She had not been in these waters since she was a young girl, but it rushed back, the sea’s hypnotic boil, the smell of blood, weather and salt, fish heads, spruce smoke and reeking armpits, the rattle of wash- ball rocks in hissing wave, turrs, the crackery taste of brewis, the bedroom under the eaves.
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
THEN, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot.
Grey eyes close together, curly hair the color of oak. The fluorescent light made her as pale as candle wax. Her eyelids gleamed with some dusky unguent. A metallic thread in her rose sweater.
Petal Bear was crosshatched with longings, but not, after they were married, for Quoyle.
While she remained a curious equation that attracted many mathematicians.
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Al Catalog, face like a stubbled bun, slick mouth, ticked the back of his fingernail down the assignment list.
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Full title: Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My friend Joe Boydston recommended this book to me. I attended one of his running clinics at the Automattic Grand Meetup in Park City, Utah in September. In a short hour, Joe changed the way I approach my training and after applying his tips to my runs, I’ve been given a whole new lease on an activity I’ve been doing off and on for over 20 years. I knew I had to read this book.
Born To Run is one part adventure story, one part science, one part anthropology, and one part sheer guts. As an oft-injured runner, McDougall opens the book lamenting another injury. He’s trying to figure out what he’s doing wrong in an activity that’s natural to all humans.
Conventional science says that running is guaranteed to tear our bodies down over time with the repetitive pounding, yet by investigating science, history, and anthropology, McDougall discovers that the human body — with it’s upright form maximized for air intake, springy, rubber-band-like tendons geared to storing and returning energy repeatedly over long durations, and our well-muscled buttocks — has evolved into a running machine, dispelling the myth that as runners, we’re slowly ruining our bodies over time.
McDougall posits that we get injured because we use high-tech running shoes as a crutch, and that these cushy shoes create more running injuries than they cure. The book talks of the foot as a marvel of evolutionary engineering that we as a society have allowed to let languish in shoes, essentially weakening our foundation, causing supination, and over pronation — the very form problems shoes, braces, and orthotics are meant to cure. Strengthen the foot, and improve your running form, says McDougall.
The anthropological study of the evolution of The Running Man is accompanied narratively by stories of The Tarahumara, a race of Indians in the remote Mexican Copper Canyons, who run ultra marathons in the mountains for the fun of it. The culmination of the book is an epic 50-‘mile ultra marathon in the Carrabancas pitting ultra-marathoner extraordinaire Scott Jurek against some eccentric and somewhat crazy American athletes and a group of Tarahumarans — a race arranged by a running-crazed drifter called Caballo Blanco.
The pacing of the book is excellent — it’s difficult to put down and it’s a very enjoyable read. One thing that struck me is that the book opens with McDougall’s running injury, and ends as he completes the Carrabancan ultra. The reader gets occasional advice on the way he revises his form –(easy, light), back straight, head up, knees up, short strides at a cadence of 180 steps per minute — though I would have loved to know more about his personal recovery and how these principles changed his approach to running.
October, 2014
Hive- spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood;
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Among the first lines in this amazing book. Here begins my third reading of
The Shipping News.
In the final 150 pages of The Fires of Heaven — book five of the Wheel of Time series — Robert Jordan hits his storytelling stride.
While this book — like all the others — covers a lengthy, often tedious journey to an epic battle, the battles were worth the time I spent reading the book. Bossy hypocrite Nynaeve squares off against dark wench Moghedien not once but twice. Rand defeats Rhavin in a balefire duel and finally learns that his well-meaning yet chivalrous unwillingness to put women in danger has cost him one close ally as Moiraine sacrifices herself against Lanfear.
While all of the characters (even Nynaeve) evolve and grow within the scope of this book, the ever-present stereotypical Women! Who can understand them?!? / Men! They’re all wool-headed fools! idiocy detracts from and cheapens what could become a much deeper narrative about men and women and relationships.
Perrin Aybara makes no appearance in book five. What’s going on in the Two Rivers? On to book six to find out.
September and October, 2014
The Shadow Rising, book four of The Wheel of Time series, is another long, tedious, lead-up to an eventual clash with members of The Forsaken — the minions of the Dark Lord, though at least this time, Rand doesn’t get all the fighting fun. Nynaeve helps out by capturing and almost stilling Moghedien. Interestingly, the Dark One makes no appearance in this book.
Perrin Aybara’s storyline gets serious attention and he becomes a hero in his own right, rallying the Two Rivers farm community to vanquish seemingly impossible Trolloc odds, with a little help from his new wife, Faile.
I enjoyed the interesting similarities between Aiel women going to Rhuidean to become a “wise woman” — entering three rings — which resembles the ceremony to become an Accepted in the order of the Aes Sedai. I sense that Aiel and Aes Sedai are linked in some way, deeper than the Aiel subservience to Aes Sedai the book depicts.
Perrin isn’t the only character that sees some growth in the novel. Bossy biddy Nynaeve manages to overcome prejudice in seeing a former enemy — Eaginin, a member of the channeling slavers, the Seanchan — become an ally, if not a friend.
The book is over twenty years old, but sometimes the predictability of the patriarchy gets tiresome: Rand is going to need to get over the fact that he may need to kill a woman (Lanfear) if he wants to remain the Dragon Reborn, for long.
Speaking of Lanfear, her appearance at the end of the book is ham-fisted and abrupt. She appears out of nowhere, without foreshadow of any kind. As a reader, it left me scratching my head. Jordan, you had 900 pages to clue us into the fact that she’d appear in the final battle.
Books one through four all feel overly long and all the novels’ pacing flags at times. They feel like a great warm-up to something more interesting just about to happen.
After reading The Shadow Rising questions remain: why did Moraine go into Rhuidean? Why do only women need to strip naked to enter Rhuidean while men entering Rhuidean get to wear their clothes? Will Nynaeve ever stop yanking on her braid and being a bossy toad?
Why am I reading on, despite the tedium? I guess I’m hooked. I want to know whether Elayne becomes Queen of Andor. I want to know precisely how powerful Egwene becomes as an Aes Sedai. I want to know if Nynaeve ever marries Lan and eventually becomes Amyrlin Seat. I want to know whether Perrin fathers a litter of wolf puppies with Faile. I want to know whether Rand vanquishes the Dark One.
July and August, 2014
The Dragon Reborn is book three of the Wheel of Time series. In book three, Rand appears only briefly as the book follows Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve’s storyline as Aes Sedai, interspersed with chapters from Perrin’s and Mat’s point of views. As a reader it was disappointing not only to know what would happen at the end of the book before reading it (Rand goes another round vs. B’alzamon. Who knew?) but also to find out the epic battle you’ve been waiting 600 pages for is short, perfunctory, and unsatisfying. It’s almost as if Robert Jordan became bored while writing the book. There’s almost no denouément whatsoever.
I’m currently reading book four, The Shadow Rising though not sure if I’ll continue reading the series beyond that.
July, 2014
The first half of The Great Hunt (book two of the Wheel of Time) series, suffers from the same tedium as The Eye of the World. The last third of the book is action-packed and nearly impossible to put down. Getting there is a bit of a slog, at times.
What intrigued me most were some very cool scenes that mirror the superposition principle of quantum physics. As Rand moves through the Portal Stone to Toman Head, he experiences the many variations of the path his life could have taken: with Egwene, without Egwene, honouring his position as the Dragon Reborn or rejecting it.
The sul’dam and the damane were compelling, yet revolting and bizarre at the same time. This idea of magical slavery was so brutal and cruel that as a reader, you want to see the Seanchan come back somewhere in the series so that you can see their empire destroyed.
The visit to Stedding Tsofu late in the book reveals more about Ogier life and culture — some of the most interesting scenes in the book.
Character development has improved in The Great Hunt, though the fact that some characters can survive battles and slavery and remain so innocent is baffling and annoying at the same time.
May and June, 2014
The Eye of the World is book one of the thirteen-book Wheel of Time series. I bought this book over a year ago and it took me a long time to start reading it. I began the book, telling myself that I could stop at any time and abandon not only book one, but the idea of reading the whole series.
The story starts slowly, focusing on Rand Al’Thor and a few friends from Emond’s Field: Mat, Perrin, and Egwene, and two strangers (Moraine Sedai and her Warder Lan Mandragoran) who come to town around the feast day, Bel Tine. Implausibly, these strangers convince Rand and his gang to leave the Two Rivers area in a bid to end the recent and unprecedented Trolloc attacks on their village. (This is a place they’ve barely left their entire lives. It’s all they know, and these intriguing strangers convince them to leave on a moment’s notice. Hmm…)
The middle of the book is repetitive to the point of tedious, where (of course) the fleeing group gets separated into smaller groups. The story mainly follows Rand and Mat, who get attacked by Darkfriends in various guises in every stop they make.
This long middle section reminded me of Scooby Doo where meddling kids are repeatedly attacked only to foil the evil forces. The book is over 800 pages and it covers this one lengthy and perilous journey. I was almost ready to abandon the book when the action began in the last couple hundred pages. Additionally, Loial the Ogier‘s appearance added a much needed element of intrigue. (Who doesn’t love a thinking being who adores books?)
My other major qualm with the writing is the golly-shucks-hayseed innocence to the interior monologue of some of the characters, notably, Rand, Perrin, and Egwene. Greater character development would make them feel less wooden. They’re young adults, though they think like children. Sometimes this book felt like a YA novel.
The action in this book hooked me enough to read to the end. I enjoyed learning about the world and about the various inhabitants, dark forces, and magical beings enough to start book two: The Great Hunt. Two hundred pages in, it’s moving slowly as well. Will I read book three? The jury is out.
May and June, 2014
Bewildered Creatures 
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