Tag: Nick Flynn

2019 week thirty eight

Book Read
37. The End We Start From – Megan Hunter

Kilometres Ran
week thirty eight – 68.1

2019 to date: 1,885

This is Megan Hunter’s first novel (more of a novella but who cares) and I thought it was pretty good. I generally have a good time when poets turn out fiction (Nick Flynn and Meredith Quartermain come to mind). The End We Start From tells a dystopian story of a young couple who along with their newborn are displaced when London floods (I don’t recall being told why but I think rising seawaters). The story is told in first person by the unnamed new mother, and it reads a bit abrupt and sharp, as if we are reading her diary. Other character’s names are only initials; the newborn is Z and the father (I assume father) is simply R. Maybe Hunter had read Roger Farr’s IKMQ. I guess it’s possible. It’s a good first book that plays pretty well with a couple interesting ideas, though I could have done without all the baby stuff.

A couple hours after I got home from racing the Eastside 10K and then taking a 12 KM cool-down jog around Stanley Park I found out that immediately following the race the Lower Mainland Road Race Series handed out their annual awards and not only did I not know anything about the race series (run a minimum of four of the nine races), I had no idea that I had placed 5th in my age group having raced five of the series this year (St. Patrick’s Day 5KM, April Fool’s Half Marathon, Scotiabank Half Marathon, Summerfast 10K, Eastside 10K). I’m a bit sad that I missed the awards, but I did get my 5th Place award in the mail this week. Thanks Lower Mainland Road Race Series! I’m definitely going to keep this in mind for 2020.

week fifty

Books Read:
58. The Woods: A Year on Protection Island — Amber McMillan

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 66.95
to date — 2,000.75

I’m not going to get 95 books this year. I’d wanted to read The Woods because I’m a fan of McMillan’s poetry and I tend to have good luck when a poet I like ventures into prose (Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City comes to mind) and I picked up a copy finally at the Real Vancouver Writers Series event a couple weeks back. It’s a fine read, a collection of events and experiences over her year living on Protection Island just outside of Nanaimo, B.C. Oh and apparently they’re suing her. All of them are, or something. There’s a story about it in Quill & Quire but it’s behind a paywall, and I (haven’t looked very hard but) haven’t found anything else about it. McMillan did mention it a couple times during her RVWS reading. I really liked this book. I thought it was funny and relatable and really shows that people can be pretty awful for no real reason off of social media too. Through it all McMillan seems to be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On a snowy Sunday with Yaktrax strapped to my feet I passed my goal of 2,000 kilometres this year. It feels pretty great and I’m very pleased with myself and now I’ve been contemplating what to do about next year. I had wanted to swim more but I found that I would often forego swimming in order to run instead because of my running goal. And that said I’m contemplating aiming for 2,600 next year for an average of 50 km per weeks. Not sure what to do about the books though.