Cannonball Read #13: The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

In her debut novel, The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce tells a story of regret, redemption and forgiveness. Harold Fry is a pensioner, living in Southern England. He spends his days quietly and without fuss, barely exchanging any words with his wife, Maureen. One day, Harold receives a letter from Queenie, an old colleague and friend, with whom he hasn't spoken in many years. Queenie is in a hospice in Northern England, dying of cancer, and she is just writing to say goodbye. Harold writes a quick reply and he's on his way to the post office to send it, when he suddenly gets the urge to keep walking. He needs to keep walking, believing that he can keep Queenie alive as long as he continues his walk towards her. This is the story of his journey.

I am a long distance runner. The thing that I find most exciting about running far is that I get to see new places. That is why I was immediately fascinated by the premise of this book. Harold's journey, especially in the first 50 or so pages of the book, capture the powerful wanderlust which I feel when I travel on foot. I could just picture myself running along those same roads, surrounded by flowers and lush green fields, as Harold walked. I could easily identify with his desire to keep going.

But this book is ultimately not about wanderlust. It's about life, and death, and how sometimes you're alive even though you don't actually live your life. It is about overcoming personal obstacles and fears. It is a simple book, on the surface. Joyce's writing is easy to read and keeps the reader turning the pages. Still, once the book is finished, the emotional impact can be very deep indeed, the simplicity of the book an illusion. Because underneath his polite exterior and his quaint ”Englishness” lie Harold's repressed feelings.

This bitter-sweet tale sags a bit in the middle and almost runs out of steam, but perhaps it is meant to feel that way. After all, it is a huge undertaking of a journey, and Harold is bound to get tired at some point. But, if you stick with it to the end, it will not disappoint you. The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry is the kind of book that grows on you the more you think about it, and you are likely to think about it a lot.

Cannonball read #12: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

What a strange book this was. What a difficult task to review it. Its structure resembles more a collection of short stories rather than a novel, which makes it way too easy to get stuck on the parts and miss the whole, but there is a red thread through it, thin as it may be.

The Martian Chronicles was written in 1945, around the time World War II was coming to an explosive end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The year is 1999. As more and more people flee our planet to start a new life on Mars, to escape such things as slavery and bureaucracy, Mars puts up resistance. Strange things start happening. But that doesn't stop mankind from colonising the red planet.

The red thread that I mentioned above, the common denominator of all the episodes described in this book, is the uneasy feeling that nothing is how it is supposed to be. My first encounter with Bradbury was the excellent, superbly creepy Something wicked this way comes. I read it as a teenager, and, even though I no longer remember the details of the book, I remember very well how unnerving it was, how deeply disturbing. While The Martian Chronicles isn't quite the waking nightmare that book was, it has a dark, foreboding character that never lets you forget who wrote it.

I found it hard to get past the episodic nature of the book. All characters were bound by the same history, were facing the same threat, were heading towards the same future and inhabited the same planet. Yet, with only a handful of pages dedicated to each of them, there was no room for character development. I felt detached, almost indifferent to the fate of these pioneers.

Yet, the poetry. The poetry! Bradbury writes beautifully, his descriptions casting spells on the reader. His storytelling is as vivid as his imagination, his world -although at first dated when seen through our modern eyes- believable. His message is as important and relevant today as it was in 1945. All in all, The Martian Chronicles is not one of my favourite books but it did make me want to read more Bradbury.

Love affair

I have been fighting a cold the last few days. I haven't been able to train at all. In fact, even walking to work has felt like a struggle on a couple of occasions. As my mood deteriorated in step with every sunny day wasted lying on the sofa building a tissue pyramid on the coffee table that would turn Egyptians green with envy, I started feeling resentment towards running. Why does it treat me this way, causing me several injuries per year, when I love it so much? I am sick of its antics, its blatant disregard for my well-being! Surely, if I had any self respect I'd kick it out the door and change the locks.

Then, this morning, I spent my break at work reading an article in the latest ”Turist” magazine about running in the mountains. I remembered the sense of wonder and awe I felt while running in Hemavan, rolling down the Kungsleden trail, surrounded by nothing but majestic snow-clad mountain tops and the absence of time. I thought about my running friend N, with whom I've been planning a running holiday in the mountains this summer. My heart started waking up from the deep slumber it's been in the last few weeks and wrote running a love poem.

When I got home, I put on my VFF for the first time in 2-3 months. I ran with the wind on my back, under a spring sun, aiming to get as much mud on my shoes as possible. Just before I got home after this short run, a cloud directly over my head started dusting minuscule snowflakes all around me, at the same time as the sun warmed my face. 

Running, I know we've had some hard times. Things haven't always been easy between us. But I still love you.

Cannonball Read #11: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Does God exist? This is the question that is central in Richard Dawkins' ”The God delusion”. Dawkins is an atheist and he thinks that you should be, too. That is why he provides arguments in favour of a scientific explanation for our existence and deconstructs the arguments against it and in favour of a creationist theory.

My parents are not religious, but my grandmother is a devout Christian. We have always been close, and some of her beliefs rubbed off on me when I was growing up. She took me to church a few times, told me stories out of the Bible, spoke of the importance of prayer. Religion had such an impact on me during my early formative years that I became superstitious about it. Was the headache I was experiencing a punishment from God, because I had forgotten to pray? But then, when I turned 13, I started questioning things. Why didn't God listen to my prayers? Why was there so much suffering in the world, if God was benevolent? All the answers religion provided seemed very unsatisfactory to my curious mind.

Since then, I have been calling myself an agnostic. There are things in the world that I don't understand, that no one understands, that have stopped me from becoming a full-blown atheist. Dawkins book gave me a firm nudge in that direction. Just because we can't understand these things now, with the amount of knowledge that we have today, doesn't mean that we will never understand them, and it certainly doesn't prove that God exists. This is just one of various ”myths” about religion that Dawkins debunks.

The God delusion is an intellectual and philosophical exercise on the existence of God. Being prone to philosophical musings myself from time to time, I found it immensely enjoyable. It touches on many religion-related subjects, psychological and evolutionary explanations why it exists, the reason why it is so wide-spread, etc. It was informational, both about the history of religion but even about the influence it currently has in other countries (mainly in the USA, but Dawkins doesn't discriminate against any religion. He thinks they're all unnecessary, and in many cases even dangerous). It was thought-provoking, even thought-altering.

If there is anything that I disliked about the book, it was his badly disguised contempt for religious people. This is particularly evident in the first half of the book. He makes snide remarks against believers, and that, coupled with the fact that he delves into scientific facts without adequately explaining what some of the terms mean (”memes”, for example, or even natural selection for that matter), make it seem like the whole enterprise is nothing more than Dawkins winking at the educated ones among us (who are, of course, also atheists. Dawkins seems to imply that you can't be highly educated without being an atheist).

If Dawkins is out to convert (sorry about the choice of word) believers to atheism, he's certainly not going to succeed by presenting them as small-minded fools. He states right from the beginning of the book that he doesn't think that religion should be dealt with with kid gloves (and I agree) but we should make the distinction between religion and its followers. You don't want to respect religion? Go ahead, disrespect it! But you shouldn't disrespect people just because they are religious.

I would recommend this book to everyone, religious people and atheists alike. The latter will enjoy adding arrows to their conversational quiver, the former might enjoy the challenge of thinking outside the box. But, at the end of the day, the only people Dawkins will probably manage to convince will be people like myself: agnostics.

It's science

Hypothesis: The ”Fight fire with fire” method works on my troubled leg.

Previous empirical evidence: My leg felt fine the day after I put it through a torturous 23 km long run. I ran the first 30 km of an ultra with an injured, really painful knee, whereupon the injury promptly disappeared out of my life.

Experiment: The goal with today's experiment was to see how far I could run before my leg started complaining. Also, to see how it felt afterwards.

Results: As long as I stayed on flat ground and avoided hills, the leg was happy. It's a bit stiff now afterwards but it's an ache that resembles sore muscles more than it does injury.

Hypothesis: More is better. More would not make my runner's knee worse (Many runners' famous last words before he or she gets injured: ”21,5 km is good but 22 is even better”).

Previous empirical evidence: All previous evidence suggested that more is not, in fact, better when it comes to runner's knee. Even if the knee doesn't get worse following the run, the sensation during the run gets gradually worse.

Experiment: Push myself a few kilometres further even though my knee started bothering me after only 17 km.

Results: Stiff knee.

Hypothesis: The marathon I have my eye on at the end of April is a flat one, therefore I could run it if I take proper care of my runner's knee from now until then.

Previous empirical evidence: Neither bargaining or praying has helped an injury heal faster before.

Experiment: Stretching, rehab exercises, and alternative training as much as possible in the 3 weeks leading up to the marathon. Short runs in VFF. Then enter the marathon a day or two before the race if all feels fine.

Results: Stay tuned.

Green plastic grass

The piste machines got replaced by great yellow tractors carrying big chunks of frozen snow and laying them in a heap, revealing a green plastic football field. The year's Nordic skiing competitions that kept us company every weekend came to an end last Sunday, and with them the skiing season drew its last breath, inhaling skiers and exhaling joggers. A passionate spring sun, eager to wake nature up with a warm kiss and turn barren ground into fertile flowers and naked branches into haute couture, melts the snow. But, when night comes and the cold returns, the water turns into ice, and winter makes a last effort to resist the onslaught of bird song and sunburned cheeks.

And me. I am lost, standing on my one good leg, balancing precariously on the ledge between white and green. My heart is indifferent to the change of season this year. It loves spring, but it loves the white winter of the North, too. But my body wishes that the winter would stick around a couple of weeks longer. My feet want to find their way back to the soft trails of last autumn, but my knee cannot follow. So it tries to ski instead. Skiing is not as demanding for it. Skiing works. Please, let it be winter until the injury heals.

I tried to run with AIK last Saturday, a 23 km run. I couldn't decide until the last minute if I was going to attempt a run or not. What finally made up my mind for me was the wonderful weather. I had to get out, I had to try. It went well for the first 6 kilometres. Then, it went worse. I describe it as a knee problem, but both the backside of my thigh and my calf are involved. They weren't happy with all the uphill running. Downhill, it felt better, and I thought I would make it the rest of the way home without any more pain, but then my runner's knee decided to join us. Despite having the opportunity to stop running and get a lift home a couple of times, I marched on, pig-headedly. In the end, I told the others to go on without me and stopped to stretch. It helped; I could continue running after a while and made it home.

The aftermath was not as great as I had feared. Whatever leg muscle is injured felt inflamed the rest of the day, and I had some difficulty bending it, but the next day it was as pain-free as it had been the day before the run. I went skiing, breaking my distance record and making some progress technique-wise, which gave me hope that I would be able to maintain my level of fitness until my leg got better.

Now, snow is turning into ice. Ice is not as soft as snow. I went skiing yesterday, wisely avoiding the hilly terrain in the forest and sticking to the flat surfaces around the camping area. I had thought I'd practice switching from one track to the other, a balance exercise that, if done right, could do wonders for my confidence and skill level. Then, failing spectacularly at doing the exercise right and while I was trying to place my skis into the tracks, I fell. My knee hit the hard ice. I took a minute to rest right there on the ground, wincing and swearing.

It is probably nothing serious, just a bruised knee. But it is a reminder that spring is coming, and I am not ready for it.

Cannonball read #10: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I picked up this book after seeing it on several Top-100 lists of Science fiction books. People discussing the book on online forums talked about how it had affected them profoundly. So, naturally, I expected a lot from it.

Flowers for Algernon is the story of Charlie Gordon, a 30-odd year old man with the mental capacity of a little child. Growing up, all Charlie had ever wanted was to become smart and have friends. Then, one day, he's given the chance to participate in an experiment, an operation that's only been performed on a mouse before -the titular Algernon-, which, if all goes well, will turn him into a genius. Sure enough, through Charlie's written reports, we witness his transformation from a likeable, mentally handicapped person to someone whose intelligence surpasses even that of the people who designed the experiment.

The story is told from Charlie's perspective, through his accounts of everyday life, as they become more and more complicated, more and more grammatically correct. As Charlie becomes smarter, his language changes, and with it the way he perceives himself and his surroundings. He starts noticing things about the people in his life that he had neither noticed or comprehended before. He starts making connections and remembering significant events in his life, which in turn changes his attitude towards the world.

Keyes created an original story about a subject that is today as relevant as ever: knowledge, intelligence and the status they have in society. Some of the words he uses are so politically incorrect today (for example, moron or retarded) but we have to remember that Flowers for Algernon was written in 1966: indeed, despite the language that he uses, he means no offence. He has nothing but affection for mentally disabled people, whom he sees as small children, people, worthy of our respect.

This book should have become a favourite of mine, seeing as its subject matter (social inequalities, the human brain etc) is one that I am very interested in. The promise many reviews made that it would touch me deeply resonated with me on some level, and I expected some emotional devastation that never came. Instead, I cringed at how insufferable Intelligent Charlie was. I found the glorification of intelligence at the core of this book to be at odds with what the author also seemed to be saying, which is that terrible things only become terrible if we're smart enough to understand that they are so. Charlie went through his childhood afraid at times, but always with a warm smile on his face, laughing along when his friends laughed at him. Keyes seemed to imply that with knowledge and intelligence comes misery (and he mentions Plato's Cave a couple of times) at the same time as he has his main character desperate to become intelligent. I am not sure if that was Keyes' intention, but the message his book seems to send is that life is terrible no matter if you're smart or dumb – you just don't know it if you're dumb. You have to either choose to have friends and think you're happy, or be smart – never both. I am oversimplifying here, of course, and picking out only one of the themes in the book, but it was a theme that was quite central to the story and which I felt was something of a false dilemma. And maybe that is why the book failed to affect me as deeply as all the online reviews suggested it would: I had trouble believing that the only possible outcome of becoming smart is that you become depressed and arrogant.

Overall, the book has many good points (originality, accurate portrayal of the way the human brain works, the author's intention to show the reader that mentally disabled people deserve our respect) but it failed to have an emotional impact (maybe because it was preaching to the choir). It certainly made me think about the human condition, though.

Cannonball Read #9: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Rarely does a book leave me so ambivalent as to whether I liked it or not. Sure, I kept turning the pages to find out what happens next; sure, I thought it was well-written; sure, the story was original. But. There is a but. Let's start from the beginning.

Gone girl is the story of a married couple, Nick and Amy, whose love story started as most love stories do: everything was great, everything clicked, and everything was magical (especially against a New York background). But then Nick and Amy get married and move to Missouri to look after Nick's dying mother. Things start falling apart. And then things turn ugly. Amy suddenly goes missing and everyone seems to think Nick killed her. The evidence suggests that these suspicions might be true.

This is a story narrated by both Nick and Amy. Nick gets a chapter, then Amy gets hers, and so on. Nick tells his side of the story as it unfolds, whereas we get to read about Amy through her diary pages, which she wrote before she went missing. Immediately we are presented with two very different sides to the same story. Both two halves of this couple are hard to like: Nick is carrying a lot of hatred and anger, and you know he's hiding something. Amy is just irritating. I wasn't rooting for either one of them. And that was the ”but” I mentioned earlier.

Perhaps it was Flynn's intention to create such unsympathetic characters. In fact, I am pretty sure it was. Yet, as I was reading the book, I felt repulsed by them. It was kind of like looking at a car accident. You know it's nasty, but you can't help rubbernecking. I suppose it is human nature, this morbid curiosity: to try and find out what goes on in the mind of seriously disturbed people. So, despite my repulsion, I have to hand it to Flynn for creating such believably sick people. No matter how twisted the situation she described, I never doubted it could happen.

The fact that I found most characters in the book revolting, with no redeeming features to speak of, stopped me from giving this book a better score. Maybe that's not being an objective critic, but I never claimed to be one. I like some redemption in my books. A glimpse of hope. A happy ending. But then again, I can appreciate the dark humour (it's not funny but it is amusing, in a crazy way) that is lying under the surface of this book. So I'll just say: read it. Make up your own mind. Because, even if you hate the characters, their portrayal, the story and the writing will make it worth your while.

Letting go

Someone is dusting the whole town with glitter. It floats lazily down from an almost cloudless sky, catching the sunlight and sending it off again to coat our hearts with magic. I watch it through the living room window with eyes wide open, feeling like a little kid at Christmas Eve who's just seen Santa climb down the chimney.

J and I have just come back from an 11 km long ski session. It was cloudy when we started, a weak kind of cloudy that hangs so low in the sky that it almost becomes mist, the kind that lets the sun shine through. Up on the Vitberget mountain, up top where I've never been before on a pair of skis, you'd be forgiven for thinking you're in a bubble. But it is an eerily beautiful bubble.

I struggle to move uphill, struggle to brake downhill. I fall a few times. I'm on a more advanced ski track, me, a beginner, who can hardly plough and who can definitely not turn if the tracks are broken. But it's ok. I'm doing this. It's worth it, if only for the surroundings.

The reason I'm skiing on a Saturday instead of getting in my long run will probably come as no surprise to anyone who's been reading the blog for a while: I'm injured. It started by me getting some runner's knee signals a few weeks ago, and then my calf got all jealous that my knee was getting so much attention and stabbed itself with a knife half way into an interval training session. The next day I could neither bend the leg or extend it completely. I could hardly walk.

To this day, this is an injury that I haven't been able to find any information on, as it is almost impossible to find the source of the pain (between the calf and the back of the knee. Or maybe the back side of the thigh. No swelling. No bruising.). It's been getting better, but the single attempt I made at running (5 km last Saturday) resulted in it getting slightly worse again. So I don't run. I ski instead. And I change my plans. No Lapland Ultra for me. No race-specific training. I need to find my way back to running just for fun, running according to what I feel like on that particular day. And that's ok, too. With work and other obligations demanding more and more of my energy and time, I simply don't have the strength to commit to the enormous amount of training Lapland Ultra requires.

I am at peace with this decision. It feels right.

Cannonball Read #8: Wool by Hugh Howey

Good books suck. They keep you reading, dying to find out what happens next, but the more you read, the closer to the end of the journey you get. And when you finally reach the end, you wish you had taken a little more time to look around, listen to the bird song and smell the flowers, that you had made the journey longer somehow.

Hugh Howey's Wool is such a book. The blurb on the back cover of the book claims it is a science fiction book, but if I had to describe it I would probably say it was a dystopian fantasy set in the future. At the core of the story is our heroine, Juliette. Juliette has just become the new sheriff for the top levels of an underground, 130 level deep silo, which is the home of a whole society. These people have lived there for ages and know no other truth than the silo around them. The only thing they know about the outside world is that it is dangerous, the air filled with toxic fumes. They also know that they can get sent out there to ”clean” (that is, die) if they break the rules.

Then Juliette, a strong, curious woman, starts asking the wrong kinds of questions which lands her in all sorts of trouble. To reveal anything more about the plot would spoil the fun, but suffice it to say that there is never a dull moment. The story is excellently paced, keeping you on the edge of your seat, yet without rushing the plot forward. And, if you are so inclined, it can get you thinking about the power (and dangers) of knowledge.

My only -minor- complaint about this book was that...

* Spoilers! *

Because Howey wrote the book as a series, the protagonists of the first couple of books disappear pretty quickly, creating some confusion as to whom we are supposed to be following. But that is only really an issue for a small part of the book, and the rest of it more than makes up for this minor ”flaw”.

* /Spoilers *

At 540 pages, you would think that this omnibus edition would feel like a very long read, but it only left me wanting more. Thankfully, the follow-up to Wool, Shift, is due out soon. Until then, I will have to find some other book to satisfy my cerebral wanderlust.

Cannonball Read #07: Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti

Jessica Valenti's book ”Full Frontal Feminism” attempts to disprove the claims made by various journalists (and others) that feminism is dead. These claims suggest that whatever feminism was out to achieve, has been achieved already and there is therefore no need for anyone to fight any more. They also suggest that young women nowadays are not interested in fighting any battles, and they definitely do not want to be called feminists, because that is supposedly an ugly word. 

The method Valenti uses to disprove these claims is to write about some of the issues that women still have to deal with today: lower wages, unrealistic beauty ideals, governments trying to control their bodies and more. It is a successful method in that it reminds the reader of just how much still needs to be fixed, just how unequal our society still is.

I consider myself a feminist. I believe that we have come a long way towards equality but we also still have a long way to go until men and women have equal rights and everyone is treated with respect. I also applaud Valenti for what she is is trying to do, which is to educate people about these issues. But this book irked me to no end. Valenti's constant use of profanity and meaningless exclamations, like ”Sweet, huh?”, ”Gross” and ”Ugh” made the book seem like it was written by a 14-year old, not by someone who has a Master's degree in women's studies. Maybe it was a tactic consciously employed by Valenti to reach younger women more easily (she mentions at some point that she thinks that feminism should be accessible to everyone, and I agree), but to me it felt like an attempt to come across as a cool person (and make feminism look cool at the same time). I found it grating and contra-productive. Feminism is, as she herself writes several times, pretty cool in itself. Then why try to adorn it with trinkets? Why cheapen it? Why distract from the message? The statistics she presents in the book are powerful enough on their own; I don't need Valenti to add a ”pretty scary stuff, huh” after she's told me how many women get raped by men they know in their own homes. I don't need her to take me by the hand and lead me to conclusions. I'm already ahead of her. She should give her readers some credit.

”Full frontal feminism” read like an introduction to all things feminist, trying to cover as many areas as possible without going into any of these areas in depth. If I hadn't already been a feminist, I think I would have trouble taking this book seriously. And, unfortunately, I doubt it would convert me to feminism, because of that. Does the book succeed in disproving the claims that feminism is dead? Yes, or at least it tells its readers why we shouldn't let it die, and for that it gets a couple of stars from me. But there are books out there that are way more thought out and well-written that do ten times as much for feminism as this book does.

Stalker

It's snowing horizontally outside. Some snowflakes are actually doing somersaults before gleefully whipping people across the face. Sadistic little monsters. The wind chill factor prognosis for the day was -16, so I dressed up warm before I headed out.

Last Wednesday it was a different matter:

Plus 7 degrees and a filthy soup consisting of wet snow and dirt. Still, I happily rolled up the cuffs of my tights and basked in what felt like spring sunshine.

When I started running just before 8 this morning, the wind was still but a gentle whisper. But by the time I had met up with AIK and we ran eastwards, it was howling like a wolf at the moon and throwing buckets of frozen snowflakes in our faces. But did I care? Did I feel sorry for myself? No. Because I was so, SO happy that my knee felt ok. Since the disastrous run last Saturday, it had been giving me warnings all week that not all is well in the kingdom of Shaman, and that if I didn't heed its warnings it might turn into an ugly, terrifying monster: a full-blown runner's knee.

Remember the last time I suffered from runner's knee? Not that long ago. Put an end to any serious running plans I might have been hatching last year. I thought it was a distant memory by now, yet here it was, showing up at my doorstep at 4 in the morning, drunk and wanting to hook up. I slammed the door in its face. Asked it to never call or try to see me again. Stretched it, massaged it, rested. But it's a persistent little stalker that knows no personal bounds.

So as we ran on, I kept listening for those warning signs, but apart from a couple of times when it felt like the knee had popped out of its joint, it kept quiet. I was so thankful to be logging some much needed kilometres. Then I left the others and turned south, because I had to pick up some contact lenses I had ordered. The wind had turned, so I had to meet it head on again, and it was now screaming hysterically, like a B-movie actress about to get murdered with a chainsaw. It was around this point when my knee woke up from its slumber and demanded to have a word with me. Apparently it didn't much like the soft surface that the blanket of fresh snow was creating on the pavements, because it made it feel like it had to work hard to stabilize the rest of my body.

I picked up my lenses, which proved to be entombed in an enormous box that could fit into my backpack about as easily as thirty obese elephants in a Mini. Had I been a human being gifted with the most basic level of intelligence, I would have taken the lenses out of the gigantic box and put them in my backpack, but my brain was obviously in denial and pretending it was on holiday in a much warmer, drier country, so I carried the box in my arms the rest of the way home. My knee didn't like that either. A couple of hundred meters from home, it decided that enough was enough and gave up.

I'm now spoiling it by giving it massage, stretching, icing and anti-inflammatory pills, the whole knee spa treatment. But it's so grumpy that I'm afraid it's going to take a while before it's willing to take me running again. I should have known. No way I can run 30 km and think it's going really well without some sort of backlash.

Cannonball read #06: Ready player one by Ernest Cline

I was too young to remember the eighties, but according to Ernest Cline they were a blast. Great movies, great music, great fashion and most importantly great games. Ready player one is an ode to the eighties, especially to the first computer and console games that became publicly available.

Wade is a teenager growing up in a dystopian future, where the only place to find solace and entertainment is the virtual world of OASIS. Real life is miserable: environmental pollution, energy crisis, poverty, you name it. When real life is so bleak, it is no wonder everyone wants to escape to the OASIS. And now there is an incentive to spend even more time in this virtual world. The creator of the OASIS (an eighties enthusiast) has died, and in his testament he has left everything he owns to the person who manages to find the Easter egg that he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS. Players have to follow the breadcrumbs of clues that he has left behind in order to find the egg and inherit everything. Wade is desperate to find the egg and change his life. But when so much money is at stake, finding the egg becomes a matter of life and death.

Although I became a teenager during the early nineties, a lot of the eighties' popular culture coloured my upbringing. The ATARI games, the John Hughes films, the Pink Floyd music were all part of my childhood and any references to them put a smile on my face, at least at first. Because there were a LOT of references, so many that the book almost reads like a catalogue of all things Cline considers cool. I found this problematic in the beginning of the book, before the real action begins. Later it is not as noticeable any more.

There were a couple of things that I found mildly distracting. First of all, I felt that the subject matter (the aforementioned ode to the eighties) was aimed towards those of us old enough (or curious enough) to have experienced or explored that decade's pop culture; however, the simple language this book was written in and the age of the protagonist suggest that Cline was hoping for a teenager/young adult audience, who (I am guessing) have little knowledge of the eighties. I am not sure what audience Cline wrote for, but if it was meant for us who belong in the first group, I would have wished for more nuanced writing and a more complex back story. I couldn't help wanting to find out more about the real world in Cline's book. It is suggested that Wade wants to escape it and spends all of his free time in the OASIS, but the motivation behind it is never explained in depth.

Second of all, there were many instances where there is no set-up for what is about to happen. Instead, things are explained after they have happened. Example: Wade has to fight an enemy. Only after the enemy is introduced do we get to find out that Wade just so happens to have an item in his inventory which allows him to annihilate his enemy. I realise that this is in line with the magical world in which all of this takes place, but at the same time it feels like a deus ex machina that appears a little too often to save the day: there is no real suspense and it feels like cheating. Moreover, it means that we don't always get to follow Wade as he solves the problems he comes across. We find out how he's done it only after he's solved them. It makes it hard to identify with him.

Minor annoyances aside, this book was an easy, quick, entertaining read, as long as you don't expect a literary masterpiece and just want to have a fun ride.

Today was not a good day to die

It all started so well. I woke up feeling completely healthy, even if a tad tired because our cats had decided that 04.30 is a great time to invent new ways to annoy us. The plan was to run 10 km before I met up with the rest of the group, run another 15 with them and then roll down the hill home for the remaining 4 km on the schedule.

I had no idea how my body would like skipping a week in the schedule and going straight for a 29 km run, but I was anxious to catch up after having missed so much training. It started off well enough, although I kept trying to dislodge the ball of yarn that was stuck in my throat and made it hard to draw in deep breaths. I had great music in my ears, the sun warmed my face even at 8 in the morning and I was looking forward to spending a few hours on my feet.

I was the first one to arrive at our meeting place in the hockey arena, and as soon as I stopped running, I started coughing. It was the kind of meaningless cough that neither gets rid of the source of the irritation nor provides relief; the more I coughed, the worse it seemed to get. I had thankfully taken some water with me, and that did the trick. But I should have seen this as a sign that all was not well in my body yet.

We ran on roads and pavements and the conversation flowed freely. Spring was definitely in the air, and our faces weren't the only ones getting warm: the snow that covered the streets and fields had begun to melt at places, getting mushy and providing no traction whatsoever on slopes. I tried to take it easy when running uphill, but it became more and more of a struggle. This time it wasn't my throat that was the culprit. My legs were on strike. Being the hard-arsed, sociopathic boss that I am, I tried to bully them into obeying me and get them to move forward, but they refused. When we hit the snowmobile tracks, and, later, a soft snow-covered single track in the woods, they gave up completely and I had to walk.

That's when my stomach joined the party and threatened to throw up the banana I had eaten while waiting for the others in the hockey arena. It was either that, or pass out. I felt like reheated day-old monkey excrement. I was scared, truly scared for the first time in my running career. So scared that I started trying to come up with some catchy last words. I imagined them getting so famous among runners that they would get printed on running t-shirts and inspirational posters all around the world. Something like ”A little pneumonia won't kill you” or ”Not even death can stop me from completing my run”. I knew now that I had pushed my body too far before it was ready to take on the challenge, and right then it felt like I was going to have to pay for it dearly. Runners that had been behind me started running past me and I stepped into the meter-deep snow on the side to let them pass. Then I walked the rest of the trail up to where the others waited. Even that was hard work. I sank several centimetres in the snow with every step I took.

As we ran down the road and past the ski track parking lot, a part of me wished I would see J and get a lift home. He had gone skiing and I knew that he would be done around the same time as I was done with my run. Another, more stubborn part of me, the pig-headed part that is responsible for all the great running achievements of my life, thought the first part was a wimp and that I should suck it up and complete my run. After all, it was downhill all the way home. The second part was louder. It might have had to do with the fact that I could see neither J nor our car anywhere in the parking lot – it gave me no choice but to continue. The feeling of sickness gave way to normal tiredness as I left the others and made my way home. I took short steps, lowered my pace and took it easy, but there was still a battle of wills going on between my mind and my body.

Somehow I managed to get home without dying. This was without doubt the toughest, stupidest run I've ever done in my life, and I've run ultras. The only other time I remember feeling so weak and sick was about a year ago, when I and a friend from the Gothenburg running group ran the Sandsjöbacka trail. The circumstances were very similar: I had just recovered from an illness, I was running on tough terrain and my legs were non-responsive. I suppose I should be glad that I got off easy this time. Last time, I finished off my run by getting a runner's knee.

A step back

Some of you may have noticed it has been a few days since I last updated my blog. I have been preoccupied with a) trying to get out of the sofa after getting knocked out by fever and b) absorbing vast amounts of information at my new job. The combination of no training (= nothing to report) and mental exhaustion meant I haven't been in the mood for blogging, nor have I had time to do it.

I love writing. Whenever I sit down to write a post, I take my time, trying to put my thoughts into words and sentences in a way that is interesting and fun for you, the reader. For me it would be pointless to just dryly report on my runs. ”I did 5km in 27:43” - I know some people are interested in reading about numbers and statistics, but I'm not one of them and I write about the things I would find interesting myself. So I try to focus on what the run feels like. What I see. The experience of it and what goes through my head. The joy in my heart, the laboured breaths I take, the new places I discover. My goal is to communicate a feeling.

Whether or not I succeed is up to each and every one of you to decide. I have no way of knowing that, except through your comments. My love of writing means that, even if I never got a single comment, I would still make an effort to produce well-thought out posts because I need to write. But blogging is a wonderful thing: it allows for dialogue. And I draw great pleasure from reading your comments.

The process of creating a blog post takes time. It can take me an hour to write even a short one, and my posts are rarely short (as the ADHD-inclined ones among you surely must have noticed). Moreover, I always fix my bad mobile phone pictures in Photoshop the best I can, so that they don't inadvertently turn you blind – so you can imagine the amounts of time a single post can entail. I let it take the time it needs, because I want to be proud of the result. I don't want to do a half-arsed job just because I feel I have to update the blog and I only have two minutes to do it.

With that in mind, I realise that I need to take a step back. I can't keep turning out post after post every day, not if I want to keep writing the way I do. I just don't have the time for it now that I have a full time job. So, long story short (and the ADHD crowd would applaud at this point if I hadn't already lost them about four paragraphs earlier): I will keep updating this blog for those of you who might still be interested, but not as often as I have been doing. As it is now, the updates will mostly be about my long runs on Saturdays. I hope that you will enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoy writing them.

Cannonball Read #5: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

I kept eyeing the pile of books I had just received in the post lying on the living room table as I read the middle pages of Stephen King's ”Wizard and Glass”. Exciting books. Hand-picked by yours truly, all unique and whispering about amazing new worlds that would be revealed to me when I started turning their pages. I couldn't wait to read them. In fact, I was tempted to start reading one or two before I was even finished with King's book.

Yet they were all almost forgotten when I finally reached the last of the 700 pages of Stephen King's fourth part in the Dark Tower series. All I wanted now was to start on the fifth book. You can't come this far in a heptalogy and not have invested in the characters, not want to know what happens to them next, not worry about their fate. My eagerness to get started on the next part of the story was evidence of the kind of impact this book had made on me, and how well King succeeded in creating a page-turner.

Stephen King has this remarkable talent to throw ingredients into his big old cauldron that shouldn't work together (robots and cowboys? Classic movies and riddle-loving trains?) but somehow he keeps delivering, if not culinary wonders, then at least solid, tasteful dishes. For him you're willing to suspend the hell out of your disbelief. And the result is a western / science-fiction / fantasy amalgam that will reward you for your efforts.

The beginning of the story finds our heroes struggling to survive and to continue on the path of the Beam towards the Dark Tower. But Roland has a story about his past he needs to tell, and he proceeds to do so for the largest part of the book. It is a love story; it is a war story. And it is a story that we, as readers of this series, need to know about in order to understand his character and his motivations better.

”Wizard and Glass” is a suspenseful, well-written book that completely absorbed me. King continues to build rich, believable worlds in which he stages battles between good and evil, and in which tragic stories unfold. Tragic stories that pack a strong emotional punch. My only (and, truthfully, pretty minor) complaint was that I was sometimes drawn out of Roland's world by King's very distinctive tropes, like his portrayal of young characters as precocious. That one of them might think like an adult, I can buy. But that every single one of them should be like that? My suspension of disbelief isn't that great. Still, it was a thrill-ride of a book and my favourite one in the series so far.

Blessing in disguise?

Hello illness my old friend

I've come to work with you again

Because a fever softly creeping

climbed high while I was coughing

And the fever that was planted in my head

Still torments

A runner filled with dreams

So it's been a while since I posted here, and I bet you're all wondering where I've been. I started working last Tuesday on a part time basis, which I will continue with until the end of the month when I start working full time. I've been feeling tired since Monday morning, but I just put it down to, I don't know, normal tiredness? Monday was a very intense day. So Monday's intervals, Tuesday's easy jog with J and last night's run were performed as if in slow motion, but I never felt ill. Just tired – and cold.

But then this morning I woke up and my throat hurt. I had chills but the thermometer claimed I didn't have a fever, so I went to work. I spent the whole day trying to concentrate (lots of new information to take in, so running a fever is probably not the best state to be in when you need your brain to work) but I kept getting distracted by the ghastly chicken skin I kept getting by the intermittent bouts of shivering. Still, I think I managed to not drop the ball or unintentionally cause bodily harm to others too many times.

After work, the walk home was about all I could manage. The thermometer admitted its earlier mistake and that I did, in fact, have a fever. Thankfully (?) I have the day off tomorrow so I won't have to miss work (I wouldn't miss miss it, per se) but I will be missing a lot of training. A blessing in disguise might be that my plantar fasciitis-like symptoms will have a chance to sort themselves out in the meantime. Always positive, me. Always finding a silver lining. Now I think I'm going to collapse on the sofa and get some sleep.

Cats

I've had cats in my life since I was a kid. Cats of wildly different personalities and temperaments, outdoor cats and indoor cats, short-haired and long-haired. They've all had one thing in common: no matter how different they might have been in other aspects, they were all archetypal cats. Independent, tough, manipulative and adorable all at the same time.

Until Sote entered my life. Never has a cat meant more work, demanded more attention or given more love. He's the master of contrasts, making me despair one moment only to come and purr in my ear and knead my thigh with his huge paws the next. 

The instances when he drives me crazy usually have to do with his toilet habits (I will spare you the unsavoury details) or his clumsiness (I guess the toilet habits issue is partly due to his clumsiness). Last night neither J or I got much sleep, partly because our upstairs neighbours had a shouting match at 3 in the morning and partly because Sote discovered a new toy: a cardboard box with a bit of tape still stuck on it. You can probably imagine the kind of noise he makes when he drags his claws on the cardboard box at 4am.

If you think that cats are innocent little creatures without the ability to forge evil plans to drive their human slaves completely insane, think again. I am usually the first one to wake up in the morning, and, when I get up, I throw the cats out of the bedroom and close the door behind me so I won't wake J up while I'm making coffee. Somehow, Sote can sense that I am awake before I know it (the sound my eyelids make when they open? A subtle change in my breathing pattern?) and before I have even decided if I'm going to get up or go back to sleep, he runs and crawls under the bed, where he knows I can't reach him. He knows that I can't throw him out of the bedroom then.

Once he's fed up with hiding under the bed, he comes forward and I close the door. Now the next part of our weekend morning ritual is that I'll make some breakfast and try to eat it while Sote holds a vigil outside the bedroom door and whines. NON STOP. This morning, he whined for an hour despite my efforts to keep him quiet, until J finally woke up. My theory is that he thinks we are sheep, and that he is a dog. He needs to keep an eye on both of us at all times. This personality disorder becomes apparent when we make a ball out of a piece of paper and throw it. He runs, picks up the paper ball and brings it to us. People, he fetches.

Luckily for him, and his continued well-being, our exasperation rarely lasts more than a few minutes. Sure, sometimes I fantasize about getting J and myself a hotel room just so that we can get some sleep without worrying about him hogging the bed or pooping on the bathroom floor. Sure, I may have tried to bribe people to ”borrow” our cats for the weekend. And yeah, smoke might have been coming out of my ears when he peed on our sofa for the umpteenth time. But he is the world's cuddliest cat and his purr is so loud it would cause avalanches if we were living anywhere near a mountain. I try to remember those things when I'm feeling felinicidal.

Long, cold run

I mentioned in an earlier post how I've been feeling sluggish this week. The last couple of days were no exception. I tried to watch some TV last night around 7. I wouldn't be able to tell you what happened in the series I watched if my life depended on it. I ended up giving in to Sandman around half past eight and woke up nice and rested at the ungodly hour of half past five this morning. At least I got my eight hours of sleep, eh?

I headed out to the hockey arena a little earlier to get 5km in before meeting up with the others. Small snowflakes tickled my nose and it seemed like it was going to be a very nice day. Yesterday's weather forecast for today had threatened with -20 that would make my eyes freeze shut, but the thermometer only showed -11 this morning. As a result, I didn't take any particular precautions against the cold, no more than I usually do, and it worked fine. At least at first.

We hit the snowmobile tracks and must have run into some sort of wonderland. Some trees were so heavy with snow that their branches formed long tunnels under which we ran, bending our backs in order to get under them. Then we were out on a forest road by a clearing and the sunshine that was hidden behind the trees finally found us. We basked in its glory, soaking in its rays, enjoying its warmth. 

Running on snowmobile tracks is not unlike running on trails. They are so uneven and often slippery that they do wonders for foot strength. Not to mention that you get to run in the forest. Unfortunately, I suspect that it puts a lot of pressure on my calf and foot tendon, and that it's not very good for me while my foot is sending me plantar fasciitis warnings. 

The rest of the run was done on tarmac, on roads that split fields in two, fields that were oceans of sparkling snow tempting me to jump in and swim. When we got back, we went into the club's offices quickly to look at some clothes. We can't have stayed there more than 10 minutes, but when I went back outside to run home, my fingers immediately turned into icicles. Fragile icicles that could easily snap in two. I tried breathing warm air into my gloves, tried curling my hand into a fist inside the glove, but nothing seemed to make any difference. How was it possible that -11 felt this cold? The answer was made obvious as soon as I got down to the river. The wind had picked up so the chill factor was closer to -18.

It took me almost an hour, a hot shower and a warm cup of tea to turn my lips from purple back to a healthier pink. In a couple of weeks I'll have to be out for three hours on my long run. I hope it's warmer then.

Invisible

I survived yet another arse sighting at the gym today, mainly because said arse was better covered than the one last time. So, despite everything, I was feeling pretty good when I went to the free weights room, an area maybe 2 by 5 meters wide, to do my barbell squats and lunges. The room was empty but I still kept to the side while preparing the weights. From there I could watch myself in the mirror and make sure that my technique was good so that I didn't get injured. 

So imagine my surprise when, before I even had a chance to get started, this young woman walks into the EMPTY APART FROM ME room, drags a weight-lifting bench almost right in front of me, partially blocking my view, sits there and starts doing bicep curls. Now, I'm not a violent or even confrontational person, at least when it comes to total strangers, so I kept my mouth shut. But I wondered if maybe I  was invisible. 

Just think about all the cool stuff I could be doing right now. Sneaking into concerts. Bumping into random people in the street. Haunting houses. That kind of thing.

My suspicion that I had, in fact, turned invisible was confirmed later on, during my run home. I was pounding the pavement, keeping the road to my right, when out of a parking lot to my left I see a couple with a pram coming. They look in my direction. Continue to push the pram. I'm thinking that they must have seen me and they'll stop pushing that pram any second now. But no. The woman looks at me with a far away look in her eyes and pushes the pram until it comes to a stop where it completely blocks the whole pavement and I have to jump into the street to avoid colliding with it. That's it. I'm see-through.

What was it that made me this way? Was it my 100-day no-sugar challenge? Are thousands of scientists wrong about sugar being completely unnecessary in our diets? Is sugar really the stuff DNA is built on? The stuff that makes us visible? Scale says it can't be because I'm losing any weight and withering away into nothing anyway, that's for sure.

That's what was going through my mind when my new boss called me to finalise the final details about the job. I'm starting on Tuesday on a part-time basis, going into full-time at the end of the month. I hope I've turned back to normal before then. It might be hard to do my job if no one can see me.

Recover-- *yawn* RECOVERY week

Have I mentioned that this is a recovery week for me? Turns out the lower mileage has made me apathetic and sluggish. So apathetic and sluggish that I have to remind myself to breathe once in a while in order not to pass out or suffer brain damage from oxygen deprivation. This apathy is rubbing off on my blog writing as well, where it manifests itself as an enormous lack of inspiration. 

Fed up of all the winter photos? Here's a summer one *drool*

Not that life has been patiently waiting for this recovery malarkey to be over and done with so that it can go on about its business. No; it has been going on about its business in the usual fashion. So there are things I could be writing about: dishes to do, cat poop to clean off the floor and – a job to interview for. Said interview went pretty well, judging from the fact that I got the job, and if my prospective boss and I agree on some details of...shall we say...monetary nature, I start at the end of the month. See? On a recovery week, I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to be happy about that. But you don't want to read about that! It's a training blog, right? (Never mind my Cannonball read posts. Some of the books I review are about running)

The recovery part of this recovery week is thankfully over. My shorter runs are behind me. A Friday 8 km run followed by a long run on Saturday has come to feel like the normal state of things, and anything less than that leaves me feeling drained of energy, and incomplete like a jigsaw puzzle that's missing a piece - or a joke without a punchline.

Cannonball Read #04: Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist

I was first introduced to John Ajvide Lindqvist many years ago, when I read his book ”Handling the undead”. It was an unnerving, unusual book that made a deep impression on me. However, it was going to be a while before I picked up one of his books again.

I saw the film ”Let the right one in” in its original, Swedish version not long after I'd read ”Handling the undead”, and I remember making the connection that it was, in fact, the same author that had written the book the film was based on. The film left me feeling uneasy and wanting to read the book. Again, though, I waited.

Until now. I found the book in a second-hand store and didn't hesitate to buy it. From the first page, I was sucked into the dark, miserable, horrifying world Lindqvist describes. Once again, the now-familiar feeling that something terrible was always about to happen crept into my heart and made me clench my jaw. 

Oscar is a 12-year old boy living his life in fear and mistrust. Growing up in a bleak, almost ghetto-like Swedish suburb without friends or adults he can depend on, he has to try and avoid getting beaten up and humiliated by his bullies every single day. Usually, he fails. One day, Eli moves into the building next door and the two form an unlikely friendship. Finally, some light enters his life and gives him hope that it might all be ok in the end. But Eli is harbouring a secret and horrible things start happening in the neighbourhood.

”Let the right one in” might seem like your average vampire story from reading the blurb on the back cover. And it is, indeed, a gory horror story at its core. But it is so much more than that. The book has to do with hatred and revenge. Social injustices. Exclusion and isolation. Perversity and the stark contrast to the children's innocence. Adults failing children over and over again, and children having to survive in -and adapt to- a world that is cruel to its weakest members. It is easy to despair reading this book. There is a fearful monster at its centre, but strangely enough, this monster has more humanity and compassion in it than the real monsters, who are hiding behind closed doors, behind a façade of normality and - in some cases – authority. But there is love, too. Pure, unadulterated love that knows no socially constructed bounds, a love that grows out of despair and hunger like a flower in a rubbish heap.

When I finished the book, I couldn't get it out of my head. It touched me in a profound way, almost moved me to tears. Even if you ignored the social issues it tackles and take it at face value, it is a book that is suspenseful, near impossible to put down.Well-written, it never sags but is a roller-coaster of emotions, including that sinking feeling in your stomach when things are about to turn ugly. And they turn ugly all the time. Don't miss this one.

Back to the VFFuture

I've been missing in action the last couple of days and millions of imaginary readers have been sending millions of imaginary worried messages to me wondering where I've been. I've been here, but it's been pretty quiet on the training front so there was little to write about.

The aftermath I feared would come upon me and smite me like a mosquito after my 26 km last Saturday never came. My foot felt fine after the run, at least until we went for a walk Sunday morning. The shoes I use for walking are not very good. Well, that's not fair: they're very good at keeping my feet warm, but they've been making my feet ache for ages, and last Sunday was no exception. I've been massaging and icing and stretching and it feels like the situation is under control (= my foot doesn't hurt, it's just tense) but I sure wish I wouldn't have to keep thinking about it.

Last night it was time for interval training with the club, and can I just say: our coach is amazing. He has so much knowledge which he gladly shares with us, and he knows when to joke about things and when to be serious. Plus he keeps an eye on each and every one of us (and there are lots of us to keep an eye on) and I suspect that he even takes our aches and pains into consideration when planning our training sessions. Not an easy task but somehow he manages. And he does this for free.

There wasn't so much running yesterday but we did focus a lot on muscle elasticity and strength drills, followed by some technique training and calf stretching. Just what I need, in other words. Doing burpees in the snow made me wish I'd taken my warmer gloves with me, but somehow that wish was quickly forgotten when the lactic acid that had accumulated in my legs after several hill repeats made me wish I could roll around in the snow some more and extinguish the fire in my thigh muscles.

This week is a recovery week according to my schedule, which means shorter runs. I took this opportunity to re-introduce my legs to minimalistic running. I'd bought some merino wool socks in town which I was dying to try out, and, after a great session at the gym (yep, I challenged myself with the weights again) I ran home in my VFF, taking a detour to make it 5 km. Those of you who have tried running in VFF know how great they feel on your feet. Those of you that haven't, what are you waiting for? Imagine running on cotton, because that's what it feels like to run on soft snow.

And the verdict? Merino wool socks rock. The temperature wasn't that low (-1), so I don't know how they'd work in lower temperatures, but this morning they kept my toes warm enough. My feet never got hot but they didn't feel cold either. I wish I'd bought these socks sooner so that I could have kept on running in my VFF during the winter.

Do it anyway

I was in a bit of a bad mood and very nervous this morning before my run. The possibility of heading out for my scheduled 25 km only to have to stop half way because of an injury made me want to hide under the covers instead. Better not to know, better not to risk it, better to pretend I'm not a runner today. Better not to try at all than to try and fail. Because imagine my disappointment if I failed, imagine what it would mean for my goals. But then I bit the bullet and did it anyway.

Unsurprisingly it was a less-than-stellar long run, as I had to keep checking for signals my foot might be sending instead of losing myself in fun conversations and beautiful surroundings like I usually do. I took a detour on my way up to the hockey arena and thought that the foot felt ok. A bit stiff maybe, but it definitely didn't hurt. Once I got there, 7 km later, I stretched it. I had taken my orthopaedic insoles with me in case I needed them, but I decided to wait with that and see what happened. One theory going round in my head was that I was imagining the whole thing, and that running with the club and talking to the others might distract me enough to filter out the paranoid little voices in my head.

Sure enough, as long as I kept talking to people and didn't think about my foot, it didn't complain. After 10 km it stopped complaining altogether. But the worry in my mind didn't let off as easily. What if it started hurting afterwards? I talked to our coach about it and he gave me hope that, even if it is plantar fasciitis, I don't have to stop running, as long as I take care of it right away: icing, diclofenac, stretching, the works. Good. So far I'm already doing everything right. Another thing that I'm going to do to take care of it is to treat myself to a proper sports massage. The foot is a symptom of something else and my hips are notorious for their lack of proper mobility. It's time to get rid of the stiffness in my body before it turns ugly. The stiffness, not my body (opinions vary as to whether that particular ship sailed a long time ago).

On my way home I stopped by some shops in town to pick up some crucial household items we had run out of (wine). When it was time to start running again, this time with a loaded backpack, my legs politely informed me that they were suddenly feeling very tired indeed. I took it as a good sign that they waited for almost 25 km to tell me that and jogged home. I shall be bracing myself for the aftermath that is likely to follow.

Cannonball read #03: Protector by Larry Niven

Larry Niven's Protector is a book about an ancient race of aliens, the Pak. The eldest of these aliens become protectors. A protector's only purpose in life is to take care of the offspring of the race. With no offspring left on the home planet after centuries of war, this particular protector (called Phssthpok) has to take off and space travel in search of some offspring that left millions of years before, or stay behind and die. What he finds is Earth and its colonies.

The idea behind the plot is fascinating. Humans have colonised other planets? The ones left on Earth live peacefully, unknowing that there is a warmongering alien flying towards them? Tell me more about it! Unfortunately it feels like the story plays second fiddle to the space travel physics. It was more science than fiction (and I can't vouch for the accuracy of the science, either). This becomes evident in the frequent time jumps in the story. We often flash-forward days, years, centuries, and the characters that we knew are suddenly replaced by new ones.

This book had its moments. Among the descriptions of space battles and confusing explanations of how ramrobots work, there were little pearls of plot or glimpses of a character's back story or personality. Those were too few and far between, though, and most of the time I hadn't gotten to know a character enough to care about what happened to them. I couldn't understand what motivated them to make their decisions, some of which seemed outright illogical. Because of that, the book felt dry and I never got emotionally involved.

It was a quick read despite everything. What might have elevated it from ”meh” to ”good” for me would have been a stronger, more detailed plot and better developed characters.

Your typical Friday paranoia

I made it! I dragged myself out of bed and down to the gym. And I did not just make it there. Oh no. I even exercised. SOMEONE GIVE THIS WOMAN A MEDAL. To my relief, everyone had their arses safely tucked inside their pants this morning, and my training there was as vanilla as it usually is. I'll take vanilla over half-naked arses any time.

Recycled photo, because why not.

Then I ran home, taking a detour so that I'd run the 8km my training schedule dictated. Although I could see the sun coming up on the horizon, in the part of the sky directly over my head floated snow clouds that dumped tiny little delicate white flakes on my head and in my nostrils. I listened to music but I also listened to my body. How was my foot doing? Was it tense or was I imagining things? I spent half the day yesterday massaging it frantically and I wondered if that actually made it worse. Can a tendon be too supple? I obsessed. If I got distracted for a second, like if a great song came on, the foot went quiet. But if I paid it any attention, I got paranoid. Is my foot an attention whore? Is this a cry for help?

Well, as long as it doesn't hurt, eh?