Tag: 95 Books

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.

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.

week thirty nine

Books Read:
Hahaha hilarious.

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 44.79
to date — 1,512.61

Okay look I didn’t read at all this week. At. All. I’ve somehow mastered the fine art of catatonia. I can do it for hours. It’s especially useful on the Skytrain, but it has decimated my reading. No really, I’ve read nothing. Well not nothing nothing, but nothing of recordable substance. Not even an article that made me go, “Eh?” I have listened to this on repeat though.

I did go for a run a few times. Over the bridge again, and again with the butterflies in the stomach and the jello legs and the imminent fear that the bridge was going to collapse under the stomp of my runners pounding the pavement. In a week I’m getting on an airplane destined for two weeks in Scandinavia. SC has the window seat; I have a “sleep” mask.