me on reaching my daily step goal. I guess clapping is exercise.

week twenty

Books Read:
33. Poverty Creek Journal — Thomas Gardner
34. Serpentine Loop — Elee Kraljii Gardiner
35. Ignite — Kevin Spenst

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 45.97
to date — 653.13

I don’t know anything about figure skating but I do like dance and I played hockey for a decade or so and they’re kind of a combination of the two, but Serpentine Loop has so much more to offer than just a crash course in figure-skating-meets-poetry. I really liked this book. It was launched a few weeks ago along with Kevin Spenst’s Ignite at a mediocre hipster joint in the old Heatley Block building on East Hastings, the best part of which (other than the poetry that eve) is certainly the Ola Volo piece on the wall above the bar. We sat at the bar for a little while then I leaned over to SC and said not too subtly that if the bartender ever decided to ask us hat we’d like to drink that I would have the pilsner on tap and that I was going over to the book sales table for a sec. He heard me. The dirty looks and curiously the service level both increase dramatically.
week twenty
There’s this entry in Thomas Gardner’s running journal where in he comments about how unfriendly the runners are compared to his frequent trails in and around Poverty Creek and I got to thinking that the Seawall isn’t the friendliest place either though I think that’s Vancouver in general and not something particular to the running community here and I use the term community loosely though that’s as much because I prefer the solitude of running and really do not understand those that can run and carry on a conversation amongst each other but every once in a while I’ll pass someone and get a wave or a head nod and once on the Burrard Bridge a high five which was a bit weird. Anyway, I’m part of the problem though I’ve started to at least acknowledge another running if we make and maintain eye contact.

week nineteen

Books Read:
31. Ticknor — Sheila Heti
32. Pound @ Guantanamo — Clint Burnham

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 48.72
to date — 607.16

I read Ticknor in one round-trip transit ride to-and-from work. It’s pretty short. But short is good sometimes too. You’ve noticed the amount of poetry in these posts, yes? Ticknor was not what I was expecting. It’s nothing like How Should a Person Be?. There were times when I was reading Ticknor and it felt like I was reading Kafka. My edition has an introduction by Ben Lerner and I didn’t bother reading it and then I finished Ticknor and I was around Nanaimo Station and still had another four stops on the Skytrain to go so I decided to take a look at what Benny had to say about the book and he writes that Ticknor reminds him of Kafka’s “The Next Village”. I don’t recall reading “The Next Village” and there’s a good chance that I have not. Yet, anyway. Maybe I should. I mentioned a couple weeks/posts ago the Talonbooks launch. Clint Burnham reading “No Poems on Stolen Land” from his collection Pount @ Guantanamo was far and away the best part of the evening. And most of the evening was pretty good. I like this collection. There’s a rather odd little shout-out to Poetry is Dead in the acknowledgements that I’m a bit confused by. There’s maybe a story there. Or maybe not. I really like Clint; I miss @prof_clinty in my Twitter feed.
week nineteen
Until lately I’ve been grossly ignorant about all the races, and I was lamenting the other day that it would be nice if there was a list somewhere. Well, there are a few, and I was just grossly ignorant when it came to my Googling. Be that as it may, I learned from a Skytrain Station ad that apparently if I sign up for and complete the Granville Island Turkey Trot 8 km race over Thanksgiving and the Fall Classic at UBC in mid November (probably the half marathon) then, along with the BMO ten days ago, I’ll have the RUNVAN Hat Trick. I think I might give it a shot. Registration closes on May 31 so I’ve a bit of time to decide, but I think I should just sign up before I convince myself to back out. The word “trot” though. I really dislike that word. I broke 600 kilometres somewhere around the lighthouse under the Lions Gate Bridge today, so that’s exciting. I’m 30 per cent away from my goal of 2,000 kilometres this year and 36.5 per cent through the year. I’m pretty happy with those numbers.