January 2024 Reads

...And here we are in February. People will talk about how January is such a garbage month, the Monday of the new year, but friends, I freaking loooooove January. The emptiness of it. The blissfully free evenings and weekends that no one is quite up to filling with social events this soon after the bacchanalia of the December holidays. SO. MUCH. FREE TIME. Honestly it just makes my little introvert heart glow.

Of course, this means more quiet winter nights for curling up with an actual paper book, which inevitably gets harder for me as the year goes on. I read four count 'em four full paper books this month! Unbelievable.

Also totally by chance, I had no work travel this month, which meant more time for running, particularly longer runs, which meant the audiobook count was also up there this month.

Check out this month's list and see if anything calls to you! (Also, I've decided to start starring my favorites every month just to make it easier to scan for which ones I particularly liked.)

(1) 📚🎭✨ The Magus by John Fowles (656 pages, 1965). Audiobook. In 1950s Britain, a disaffected and aimless young man takes up with an Australian girl, then breaks up with her when things get too serious. Soon after he pursues a job teaching English at a boys' school on the Greek island of Phraxos, where he meets the enigmatic and eccentric millionaire Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have been a nazi collaborator in the second world war and who is soon engaging our young protagonist in what I can only describe as a kind of dreamy LARP involving a pretty girl who is first introduced (impossibly) as Conchis's young lover from back in 1915 and also a lot of Greek mythology cosplay. It only gets more bizarre from there!

December 2023 Reads!

We made it friends! We made it all the way through the 2023 books before we had to start talking about the 2024 books! 🎉🥂🎊 I hope you've found something interesting to add to your to-read list.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
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July 2023 Reads
August 2023 Reads
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October 2023 Reads
November 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(100) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (356 pages, 2023). Audiobook. The disinherited son of a local god tries to make sense of his life and early upbringing by his vengeful mother who, bitter and resentful of the god who abandoned her and their child, raises her son with the goal of committing patricide. Fetter's travels lead him to investigating the Bright Doors, mysterious and ornate doors that regular doors sometimes turn into, which in turn leads to unexpected revelations about his life and family tree.

November 2023 Reads!

Friends, it will be February before we know it and time to post January 2024 reads, so I'm trying to make a solid effort to knock out these 2023 monthly recaps. Enjoy!

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January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
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Reads from previous years

(90) Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia (368 pages, 2019). Audiobook. I nearly quit this book. It wasn’t bad, per se, but just, nothing about the story or characters interested me and I couldn’t convince myself to care about any of them or anything that was happening to them. I can’t really pinpoint why. I think part of it is the supernatural element, which rarely works for me in a mystery/thriller style novel.

October 2023 Reads!

Slowly but surely getting caught up!

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January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
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(78) The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding (336 pages, 2023). Audiobook. After a failed restaurant leaves her drowning in debt, restaurateur Lee Gulliver finds herself living in her car on the streets of Seattle. When she witnesses a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean, Lee rescues her without thinking, only to learn that Hazel was attempting to escape her abusive marriage by taking her own life. But then Hazel seeks Lee out again the next morning, and proposes Lee help her with the new, intricate plan she’s come up with to escape her husband in exchange for financial help. Meanwhile, Lee is falling for an intriguing new man. Can either of her new acquaintances really be trusted, though? An entertaining enough psychological thriller/crime drama.

September 2023 Reads!

Friends, we will get back to the relatable running content you are here for sometime in the very very near future, never you worry. But we are behind on book reviews and that just will not stand.

Like August, September included a few lemons on the reading front, but also some of my favorite books of the year!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
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May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
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Reads from previous years(70) 

 🪐🔍🗡️The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (pages, 2023). Audiobook. This book reminded me in turns of things I’ve read by Ian M. Banks and Nnedi Okorafor. We open in the wake of the Holy Vallbaran Empire’s failed attempt to conquer the Ominirish Republic. All this means little to Ominirish scribe-cum-tea mistress Enitan until her lover is assassinated and her sibling abducted by Imperial soldiers. She then proceeds to trade on her tea-making skills in an attempt to work her way up through the Vaalbaran capital in order to rescue her sibling and solve her lover’s murder, and soon finds herself at the heart of intergalactic intrigue and scandal. I am very picky about sci fi and this was smart, refreshing, and super well done.

August 2023 Reads!

Hello friends! I am safely back from the Middle East and readjusting to the Pacific time zone and regular life. I was super busy with work and jet lag and got absolutely zero running done, but I got through some books, so there is that.

Speaking of books, we are now up to August in terms of recapping the year's reads. August was a mixed bags in terms of books--a few lemons in there, but also some of my favorite reads of the year!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads
February 2023 Reads
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Reads from previous years

(58) 👻😱🧨 The Lost Village by Camilla Sten (348 pages, 2019). Audiobook. Alice has finally secured enough shoestring funding to make her dream film–a documentary about the old Swedish mining town where her grandmother grew up and from which all of the residents had mysteriously vanished in 1959, leaving only two people behind–a newborn baby girl and woman stoned to death. Not long after the tiny crew sets up camp, though, distressing things begin to happen. Are they really alone here? And can they all be trusted? Pretty dark at times, but an interesting, well-written psychological thriller/drama/horror.

July 2023 Reads!

Alright, we're more than halfway there! Enjoy these July reads!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads
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(51) ℹ️ 🏫 Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning by Jenni Donohoo (152 pages, 2017). Paper book. Work read! A good one!

(52) 🔎🔪🧨 The Survivors by Jane Harper (384 pages, 2020). Audiobook. Returning to his tiny Australian seaside town with his new wife and baby after some time away, Kieran finds there are still people who blame him for two accidental deaths that occurred during a giant storm in his teen years. The plot thickens when a young woman living in town turns up dead and Kieran’s father–suffering from quickly-progressing dementia–can’t account for his whereabouts that night. As police investigate, connections begin to surface between events in Kieran’s past and present.

June 2023 Reads!

Another pretty light month on the book front! Must have been another podcast heavy one.

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January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
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(44) 🛹🪐 The Memory Index by Julian Ray Vaca (384 pages, 2022). Audiobook. In an alternative 1987, a global disease begins destroying human memory. While there's no cure, the lucky ones can create "artificial recall" via a daily treatment. Others, like Freya--the "degens"--need the treatment several times a day. Desperate to make sense of her father's mysterious and violent death, she makes a poor decision that gets her invited to a special school trialing a new technology that claims to make artificial recall obsolete. But questions abound--why is Freya the only degen in the trial? Why are students starting to vanish? And what is the school dean doing in a bunker in the woods behind the school? This book was weird and dark and kind of overly dramatic. There's a sequel but I keep feeling...not really that compelled to read it.

May 2023 Reads!

May was a light reading/listening month. I think I was super into some podcasts and so spent more of the time I'd usually be listening to audiobooks doing that instead. On the other hand, not a single miss among them this month! Highly recommend all of these!

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January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
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Reads from previous years

April 2023 Reads!

One of the things that I find myself missing about blogging is not just writing about running, but also just kind of documenting other stuff that I'm doing. One of those things is what I'm reading.

Of course being that it's now November, I'm super behind on this! But I had a couple of drafts in the hopper before things got crazy last April/May that I figured I'd go ahead and share.

Enjoy, and as always please feel free to share anything you've read lately that you're particularly excited about.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
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March 2023 Reads!

Hello friends, I don't know about you but I am SO EXCITED that it is properly spring. The time has changed, my evening light is back (as an evening post-work runner I *super* appreciate this), and we've even had a few pleasant days of weather (in spite of all the bananas rain & wind we've been getting in SF lately).

March was a pretty solid month of reading, including several starred reads! As always, I am taking recommendations if you have any to offer.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(19) The Last Guests by JP Pomare (336 pages, 2021). Audiobook. Lena & Cain, an Australian couple with money worries, reluctantly decide to put the family lake house Lena inherited up on a vacation rental site, a situation that is complicated by an increasingly problematic secret she is keeping from Cain. Then one night a harrowing experience at the lake house threatens to destroy everything. Has Lena’s secret finally come home to roost or is there something even more sinister going on? The premise here was a bit outlandish in my opinion and the ending felt sort of unbelievable and unresolved, as if this were intended as the first half of a book rather than an entire story.

(20) What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin (384 pages, 2016). Paper book.

February 2023 Reads!

Oof, hi friends, long time, no post. I have a race report almost ready to publish BUT in the mean time, please enjoy this missive covering my February reads. Hang on to your hats, last month was a doozy. 

 In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads Reads from previous years

(8) First Born by Will Dean (368 pages, 2022). Audiobook. Outgoing, extroverted Katie is at Columbia on a full ride, while her mousy, introverted, pathologically anxious twin Molly hides from the world back in her London condo. But when Molly's parents call to tell her that Katie has been murdered while they're visiting her in New York, Molly must steel herself to fly to the U.S. to support her parents and the investigation of Katie's death. This took a super interesting turn riiiiiight at the end but there was a lot of kind of boring stuff in the middle and I came very close to not bothering finishing it.

(9) Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard (373 pages, 2022). Audiobook. Another mystery/thriller with a twenty-two-year-old woman at the center. Once a rising star, recently disgraced actress Adele Rafferty has left her native Ireland for LA in a desperate (and thus far unsuccessful) attempt to revive her career. When she's offered the lead in a small, hush-hush indie horror film back in Ireland out of the blue, the deal seems almost too perfect. But soon Adele starts to feel as if the eerie events of the script are happening around her for real, and it seems as if her tumultuous past has somehow come back to haunt her. Reasonably entertaining but I've liked previous works of hers better.

(10) Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl (336 pages, 2018). Audiobook.

January 2023 Reads!

 ...And just like that, the cycle begins anew. 👵 ➡️ 👶 Welcome back, readers!

I got off to a solid start in January in terms of reading. Here's what was on my nightstand / in my headphones this month:

(1) The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan (336 pages, 2012) (psychological drama, lgbtqia+). Paper book. I can't remember how this book got onto my 'to-read' list but about a quarter of the way through, I was like, "You know, this book realllly reminds me of a different book I read ages ago." It bugged me so much I had to hunt that book down and guess what? It was The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. The story is presented as schizophrenic India Morgan Phelps's attempt to make sense of some very strange recent events by writing things down, since she can no longer trust her own memories. Plot points include a tumultuous new relationship with a gamer girl, the suicides of her mother and maternal grandmother, and her encounter with a vicious siren, a wolf, a feral little girl, or something altogether else. This was a really interesting well-written book but it was also very, VERY strange.

(2) Survive the Night by Riley Sager (336 pages, 2021) (crime/mystery/thriller).

The Year in Books, 2022! (+ my top reccs for the year)

Because I love numbers and making lists and quantifying all the things. :) 

 

(You may be asking, "Did you do all this tracking and calculating yourself????" To which I say, HELL NO, The StoryGraph does it for me! In case you missed it, I left Goodreads because I am sick of their bullshit/screwing over authors and sick of supporting Amazon with my data and clicks. Instead I joined The StoryGraph, an independent book-tracking platform created and run by a woman of color. It is still building up the level of community that Goodreads has had years to develop, but I find it MUCH more user-friendly and I love all the cool stats features and the recommendations based on your reviews of past reads. Come join me!)

By the numbers: 

Run Like A Pro: Balance Intensities Like A Pro (Part 1)

So like I was saying (lo these many months ago 😬), reading running books by your favorite authors can be a little like a religious devotee reading their religious text. They already know pretty much what's in it, they don't expect a lot of surprises, but sometimes it's good to be reminded of what you know you should be doing that you've maybe gotten a bit away from doing. So we are here to talk about where and when in Run Like A Pro I found myself feeling a bit convicted and like I needed a bit of revival.

The chapter in question is called "Balance Intensities Like A Pro," intensities being whether you're running easy, hard, or somewhere in the middle. 

If you have read 80/20 Running or any other book that discusses how runners should allocate their fast training miles vs. their easy training miles, the advice in this chapter will not come as a shock. In case you haven't, though, a quick overview.

When scientists look at the most successful endurance runners, from 3-10K track specialists to half marathon and marathon road racers, all of them seem to stick quite close to an 80/20 split--that is, 80% of their miles done at an easy, comfortable pace and 20% done at moderate and high intensities (speed work, tempo/threshold runs, etc.). 

The conclusion: "Relatively high training volume at low intensity ... was beneficial for the development of running performance at the top level" (Run Like A Pro (Even If You're Slow), pp. 66-67). The same has been found to be true for elite athletes in other endurance sports such as cross-country skiing, cycling, rowing, swimming, and triathlon.

December Reads (We made it, friends!)

Happy new year, friends! Regardless of anything else that happened in the last year, you can say you made it into 2023.

Today we are wrapping up this year's reads with December's list. I had more time for reading last month, and had several books that I really enjoyed! Take a look and see what you think.

In case you missed it:

January 2022 Reads
February 2022 Reads
March 2022 Reads

April 2022 Reads

May 2022 Reads

June 2022 Reads

July 2022 Reads

August 2022 Reads

September 2022 Reads

October 2022 Reads

November Reads

November Reads (Friends we are so close!! We're gonna make it!!)

Happy holidays friends! Hope you are doing well!

So help me, I am going to finish out these 2022 book posts if it kills me. Which given that we're now down to one to go with a solid week-plus left in the year, I think we'll probably manage to avoid.

Not a ton of reading in November but there were at least a couple of winners! As always, feel free to share any favorites you've read this year (or before this year) in the comments. :)

In case you missed it:

January 2022 Reads
February 2022 Reads
March 2022 Reads

April 2022 Reads

May 2022 Reads

June 2022 Reads

July 2022 Reads

August 2022 Reads

September 2022 Reads

October 2022 Reads

 

(73) The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (1934, 170 pages) (crime drama, classic). Paper book. Another classic by a master of the genre. Set in the early 20th century in rural California, a drifter and the disenchanted wife of a Greek diner owner begin an affair and conspire to murder “the Greek.” Alas they may have both bitten off more than they bargained for. A dramatic tragedy in the most Greek (no pun intended) sense of the word. No mystery here, just hard-boiled crime drama.

October Reads

A few solid reads from October for ya!

In case you missed it:

January 2022 Reads
February 2022 Reads
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April 2022 Reads

May 2022 Reads

June 2022 Reads

July 2022 Reads

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September 2022 Reads

 

(68) All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers (2022, 320 pages) (crime mystery thriller). Audiobook. This one brought to you by the host of the popular true crime podcast Crime Junkie. Margot Davis has always been haunted by the sensational and unsolved murder of her childhood friend and neighbor, January Jacobs. Twenty years later, grown-up journalist Margot has returned to the small town where it happened to care for her deteriorating uncle. When another little girl from a nearby town goes missing under eerily similar circumstances, Margot can’t help but investigate, and in doing so may uncover more than she’s bargained for about her hometown and old neighbors. A reasonably clever & entertaining read, though the ending felt unfulfilling and sort of off.

September Reads

Rounding the corner, folks! Are we gonna make it by the end of the year??? I know the suspense must be killing you!

In case you missed it:

January 2022 Reads
February 2022 Reads
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April 2022 Reads

May 2022 Reads

June 2022 Reads

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August 2022 Reads

(58) The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (2022, 341 pages) (mystery/crime/thriller). Audiobook. Crime blogger Shea Collins manages to land an interview with Beth Greer, suspected but never convicted of two famous murders forty years ago. As one interview with Beth at her home turn into several more, Shea starts to since that something is wrong here in ways that go beyond Beth's being a murder suspect. A perfectly entertaining modern crime read.

August Reads

The slog continues!! If my math is correct we are now two-thirds of the way through the year. Have you picked out anything from my first even months for your own list??? If not, August offers a couple of good ones (plus several that are fine enough)!

In case you missed it:

January 2022 Reads
February 2022 Reads
March 2022 Reads

April 2022 Reads

May 2022 Reads

June 2022 Reads

July 2022 Reads