Since getting hit on the head reading has been a struggle and at first I thought that it was just down to a lack of interest. It was late 2020 and the global pandemic was in full swing, on the verge of its Wave Two resurgence. What struck me at the time, besides a load of lumber, was the thought that I expected the end of the world to be a lot less boring. What I learned working with an occupational therapist was that reading struggles and head injuries can go hand-in-hand. My physiotherapists marveled at the pace with which I returned to running and cycling. Reading turned out to be banally ordinary. So I didn’t read for a while, except for what I had to.
I don’t tend to make resolutions but I do like to set goals so as 2022 turned into 2023 I set a goal and made an effort to force myself to read again. I started with a goal to read 10 books, and with deep sardonicism launched into Steve Magnes’ Do Hard Things. Around the same time I archived this site I abandoned Goodreads without bothering to find a replacement reading tracker cum minor author circlejerk (don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean). I don’t actually remember how many books I read that year. The next year I tried again and I remain relatively foggy on the goal and its success. Then last year I tried for a dozen and this time, like a genius, I wrote down what I read, and I reached 13 — if you count the 700+ page UESCA run coach certification manual (jury’s out).
Reading struggles and head injuries are well documented with studies linking the two here and here and here and I didn’t read any of them because I don’t need to read them to know that it’s true but also because I don’t need that kind of confirmation bias telling me I am broken. I have a swath of IME reports commissioned by my lawyer’s office and ICBC that all say pretty much the same thing (save for one and let me tell you that guy was a real piece of work). But a strange thing happened immediately following mediated settlement without having to go to trial: a weight lifted like suddenly I was allowed to be well. It’s a feeling that I will never forget, which is really something because I now forget stuff all the time.
So for 2026, I’ve set a lofty goal to read 20 books and I am off to an okay start. I started the year with A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home by Jason Arnopp. The book is written as a long letter on the subject implied by the title. It was ok. I don’t read a lot of horror and I don’t remember (get used to hearing that a lot) how this title landed in my to read pile. The concept behind the haunting seems unique but not altogether compelling. It’s a quick read.
Following Sincere Warning came UnWorld by Jayson Greene — an unsettling glimpse into our AI future and implants, which sounds altogether too close to the sort of thing I dabble with anyway as every single morning I check in with my Garmin watch and Oura ring so they can tell me how poorly I slept and if I am alive and how much. They seldom agree; I am reminded of waking up on the day before the Chicago Marathon last October to Garmin telling me I am “peaking” and Oura counter with its symptom advisor reading “strain” and that I should probably take it easy. In UnWorld, Greene explores moral and ethical conundrums with AI and sentience, as well as themes of death and grief, and I read it at the same time I was trudging through a self-directed New Year’s resolution (goal?) to at least glean a cursory understanding of a dozen or so publicly available AI tools. Death and grief indeed.
As I type it is 75 days until the Boston Marathon. I’m currently averaging about 70 km on my feet and about twice that distance on a bicycle (mostly to nowhere). Expect better balance between reading, running (and cycling) in the next writing. I’m still finding my rhythm.