Reading Projects Update

I have a number of ongoing reading projects. Ongoing just means I still track my progress on reading books from some list. Ongoing shouldn't imply that my reading choices are informed by a stated desire to finish all the books in a given list or finish a series or some other reading goal defined by completing all of something. Maybe I will decide that a reading project should be abandoned by the time I finish this recap, but I wouldn't expect that to happen. It's more likely I get another side quest added to my already lengthy list of in process side quests. In porcess side quests outside of my reading goals would be a fun post. Maybe I should figure out the main quest while I'm at it. All good ideas. Let's get to the reading quests first.

Book Shelf Zero: If any of these quests should be considered a failure, this is it. Reading all the books that I own remains a worthy goal, I have just continued to buy books faster than I have finished reading what I already own. I tallied up my current owned but not read books to see where I was at New Years Eve. 199. I started this project on December 13, 2016. Nine years in, I have managed to read 238 books since staring the project. I started Book Shelf Zero with 190 books. Over all that time and all those books that I've read, I've managed to increase the size of my library. I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of this nugget. I guess the obvious answer is I like to buy books. Yes, I've known that since I was a pre-teen. The real question is whether I keep this as a formal reading project. I'm turning 50 this year. The project will be in progress for 10 years come December. Let's see what a more deliberate approach to reading does over the course of the year. Maybe I just maintain my tally without really trying to get it to zero (which is basically what I'm doing now).

Modern Library Top 100: I've read 56 of the 100 titles in this list. I can't even remember the last book that I read from this list. I own a bunch of them, so I can make progress on two projects by reading those titles, but they are just not the kind of books that I've been choosing to read. The last one I can remember trying ot read is Henderson the Rain King. I read about a third of that and set it aside for something more fun to read. My lack of progress on this particular project really shows me how much I have let my job steal energy I save for more meaningful parts of my life. I was choosing to carry work burdens that I was not obligated to endure. I had a thing happen at work on Friday that would have burdened me a year or so ago, but I just decided that I wasn't going to let it get to me. It's a situation that I will deal with at the right time, but I don't need to let it fill my mental space until that time comes. I was letting way too much get to me since I was embroiled in my PDI drama. I was actually on a Disney trip on this day when that entire situation was blowing up in 2020. The trauma of that experience has been hounding me for 6 years. I think I've finally put it behind me. Assuming I have been successful, maybe I will actually have the mental energy to read a few of these books in these books in the short term. They are usually good books, but they are usually not the kind of book you pick up and zip through (although a few of them have been that kind of book.) It looks like my most recent action on this list was finishing A Bend in the River in September 2023. It's pretty safe to say this list has not figured into my reading choices for awhile. I will look to change that soon. 

NPR Science Fiction/Fantasy list: Take what I said about the Modern Library list and apply it here too. I'm even at a similar point in reading through the list, 54 titles. I would like to get back to some of these books. I don't own as many of them so I can't quite do the same 2 for 1 thing, but most of these books are pretty quick and easy reads. If I was to kill one of these projects to the point I stop tracking my progress, this would be it, but I also already have the list in my spreadsheet so why not just keep marking them off? I guess I will keep doing that. I just may not refer to the list when I'm looking for something to read though (not a big shift as I haven't really been doing that anyway). 

I have a more comprehensive reading project bubbling in my head. Well, reading would be part of the project. I'm not certain if I will be shifting to that one. If I do, this blog will be a completed project. Early versions of this latest project may show up here first, at least until I'm ready to launch. We'll see if I decide I want to put in the effort (talk about a subject needing ti's own post..>O)

Thinking about 2026

Today I realized that I have been waiting for my life to get back to what it was in 2018. If I'm going to read the books I own (and the ones I keep buying), get in better shape, and lose weight, I need to figure out what works with my current circumstances rather than be annoyed that my life isn't as easy and low stress as it was 7 or 8 years ago. I'm tired of fitting in a just long enough to feel worth it run or squeezing 10 pages of book into the time before I go to bed. I need to set up a system to read more, get in more miles, and improve my diet. 

I always set reading output goals (read a certain number of books over the course of the year). How much time do I need to spend reading to realize this goal? Let's say I set a goal of 25 books. That's roughly a book every 2 weeks. If an average book is 400 pages, that would require me reading about 200 pages a week. If I read about a page a minute, I would need to read about 3.5 hours a week. That's reading for about a half an hour every day. My reading goal this year was 36 books. I would need to read for about 45 minutes a day to achieve that goal. If I started reading around 10 or 10:30 every night, I could read for 30 to 45 minutes a day. Making it a point to read a bit on the weekend and I could get there. I could also read while Tiffany is doing stuff for her classes. There is time, I just need to make sure I'm prioritizing reading over scrolling on my phone or watching TV. 

I need to make better reading decisions in 2026. I read decent books in 2025, but my bad decision to stick with The Bee Sting for way too long prevented me from reading other (and almost certainly better) books. Starting my year with a Brandon Sanderson behemoth also limited how many different books I would be reading. I don't have good records on this, but I also tried reading a few different books and ended up not finishing them for one reason or another. I'm actually working on finishing a book that I read the first half of earlier this year. I skipped through a YouTube video this morning of some guys top 10 books of the year. I was only familiar with a couple of them. He was very excited about a few of these books. They were mostly genre fiction and nothing that would be considered prestigious reading, but he enjoyed them. Isn't that kind of the point? There is value in reading challenging books, but mixing in a few easier genre books that go quickly and are a pleasure to read could be a nice palate cleanser between more literary works. I wasted 3 months reading a piece of crap just because it was short listed for the Booker Prize. I could have read 3 or 4 fun books in that time. I would argue that reading the fun books would have been a better use of my time.

I'm harping on reading because picking up and reading a physical book has become a subversive act. Engaging in any activity that does not feed the algorithm with behavior and consumption data undermines societal control objectives being pursued by the global elite. Reading books written a few decades ago is an even bigger violation of the new tech dogma. Spending slow time with a physical thing produced by a person for consumption by other people disconnects us from technological monitoring and engagement tools. Reading makes us better people rather than more efficient consumers. Reading an ebook is better than not reading at all, but it keeps us engaged with monitoring technology. Kindle and other reading apps have gamified data collection that makes the activity of reading about more than just consuming fantastic writing. It's about keeping a streak or earning a badge. People were able to engage with novels for hundreds of years without the additional motivation of earning some electronic cheerleading. I want to spend this year getting back to that kind of relationship with reading. It's not about reading a certain number of books or hitting some daily reading target. It's about finding joy and pleasure in an analogue activity. 

I know I have said this before, but I need to start doing the things I'm going to do someday. That pretty much applies to every aspect of my life, but it's a pretty big piece of reading as I have lots of books that I plan to read someday. My Book Shelf Zero project was supposed to be about reading the books I say I want to read rather than just adding more books to the pile. Adam the Woo's death has put a new urgency into living for today. He had all kinds of plans and things he wanted to do. He no longer has the opportunity to do those things. I am basically the same age as Adam (he's little over a year older than me) so his sudden death has impacted me more than I would have expected. I haven't been watching his videos regularly for months, but I did watch them regularly for years. I feel like I knew Adam. I met him at a Rays game and saw him at a couple of others. He was a part of my life, but now he's gone. I can't wait to keep doing things that look interesting and fun. I plan to spend this year finding ways to keep adventure and discovery in my life. Adam travelled to find new adventures. I read. 

Adam's death also brings a greater focus on my physical fitness. His official cause of death has yet to be determined, but my first guess was a heart attack. Watching some clips put together by Tim Tracker only reinforced that initial guess. He was pretty heavy for quite a few years. I've been saying I want to lose weight while doing almost nothing to actually lose weight. Running more is one way to start changing the direction of the numbers on the scale. My running mileage goal this year was 750 miles. I will have a little over 600 miles at the end of the year. That means I averaged about 11.5 miles a week rather than the 15 or so I would need to reach 750 miles. I would not need to dramatically alter my current running plan to hit 750. If I do 4 miles on Tuesday and Thursday, I would only need to do a 7 mile run on Saturday. I had the goal to do a thousand miles in 2022 (my first full year in Florida). That takes about 20 miles a week. You can get that in 3 runs a week by doing 5, 5, and 10 miles. That sounded like a realistic plan, but doing 5 miles means getting on the road pretty early during the week, and you need to be out pretty early for the long weekend runs to beat the heat once you get into mid-March. Both of those require getting an early start, which means going to bed relatively early. I also didn't consider how often I would be going back to Virginia to get my family moved down here. It was an achievable goal, but I did not make getting in runs at those distances a priority. I would run, but it was more like 3 or 4 miles with 5 or so on the weekend. That's better than not running, but it's not going to make running the Disney Marathon less painful. 

Running more should make me weight less, but weight loss is really all about diet. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but my preferred strategy is to focus on eating more whole foods and cutting out processed foods rather than cutting calories. I have a plan for lunch (I just need to actually do it), and I need to figure something out for breakfast (hard boiled eggs?). I will just do whatever the family does for dinner and avoid dessert during the week. Cut down on snacks during the weekend will be one more step to improve my diet. We'll see where my weight levels out if I can stick to that plan.

This New Year's transition feels different. It may just be wishful thinking, but the focus on reclaiming my energy from the churn of daily demands feels like the missing ingredient in my inability to build a solid and satisfying Florida life. 

Keep or Throw Away?

Ted Gioia's The Honest Broker is one of the few Substack's that I subscribe to. Maybe I should find a few more to get a better sense of the vibe before I initiate my thing. He recently published a piece decrying the death of mid-twentieth century American culture. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm trying to accomplish with this reading old book thing, but the disappearance of once popular and prominent writers from the cultural consciousness is part of what I'm trying to understand. What gets lost when we forget about works from the past? Should it be discarded or is there some inherent value in a book written decades ago that can tell us something about living today? I'm not sure that really gets at what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm not sure why I'm trying so hard to really define the primary thrust of this idea, but it feels really important to have a clear idea of what I'm trying to do or want to do or think I should do. 

Gioia is mostly addressing the erasure of once significant and well respected works of art from our current cultural experience. They are in there, embedded in the output of the now, but they are invisible, forgotten, no longer an active part of driving popular culture or deeply influencing contemporary artists. Gioia's comments on the embeddedness of our culture in the works of the past is part of my project. I'm more interested in poking around in the parts of the culture that never really took off. If they never really got a foothold in the popular conscience, are they even part of the culture? I guess any work, no matter how minor, is part of the culture. I guess my big question is whether the major works are really all that much better than the minor works. What do the minor works say that got drowned out by the hits that captured a broader audience?

The hits are hit for a reason. The only deep cut from an album that I can think of that was just as good as a hit single is Black from Pearl Jam's Ten. People like to flaunt their elevated task by highlighting deep cuts that they think are better than the hits. Predicting hits in any creative endeavour is a mystic art with a very low success rate. Experts can't reliably pick what will be a hit and what will flop. Hits emerge from some kind of collective act that makes something popular. Then that popularity wanes, and something that was popular is forgotten. Being forgotten doesn't necessarily make that thing bad or of low quality. I'm not really looking to arbitrate whether an old book is a masterpiece that should be recognized for its genius. I'm just trying to see if something produced years ago that sits on the shelf forgotten and ignored offers a meaningful experience to today's reader. How has the accumulation of culture altered the value and meaning in an object produced for a different person in a different time. The Book Club edition of Beneath the Storm's Eye wasn't produced for an almost 50 year old man sitting by his pool in Florida 58 years after it was published. How big should our cultural memory be? How much of the history that informs our culture needs to be remembered? Do we really lose anything when a book that never caught an audience physically exists but does not actively participate in the culture? What should we remember and what should we forget?

I guess that depends on what I write

I never really answered the question about whether people would want to read my thoughts on old books. It's probably not something people would seek out, but if the content is worth their time, a few people will stick around to see what else I have to say. It's not a topic with broad appeal, but hyperfocusd, single topic micro publications are the super power of sites like Substack. Would it be interesting? Would it tell people something they wanted to know? I like to read things that help me understand the world. People who have a perspective and share their lens for viewing the world will draw an audience. Their voice has to be authentic. You can't pretend to be something that you are not. Maybe you can be something you always wanted to be but didn't pursue for a whole bunch of reasons but now the tools of the internet allow you to capture a little bit of that lifestyle?

In my fantasy life, I get to spend my days in serious study of some deep and profound topic. I could be writing a novel or some academic paper. The activity or the topic is secondary to the association with study and gaining insight into how some aspect of our reality works. It's about answering questions without easy or obvious answers. Life as a professor has too many unappealing features for me to have ever seriously considered that path, particularly the idea of begging the government for research funds as a physical scientist, but some kind of self-supported thinker writing books or thought pieces would not be the worst way to spend my days. Some of my other little side projects were my attempt to get a taste of that life. I was reviewing Pitchfork's top 100 albums. I flirted with some kind of personal development theme for a more focused blog or book (it was just an exercise to see how hard something like that could be, it was never something I really intended to pursue in earnest). I did submit a request to participate in a workshop with Seth Godin to develop my ideas into some kind of serious project for a big audience. That was back in 2011. What was I even doing back then? My law school blog project was a mini-project to do something and share the outcome with the world. The blogging part of that process was my primary motivation through that entire project. I can look back at that and know that I never really wanted to go. to law school, but that entire process was fun. It was super selfish given how old my kids were at that time and I did think that there were some advantages to pursuing a legal career (if I had had the courage to believe in my system to just go with A for any logic puzzles that had to be worked out in detailed steps, I would have had a 170+ LSAT score and acceptances into schools that would have been hard to turn down). It was also me trying to find a way to be a thinker or at least someone who shared thoughts and experiences with an audience. 

I haven't thought about that Seth Godin Medicine Ball session thing for a long time. I applied just to see what kind of response I would get. It was kind of a low risk way to see if I maybe had the chops to really work on building something online that could be more than just a diversion or fun hobby. That's the kind of thing I wanted to do, the kind of thing I was struggling to find the right words for at the start of this post. I wanted to build an idea into a thing that people could hold and share. A book. A blog that is more than a diary or journal. A produced thing that I had shipped into the world. Something I thought up, generated, and finished so I could share it with others. 

Is my idea to use obscure books published decades ago to explore the world we live in now the next little project for me to try? Seth Godin would say yes. When I was reading him, he was all about shipping. Get an idea, develop it, get it out into the world. I'm taking some of those steps already. I stopped in Book Rescuers just to see if I could find an old book that fit my project. I looked for a few that AI had given me when I asked for obscure old books. I found a few by one of the authors, but not that specific book. I decided to just start looking for books that had that old book appearance. I found one. Under the Eye of the Storm by John Hersey. It was published in 1967. The physical book has some interesting features. The book has 10 reviews on Goodreads. It's not very long, about 250 pages. I plan on reading it right after I finish this book I've been reading about a sex cult. We'll see what I make of it. I plan on having posts for a few books ready to go before I do anything on Substack so it will be an interesting experiment. 

Would people want to read about my thoughts on old books?

If I were to start a Substack, as my effort to build something digital, what would I write about? My blogs, which are essentially online diaries or journals, are primarily about books/reading, career thoughts, efforts to improve my fitness, and occasional musings on my relationship or my role as a man in the family. My first thought is to do something about reading and books. My dissatisfaction with contemporary books is so high I have a personal desire to explore deep into the catalogues and niches of books published decades ago. I'm almost 50 so books published before I was alive could be a fun slant. That might be too limited so maybe that would be a fun category or post/article topic. Reading the books would be a big part of the stack, but the physicality of the books could be something to explore. Older books are smaller, use different paper, more mass market books for more literary titles. The masculine in literature, a virtual black hole of nothingness in contemporary publishing, would be a strong theme. Where to find the books, how to select them (old bestseller lists, browsing used bookstores, award lists (going deep into the Booker Prize)), and maybe old marketing material could be an element of the articles. This would of course give me something to explore when I'm taking too long to read a book. It would kind of be the anti-booktok. Old books being discussed by a middle-aged white man. This topic is appealing because it aligns with things I already do or want to do. I'm not exploring something new only to find it's not appealing to me in the long run. It also takes advantage of our current tech culture, being able to find something almost instantly online, but applying that to something more analog and non-digital. Physical books, the book as a physical object, would be a big part of the content. These things don't have to be hunted down. They could be found. I wouldn't be looking for things people are familiar with either. These would be obscure books people haven't read or thought about for decades. I'm not picking books popular in college course syllabi. It's almost like finding something new in something old. Our cultural legacy is deep. How rich is the writing that was churned out and published for a culture hungrier for books 60, 70, 80 years ago? Do we no longer read because the material we have to read doesn't offer what we find in a good book? Or maybe an old book is a better place to find what we need than a social media scroll. It would be random and exploratory. There will be good books and bad books. That's kind of the point of the entire exercise.

I used ChatGPT to see how it could help identify possible reading targets. I just asked it to help me find obscure books published in 1970. It gave me some good choices. I looked for a few of them in Thriftbooks and the Amazon used market. They were kind of expensive. This makes sense. These are not common books that are all over the place. They're also not particularly popular or in demand either. Using AI kind of extends that whole idea of using the tools of now to plow into the legacy of yesterday. There is a bit of simultaneous worlds or the elasticity of time element to this. Reading books to better understand the way people in a different time engaged with their media and how the content of that media (and the medium itself as a physical object) alters in meaning as the culture and physical world transforms around it. 

I've never been one to challenge the canon, but rejecting accepted ideas of which books from the past are the most worth reading has a subversive flavor. This effort implies rejecting the accepted tastes to find overlooked but still valuable perspectives. A book that didn't resonate or have a big marketing push isn't automatically inferior to the titles that got lucky and gained fame. I wouldn't stop reading the acknowledged master works. My Modern Library top 100 effort fits into this project very neatly. Those books actually offer a useful contrast to more obscure or overlooked books. One is widely read (at least in the context of the modern reading effort) while another is all but forgotten. One of the books ChatGPT suggested has virtually no activity on Goodreads. The reviews are years old. 

The decline of reading is an element of this as well. The rise of the smartphone is certainly a big player in people turning away from books, but is the reading material available to people now contributing to the reading dearth? Most books that get popular on social media are just bad. People like Lonesome Dove, but that book is amazing and was written decades ago. New stuff just isn't good. Seeing what got published decades ago tells us something about what publishers were willing to support 50 or 60 years ago. The feminization of the reading space is also part of the decline. Men read different books than women, but there are virtually no books for men these days. Perhaps I can crack the code for books that men like to read and a new publishing effort can be launched? That's a long term plan and effort. 

Fit by 50?

I'm thinking of stealing an idea from Adam the Woo and working to get fit by 50. He talked about it a bunch last year. Well, I'll be 49 tomorrow so I would have an entire year to get into shape. It wouldn't require much of a change in my plans given the Goofy Challenge waiting for me in January. Now, I could just do enough to get through the races as has been my pattern since moving to Florida, but I very much do not want to just get through these races. I'm fine with just getting through the marathon if I give a good effort in the half. My early thinking would be a solid half effort, which at this point would mean running pretty much the entire distance (with breaks at water stops and character photo ops), and a full marathon time similar to what I've been doing for the last few years. I would like to do better than my previous efforts, at least break 6 hours (which would only require me to maintain some kind of running effort after Animal Kingdom). While actually running is the biggest part of getting ready for this event, cutting some weight, adding more cross training (which means more rowing for me), and more weight lifting to improve my overall strength would all result in better running performance. 

I've already added one small addition to my daily effort as a first step toward these goals. I'm back on the ab exercises. 50 butterfly kicks has been my accepted ab exercise for years. Well, at least it was several years ago. My goal has traditionally been 5 days of this exercise a week. Assuming I take 2 minutes to make this small effort sometime today or tomorrow, this will be the first week I have achieved this goal in years. Once I have this habit re-established, I will work on getting back to the gym 3 days a week. Lifting at lunch has always been the key for getting in my lifting workouts. That's just not going to be something I'm going to be able to bring back as long as I'm at my current job. That means either going before work or in the evening. Evening workouts were a good option when I could go with my son, but he works most evenings. Maybe I should plan my lifting around his schedule. It he's available one evening a week, I could go Friday morning and Sunday. At a minimum I need to start going on Friday morning and Sunday afternoon. I can always do a quick session in the garage to get three sessions if I can make it to the gym for the other two.

As for my weight, no fast food during Lent has reduced my desire for Taco Bell and McDonald's. I didn't even eat Taco Bell this week and my McDonald's trip was largely about convenience more than a desire for that kind of food. I just need to cut down on weekday snaking and desserts to start making some progress. That progress assumes I'm back to running 15-20 miles a week, My foot is much improved. I could probably run at this point, but I'm more worried about aggravating the injury and losing even more running time. It's been one month since my last run, the Springtime Surprise 10 miler. I'm anxious to get back out on the road, but I lost a good month last year when I tried to rush back from my hamstring issue. I would probably be running now if I had just not run prior to the 10 miler. I could have made it just fine without additional training. Oh well, live and learn. 

So there is really no big dramatic plan for fit by 50. It's really just committing to doing the things that I've done in the past (which gets further in the past every year) and have been trying to get back into my life for years. It's doable. It will just take a little effort and focus.

First Quarter Update

I gave myself a little side quest to read a book while my wife was out of town. She left on Saturday. I started Indignation, a Roth book I bought on a used book binge before I left Richmond, that same day. She's still out of town, we'll see her Friday night, but I finished Indignation last night. It's a short book that butts right up to the limit for a novella. My copy is 230 pages, but the font is big and the margins are generous. The shortness of the book made it easier for me to finish in a few days, but the book was engaging and pleasant. It was deeply Roth, but his writing makes up for his focus on intensely personal experience. I'm happy to have read it. Roth is yet another reading project lingering on the edge of my future plans. I should probably finish at least one of my many reading threads before I start crossing titles off of a list. (I've read 3 Roth novels according to my Goodreads records with another one of his books in that I'm not sure if I actually finished this on space.)

Indignation is the fifth book I've finished this year. I'm ahead of last year's pace, I was just finishing up my fourth book this time last year, but way behind my reading pace of years past. At least I haven't bought any books this year. I actually haven't even felt tempted. I want to read down the pile that I've built up over the last year or so. All my recent buys are intriguing so I'm not looking for something new to pique my reading interest. We'll see how easily I refrain from book shopping once I'm left with the ambitious reads that I scooped up in my carefree and optimistic youth. That's in the future. I'm content with what I have in front of me at the moment. I started Submission today. Houellebecq feels like a superior Roth. I appreciate the masculinity inherent in their novels. I'm the antithesis of the reader publishers care about right now so there isn't much contemporary stuff that really resonates with my life experience. I can read and appreciate current prominent women writers, but it's nice to have a book that resonates with my male brain (no matter how estrogen soaked). That lack of really compelling new material is a big reason why it's been easy for me to stick to my book buying ban. I expect that I will just drift into older books rather than wander into the pointless crap on the tables at Barnes and Noble (older books outside of the most classic of classics have essentially disappeared from B&N shelves).

The book I finished before Indignation, The Doctor's Wife, was an effort to go back to men writing free from the imposed guilt of being a white man. It was a fine book, but there was a strong feminine energy (which I guess shouldn't have been a big shock given the title). The use of a female protagonist had the same feeling of the main character in the Hulu Predator movie Prey. The character didn't need to be female. The story could have been told with a similar impact and result with a male character. The use of a woman (girl in Prey? Her age is ambiguous) feels like an attempt to be subversive rather than being an essential element of the story. I guess there are no more men's stories. We're all just interchangeable people. Strong women must be more essential than strong men. 

I'm making no progress to become a strong man. I've decided that my reluctance to go to the gym is rooted in my dislike for the Y that I've been using. It's an excuse, but it's also true. I've never really liked the way the free weight area is set up. A new Crunch is opening soon. I'm hoping new scenery (and equipment) will get me back into a gym groove. One evening, Friday morning, and Sunday afternoon would be enough to get back on track. Easy to say, harder to execute. I'm starting to get fat so I need to start lifting again soon. My body is aging quickly. I may not have many years of throwing 225+ around on the bench. 

First reading update of 2025

Two months into the year, I've managed to finish two books. That low number is more due to the massive Wind and Truth that I read to start the year more than any lack of reading on my part. I obviously didn't read as much as I could have during January and most of February, but I managed to make it through the fifth volume of the Stormlight Archive. I've decided that the disappointment people have expressed about Wind and Truth is more about the exceedingly high expectations created by the first two books in the series. W and T was overly long and lacked the exciting action that was central to earlier volumes, but it moves events along nicely. The increasing importance of the Cosmere in Sanderson's books is also likely turning people off. I've read enough of his other stuff that I knew Wind and Truth had to end with Odium positioned to influence the wider Cosmere. That's the only way that story can really move forward. We may have even seen some of his plans being executed in other Cosmere books. If you're not into that broader narrative, Wind and Truth is not going to do much for you. I will keep reading the series despite the massive time commitment required to get through them. 

I've also finished James. I had read about half of that before I bought Wind and Truth so it was an easy task to finish that slim (by comparison) book. Everett is a good writer so the book was a pleasure to read. I'm not as taken with as all the acclaim would suggest. That acclaim is too based in the broader scope of the book more than the book itself. That's just a decision that culture has made. Celebrate the political or social space staked out by the book rather than the inherent quality of the book itself. I don't regret reading it. 

I picked up The Last Picture Show after James. I have about a third of the book left. This was a quick read. I've read a good bit of McMurtry so it's been nice getting back into the appealing flow of his prose. The dialogue is believable, the characters are authentic, and the story is well paced. The efficiency of this book highlights the bloat of Wind and Truth. The danger of The Last Picture Show will be going on to read the sequels. I could probably get them from the library (print versions, I don't see them in Libby), but I would rather focus my reading effort on my owned books. Maybe there is a place for an audiobook. I've never listened to a McMurtry book. I should finish this one by the end of the weekend to get to 3 books for the year. At least I will stay on my book a month pace. 

I pulled The Doctor's Wife off the shelf with The Last Picture Show. I read a couple dozen pages soon after it was delivered. I was quickly engaged with the story, but I was in the middle of James and about to start Wind and Truth so I set it aside. It's a short book so it has the appeal of a quick read to go with a good story. I may change my mind, but I'm pretty sure that will be my attempted book 4. I will need a quick read as the college basketball tournaments are about to ramp up. Those will take my focus for a good chunk of March. I'm actually building some reading momentum. I should really try to get at least a few pages in around the games.

I have stayed strong with my book buying ban. I haven't really even been tempted. 

Making my life better

If I need a reason for why I do things like run the WDW Marathon, getting the year started overcoming a big challenge could be as good a reason as any. I completed my fourth WDW Marathon in 4 years on Sunday.. My times are incredibly consistent given the nature of the marathon. I finished 3 of those 4 marathons in 6:20. The only exception is 2023 when I sat down wrong and messed up my knee a couple weeks before the race. I'm not going to revisit my recurring marathon training themes. I know what I need to do to be more comfortable in these runs. If I'm not up for the training, why do I keep entering this race (other than I really enjoy the whole runDisney vibe)? A pretty basic answer is that the race provides motivation for me to actually get out and run. My recap of my first WDW Marathon in 2022 highlighted that I was using the race to get my training runs back up to at least 10 miles. I run more when I am registered for a marathon. My run volume would plunge without a marathon looming over me. The race itself is highly rewarding. Every hard event is inherently rewarding, but covering all those miles on Disney property gives the marathon a little extra panache. There are drawbacks too, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. I also do the marathon because I can do the marathon. I'm approaching 50. My time for these kinds of activities is not unlimited. I need to accept the challenge while I still have a choice. There will be a day when my body makes the decision for me, but I still have the agency to make the choice to get out there and cover the miles. Running the marathon just feels like a better choice than not running the marathon. It's a choice that makes my life better. 

Making my life better is the point of all my resolutions/side quests/various pursuits and activities. Reading makes my life better. I'm not going to detour into detailing the specifics of how reading makes my life better, but it does. My Bookshelf Zero challenge is about getting me to read the books that I expect will make my life better. Reading a challenging book is not always pleasant in the moment, but I will be better for having read it (just like I'm better for having endured the marathon). Staying strong and losing weight are about staying healthy and active so I can live my life as I choose. I watch my Mom lead a small life where she has implicitly accepted all kinds of limitations by not taking care of her health. That is not the life I want to live. I set resolutions to give me an extra kick to get to the gym. It doesn't always work as much as I would like, but that goal probably gets me there more than if I didn't have that external measure. 

I put a book buying ban on myself this year. That restriction makes a moment less fun (lots of good choices for sale at the library yesterday, but no books for me this year), but focusing on reading what I already own makes my life better. I attempted to explore jazz last year. I was looking to expand my musical horizons and find new rewarding experiences. I found that I don't particularly like that style of music, but at least I gave it a try and don't feel like I'm missing out on something that would make my life better. I failed a goal, but I learned something valuable about how I experience the world and derive meaning from what I experience everyday. 

Of course I only explore a small part of my life in this space. I rarely delve into professional goals and challenges. I never share any details about the nature of my relationship with my wife or how I feel about being a parent. I call my resolutions and other goals side quests because my family and career are the primary adventure. Doing all that I can to make those parts of my life the best they can be will do more to make my life better than any book I read or workout I complete. I've made the decision to find another job. My current job is not doing much to make my life better (or maybe the best thing I could do to make my life better would be to find a new job). I've applied to what looks like a good opportunity. We'll see how it all plays out. I've been thinking deeply about my relationship with my wife. I look back at some of my actions with regret (it's about how I have failed to show her how I feel about her with words and actions, not any deep betrayals like cheating or something like that), but I'm focusing on how to move forward and make what we have better. Small improvements in my marriage will make my life dramatically better.

Here's to making my life better in 2025.

Resetting (Bookshelf Zero and a few other things)

I updated my list of owned books yesterday. I've been buying books without being overly diligent about adding them to my tally of owned but unread books. Assuming I haven't missed any, I'm at 190 books. That puts me pretty much back at the initial stages of this little project. Well, at least in terms of the number of books that I own but have not read. I made a shelf on Goodreads for the books that were on my original tally. That stands at 130. I'm not really worried about my lack of progress on Bookshelf Zero. I haven't exactly been committed to the project for a couple of years now. I feel worse about how I have pretty much just been going through the motions on my little personal side quests for the last couple of years. I feel like I'm past the big emotional and mental obstacles that have been dogging me for the last couple of years. That urge to channel my personal energy into making progress on a meaningful task has been gradually ratcheting up over the last couple of months. The onset of the New Year brings the annual refocusing of my energy into these long term plans. I feel ready to get more serious about my reading, fitness, and other goals. 

My indifference to things that I once found very meaningful has been a bit troubling. I don't know if I've been depressed or just worn out. The wife and I were talking about the path not taken earlier in the week. I have no idea what challenges were lying in wait for us down that path, but I doubt they would have been harder than what we have gone through since September of 2021. We downplayed the emotional stress and struggle of our year apart while we were living through it. Yes, we acknowledge it was hard, but I know I didn't really acknowledge just how big a challenge we had taken on with our decision to move. That was by far the hardest thing I have ever done. It took a ton out of me in just about every way possible. It wasn't like life was a piece of cake after that year was over. The adjustments we were all going through once in Florida took their toll as well. My energy was going to those issues. I wasn't defusing extra energy into reading or other activities. I was using all I had just to get through everyday. I was still doing the things that were a big part of my RIchmond life, they were just on a smaller scale. The ratio of the amount of energy I used for work to what I used for personal stuff slammed to the work effort. I'm finally getting that work effort under better control. The challenges and what I need to do everyday haven't changed much, but I have figured out better ways to navigate these issues. It's a process that will continue with new projects, new owners, and all of the uncertainty of professional life. 

So I start 2025 feeling better equipped to handle life. That means finding the time and energy to work on long term goals rather than just finding the energy to get through the day. Managing my energy is the real challenge. I just haven't had the physical energy to read at the end of the day. I haven't had the mental energy to read earlier in the evening.Reading rather than watching some random YouTube video would be a better use of my time, but I have needed some time to recover from my day and build up some mental energy. Finding ways to refill my energy by reading or some other more constructive activity rather than just watching a screen would be a real coup. That's what I need to figure out this year. The first step is wanting to do those things. That's what has been missing for the last couple of years. 

My low energy hasn't just made it harder for me to make positive progress on my goals (like actually reading books). Submitting to temptation and doing things that feel good, like buying books or eating crappy food or taking it easy on a workout, are also a big part of that low energy state. Making better choices, which almost always means doing the harder thing that will have benefits down the road over the easy thing that feels good in the moment, has been a big challenge as I've dealt with this life stuff. Better discipline around what I want long term will be a big part of getting back on the right track in 2025. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like in the moment, but that definitely needs to be the 2025 theme. Reading more books. Buying fewer of them. That's the path to getting the things I want to get from my reading.

A couple of updates

I'm deep into the marathon training calendar. I'm wrapping up week 4 (I think). THe plan is more of a suggestion at this point than a plan that I'm actually following. The dual derailers of a hamstring injury and getting sick (probably COVID but I never bothered to test) put me way behind on the fitness needed to do the 10+ mile runs in this early phase of the training plan. I basically do my standard 4 mile weekday run (which I can finally do without a walking break (again, I had just gotten back to this point post injury before I got sick)) and then do a long run on Saturday. I had to balance distance with getting home to get ready for a trip to WDW on my long run this week. I was planning on going 10, but cut it back to 7 when I could tell my wife wanted to do something other than sit around the house this Saturday. I felt good on the run, did the entire distance with only stopping to cross streets and to wait for a guy to use the improvised footbridge over a muddy hole down by the Pinellas Trail. I was doing longer distances at this point last year, but I have a pattern of sticking to the plan in the first few weeks of a training cycle only to see my weekly mileage fade considerably in the weeks leading up to the run. 

I'm not worrying too much about my plan adherence this year. I'm doing a half marathon with my wife the first weekend of November. My goal is to train up to that distance (even though we'll be walking most of the race) and build from there. My longest runs have been in November for a January race the last few cycles. I should be in pretty good shape for the marathon if I can push a couple of 18-22 mile runs into December. Those later runs are much more important than a 10-12 mile run in October. At least that's what I'm telling myself. I've been remiss in not doing ab work or watching my diet to lose a few pounds. Both of those things would go a long way in minimizing my pain in the last 10 miles or so of the marathon. The longer I can keep pushing a running pace, the less time I will spend out there. I'm not looking for a marathon PR, but I wouldn't mind a course PR. 

There is no way I'm making my reading goal for the year. I was going for 40 books. I'm still in the teens. I'm close to finishing book 15 for the year. At this point, I'll be happy to get to 20 books. I've been buying kind of freely, partly to speak with my wallet about men reading novels, so there will be no reduction in my to-read list. The reasons for my reading drought are numerous, but the most recent thing to cut into my reading time is my participation in The Catherine Project. I mistakenly picked the discussion of Lucretis's On the Nature of Things. That was not a good choice. I just can't get into thinking too hard about what some Roman dude wrote about how atoms work. If I had more context I may find the book more interesting, but I don't know what intellectual currents were flowing in Rome. I skipped last week's discussion. I just didn't have the mental energy after dealing with a hurricane the week before on top of work and other life events. There are only 2 weeks left in the session so I will login for those last two. I may give the Project another try, but I will do a bit more research into the books to make my choice rather than just pick something that fits my calendar. 

Some plans are changing

So after I convinced myself that sticking to the course with my fitness approach is the right choice, at least for right now, I did make a pretty big change to a near term fitness plan. I made a big revision to my marathon training plan. Last year I used the training plan from the FIRST plan. The plan is based on 3 runs a week, my schedule, so I thought it would be a good fit for my schedule. It may be, but I am not in good enough shape to start this plan in a couple of weeks. The first long run is 13 miles. I just did 7 miles on Saturday. I can try to push it but I will either hurt myself or constantly be short on my distance goals. I took a look at the long runs for the training plan I used prior to trying the FIRST approach and decided those distances were a better fit for my current fitness level. The first long run is 10 miles. I can manage that in a few weeks. 

The FIRST training plan is based on a high mileage volume. I kept the other training runs the same so I guess I'm using a hybrid approach. No matter what plan I use, it's just really important that I get in all the miles on the long runs. I must go longer than 15 miles in early November as the longest run in my training cycle. The plan doesn't matter if you don't actually do the plan. 

Should I change my fitness plan as I get older?

I was already planning on using this space to reflect on whether I should revisit my standard goals and approach in the context of my advancing age. Then I wandered into seldom visited Facebook and saw pictures from the 30 year reunion of the high school I attended in New Mexico. Seeing some of these people in the context of our old high school, I only recognized a few of them, accentuated that they are almost 50. I certainly feel the shortening of my time. There are plenty of goals I will never achieve. My life may begin to shift and alter as I adjust myself to changing physical circumstances or I lose interest in things I used to enjoy, but I really want to avoid a situation where I'm skipping activities because I don't want to deal with some minor discomfort. 

Staying physically and mentally vital requires many of the lifestyle choices that were part of my Naked Sexy narrative. Sure I've been chasing the same handful of physical goals for years and years. I'm not really sure what staying physically active would look like if I tried to mix up my goals. I have a good core of activities that I enjoy enough that I'm happy to keep doing them for as long as I can stay healthy. I watched a few miles of a live stream from the half marathon at DIsneyland this morning. I have no desire to run a race out there, but I'm very engaged with the East Coast version of runDisney. I visualized myself out on the marathon course pushing through the late miles while I was out for my long run this weekend. I've been too quick to avoid the hard parts of my runs the last few years. I stop when it gets hard rather than being stronger than the moment and pushing through. I've built a physical and mental base that too many people my age are missing. They don't have anything that gets them out running 7 miles in Florida heat and humidity. 

So I guess I don't need to adjust my general approach to working out, at least not my activities. I could always have a better approach to my workouts. I could do more when I'm lifting, but I did get to the gym to lift three times this week. I need to get on the rowing machine more often, but I've been using that more this year than I have in ages. I walk plenty. I need to do more ab work and get in more rolling sessions to keep things limber and loose. I have said these things over and over again. I just need to do them. I guess that's what I need to change if I really need to revolutionize something about my fitness and wellness strategy. 

Rhythm of War complete; books left to be read? Who knows

I finished Rhythm of War last night. The surprises and reveals that made the first couple books in the series so remarkable are not really a big part of this book. It's the fourth book. We're transitioning into the conclusion of the series. Characters are being put into position. THey're building up experience points and figuring out the next quest in their journey. The pleasure is in spending time with familiar characters in a world that we know as well as the characters. We learn with them rather than learning from them. Rhythm is a step down from the first couple books, but it was a 1200 page book that never felt boring or dull. I enjoyed being in the world. I was kind of sad that it ended. I have been listening to a chapter or two on my way home. That was a nice way to wrap up my day. I would have liked to keep that flow going. I guess I get to wait until book 5 comes out in a few months to get back into that reassuring pattern. 

These fat fantasy books always have these grand battles between good and evil. The characters are concerned with Big Problems. They're not worried about the little details of their life. They're worried about saving the world from Evil. They're working on saving lives by thwarting the schemes of Gods and Demons. Participating in that struggle is why we read these books. Sure the stories are suspenseful and we want to see what happens next, but we're participating in the struggle. We're not just passive observers. We're emotionally invested. We expand our life by witnessing the battle, recognizing the sacrifice and pain endured by our hero. Engaging with these themes makes our life bigger. These characters give their entire being to a movement. Their identity melds into their mission and purpose. The scope and grandeur of the struggle Sanderson's characters engage in are a big part of what makes his novels so compelling. It's hard to feel like you're wandering and aimless when you're engaging in an interplanetary conflict. 

Doing science made (maybe makes, not really sure of the tense to use here) me feel like part of something bigger. I was participating in this effort to understand how our reality works. My piece of the effort may be small, but a contribution makes me part of the big effort to figure the world out. It sounds paradoxica, but the more I realized how little we really know the more meaning I found in doing science. You would expect that insight to make the entire effort feel meaningless, but getting a glimpse of what is under the surface of our daily physical reality made the effort worthwhile. This wasn't looking at the cold void and feeling alone and vulnerable. This was looking out and seeing the grandeur of what makes us who we are as both conscious individuals striving to live a life and physical beings bound and limited by how we're physically constructed. We're not isolated specks of dust floating in empiness. We're small parts of everything. 

Jung looked at individuals and extrapolated from the few to the many to all of humanity stretching over time. There's a consistency to our experience that stretches across time and place. He's. reaching out to me from death and across seas through his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul. I've been reading a few pages here and there while working through Rhythm of War. I picked it up after reading about a paper where mice learned to avoid eating cherries from the experience of their grandparents. This learning through the generations (they posited that changes in gene expression was the origin of this generational learning, but it's very much part of that broad scope of what we don't know about the world) was suggested as proof of Jung's collective unconscious. I read about this in a different book by Jung, Man and His Symbols (this was the last book I read before I started college, I don't have it marked as read in Goodreads, I don't remember much of it, but I know I read the whole damn thing). I had this other Jung book on my shelf so that became the book that I picked up to start reading. I feel like I'm on the edge of understanding something pretty important and this book has been part of giving me a peek into something that feels important. 

Maybe the point of all of this is to understand our place in the grand tapestry of existence (the wording could use some work). The meaning of life isn't that it has no meaning. Meaning emerges from living. The meaning is in appreciating our contribution, no matter how small, to the constantly unfolding processes of reality. Sounds a little woo woo but that captures things well enough for me to get back to it after I have had some time to realize just how banal the thought really is. 

The spreadsheet says I'm at 179. Is the exact number really all that critical when I'm this far from zero?

Making the choice to finish a book tonight

The picture is actually worse than the 181 that I admitted to in my last post. I have 3 more books coming from Thriftbooks and another one on order from a different website. If I'm all about getting back to reading, what will I be reading to regain some momentum towards BSZ?

I have 4 books in some state of progress. I will finish The Metal Master, a Doc Savage book that I bought when I picked up the embossed copy of To the Sea and Beyond, tonight. I kind of feel like counting this as a finished book is cheating, it's only 130 pages, but it's a stand alone novel so it gets counted as a book. (My curiosity about Doc Savage is sated, I don't see any more of these in my future reading plans.) I'm making steady progress on Rhythm of War doing the audio/ebook combo. I'm about 50% of the way through it. It's a solid book with a fun world, rich characters, and an engaging story. I will keep making steady progress on that while I work on other reading projects at the same time. I will definitely finish those two, but I'm not so certain that I will see the other two books that I have going to the end. One is an ebook, I'm not going to read that in lieu of Rhythm of War, and the other is a book that I haven't picked up in months (I just can't get through Jeffereson's time in France). I guess that means I get to pick out something new to read after I finish The Metal Master tonight.

What I read isn't as important as long as I actually pick up the book and read it. My focus right now is choosing to do the thing I tell myself I want to do rather than just doing the easy thing. I thought I would read more these last few days that my wife has been out of town, but I've mostly just sat on the couch looking at a screen. I did manage to write a couple of blog posts (assuming I actually finish this one, which if you're reading it means that I did get to some point that I considered the end) but accomplished very little reading. I thought I would finish The Metal Master on Wednesday night after reading about 75% of it on the plane ride back from Virginia. That didn't happen. I'm too busy monitoring bets or watching YouTube videos. That tendency to do things that are easy is the habit I'm trying to break. Taking strong actions toward long standing goals has been a big challenge the last few years. I'm back sliding on BSZ, have basically had the same half-assed training for all my Disney Marathons, and have managed to lose pretty much no weight (at least I haven't really gained weight either). Yes my job is demanding and I'm pretty beat by the end of the day. That doesn't mean that I can't make better choices when I'm not at work.

Let's make a better choice now. It's getting late, and I very much want to finish this book tonight. With that in mind, time to wrap up this post and finish The Metal Master.

I choose to read

I just tallied up some of the choices that I've made over the last six months. After neglecting to update my bought but not read list for pretty much the entire year, I just found out that my path to Book Shelf Zero stands at 181 books. That's not really the point of the project. The point is to read all the books I own before I die. How will I ever find out what kind of transformation is waiting for me on the other side of all these books if I fail to read them? Of course I've never consciously think about the latent transformation potential of my unread books, but waiting for these books to change me in a way that makes me more of who I think I should be consistently emerges as the best explanation for continuously returning to this goal despite getting no closer to its completion. I'm not sure goal is even the right word. Compulsion. Habit. Distraction. Probably all of the above.

Completing the goal was never really the point of the activity in the first place. I was never going to stop buying books. The point was to read them at a pace faster than I was buying so I would eventually get to reading all of my books. The aspirational books are the most likely titles to elude a quick read. The fun ones get read. The ones that could actually change me in some way just sit on the shelves. They are fun little reminders that there are things I will never get to in my life, no matter how valuable the experience could prove. Book Shelf Zero is my fear of death project. Reading all of my books is a way to deny my mortality. I don't have an infinite number of somedays, but who cares about that when I have all of these books that I will eventually get around to reading. 

I recently bought a book because it reminded me of why I started this project (well, explicitly stated that I wanted to read my books, there was also an implicit assumption that I was buying these books to read them). My copy of The March to the Sea and Beyond once belonged to Philip Crosby. I know this because he used his embosser to mark the book, twice, and signed it the day he bought the book. I assume that Phil's family sold the books after he died. This item that he valued enough to mark it indelibly as his came into my possession when I bought it from a used book store in St Petersburg, Florida. My books will likely meet a similar fate. I feel like I've built myself with books. It's probably not accurate, I'm much more than the books I've read, but reading and books have always been a part of me. 

Book Shelf Zero is about reconnecting with books and reading (before it's too late!). The goal is a reminder to pick up and read what I own rather than hunting for the next book to buy. As buying books and reading them are two distinct but connected activities, BSZ was my way of shifting the arrow of that equilibrium towards reading. My failure to read more of what I bought is just me choosing to do other things than read. I've had plenty of excuses to not read over the last few years. If I am sincere about wanting to read more, and I really think I am, I need to make the choice to read. Directing my will towards reading and its transformative capacity will be my subversive act against the assault on our time, attention, and thoughts from all kinds of governmental and commercial cartels. My mind is my own. My choices are my own. I become the choices I make. I choose to read.

1 month into 2024 update

I finished reading Goshawk Squadron last night. That's 3 books for 2024. Both of the books that I've read in full this year were part of my end of the year Thristbooks order. That's me following up on my plan to read books that I feel like reading rather than committing to some plan that I will struggle to actually follow. I scanned my shelves for what I thought would be a fun, easy read. I picked up The Furies of Calderon after some consideration. I bought that book before moving down here, but I've been skipping it when looking for my next book. It's kind of a thick book, and I wasn't sure I was ready to commit to something that long (and it's the first book in a series). The difference this time was my having listened to the first and most of the second books in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. Those are crisp, clever, and well-written books. If this one is anywhere near that league, I figured it would be a fun read that wouldn't take long despite the book's heft. 

Well, I'm almost 70 pages in after starting it this morning. It's pretty much what I expected. It's been a long time since I've read a book that I want to get back to. The Furies of Calderon fits that category. The other books I've read this year, Goshawk Squadron and 10:04, were not exactly duds, they were both excellent books that went quickly (they're also both pretty short), but The Furies of Calderon is a different kind of engrossing. It's a fast paced, action packed thriller. There is no point other than a fun read. Those have been missing from my reading life for the last couple of years. I need to keep reminding myself that I read for fun. I don't need to prove something with my reading. 

Project Status

An update on pretty much any of my various projects will be about how little progress I am making towards longer term goals. Oh well. The year is winding down so I will have a chance to revisit some of my various projects, assess what's working (and whether I want to keep doing some of these things), and get myself a new direction on one or two of these efforts. 

My marathon training has been pretty much a carbon copy of last year's cycle. I've run about the same distance, have had similar length runs, and am hitting pretty much the same pace on my runs. The one big difference is the health of my knee this Sunday 3 weeks out from the race. I screwed something up during breakfast on the equivalent Saturday last year. I did not have that issue yesterday. That means I can do a long run this week and some more medium distance runs next week. I did a short run on the Monday of last year and that was it until the marathon. The running I did manage during the marathon was inefficient and super slow. I did very little training the weeks around Christmas two years ago because I was up with family in Virginia. Hopefully training right up until the race (with the appropriate taper) will result in a better race experience. I know I won't be doing an effortless jog over the entire distance. I'm hoping for less than 6 hours. That's an average of 13 minute miles. I would be happy with that. It would be a good building point for starting the new year with a better running plan. 

I'm barely reading. I don't think I've read a single page in over a week. I don't have the energy to read before going to bed and I'm not looking for time to read in at other points during the day. I'm too distracted by games and other trivialities. I have basically zero shot at meeting most of my New Year's Resolutions, but I could read a Dickens book. I read a few pages of Oliver Twist. That's my best bet at finally checking another Dickens book off my list, but I haven't built any momentum. It's more a choice and being lazy than any actual barrier between me and getting some reading done. I need to change up how I use my time and make time for reading. I really don't like this lack of progress on reading books. Hopefully I can use my week off Christmas week to build some momentum and head into the New Year poised to get my owned book pile a little smaller. 

Books, training, odds

I finally finished another book. My reading time has shrunk to almost nothing, but I still try to read a few pages every night. I used this approach to get through 10 lbs Penalty by Dick Francis. There was a 5 Books post on his novels a month or so ago. I could remember seeing his books in the bookstore so I found one at the library and gave it a go. It was a fun book. The story moved along briskly, the writing style was pleasant, and the dialogue wasn't stilted or awkward. I liked the book enough that I went up to a local library and bought a couple of his books from the used book section for 75 cents each. I don't count these as owned books. They are basically open ended library books. I will put them in the local take one leave one box when I finish them. 

10 lbs Penalty was my 21 book of the year, but, more interestingly, it is book 799 of my Goodreads list.  Assuming I don't start reading something else, definitely not a given, Jefferson and the RIghts of Man will be book 800. This book is going very slowly. I am very much against abandoning this one as I left Jefferson in France when I stopped reading The Hemingses and he's currently in France as I'm about a third of the way through the second volume of the Dumas Malone bio. I would like to get back to the US with Jefferson in one of these chronological biographies. My wife is out of town this week so I will make it a point to read a decent chunk of the book each night. If nothing else I'm hoping to build momentum and get myself moving enough that I can make it to the end of the book. I'm not really feeling anything else I have sitting on my shelves. The most likely usurper would be the 4th Sanderson secret project book. I would like to finish that by the end of the year, but I have a couple weeks until I start feeling pressure on that one. I have the last week of the year off so I'm hoping to do some day reading during that week. A fun book like Sanderson is a perfect fit.

Marathon training plods on. Saturdays are usually for long runs, but I spent my morning taking my wife to the airport. I tried running after dropping her off last year. That was probably the worst run of the training cycle. My solution for avoiding the heat was to use the treadmill. That kept me out of the sun, but it was still blazing hot, even with a fan blowing on me. My shoes were giving me all kinds of issues and my watch got very confused by the treadmill. I got in 10 miles of a planned 18 and called it quits. My training never really recovered. I did a shorter run the next week, was at Disney World the week after that, and messed up my knee getting into our booth at dinner. I'm still amazed I was able to finish the marathon. So rather than tempting a repeat and getting off my training track, I will skip beer and go to bed kind of early tonight so I can get up and run tomorrow. My plan is for 16 miles. That gets me to the turn toward Animal Kingdom on the actual marathon course. Having that reference in mind during these long runs has helped me stay focused on making the entire distance. It's not just an abstract number. It's a physical place that I can visualize myself running through. The deeper I can get in training, the better I should do on the actual course.

My plan for the post run portion of my Sunday is to exert myself by hanging out on the couch. Sports betting is once again a part of my life so I will turn on Red Zone and spend the day taking it easy. I should replace a section of screen around my pool, but I'm typically not in great moving around status after my long runs. Maybe tomorrow will be different. I plan on getting in the pool after my run. I've been avoiding the pool while some scraps on my knee and hand heal (I tripped on the sidewalk during my Thursday run the week before Thanksgiving). I've managed to avoid adding more money to my account after my initial deposit. I've been a bit free in making bets. I found a pretty good rhythm when I was betting on college basketball games a couple of years ago. I didn't do as well when I was in Virginia last March during the conference tournaments. I was just betting favorites without really having a strategy or an approach. I have fallen into that same pattern in the first couple weeks of having the ability to bet games again. I thought I was going to have to reload my account, but I put my last $35 on a three game Premier League parlay that cashed this morning. (I usually bet conservatively to avoid big losses, but I read a tweet about Elon Musk's approach to risk and decided it was the right time to go all in.) That bet got me back over $100 so I could take a step back and reassess my approach with a fresh bank roll. I've used the public bet info in the CBS Sports app to get me out of my losing approach. I'm not looking to make a bunch of money. I just want to be able to keep making small bets to keep things interesting. 

Reading Projects Status Update

Bookshelf Zero: My owned but unread list currently stands at 169 books. I finally finished A Bend in the RIver. That's the third book I've read by VS Naipaul. I understand why he is (was?) held in high regard, but his books are not fun to read. It's nice to have read them, but the actual process of reading them is just not very much fun. Rewarding and insightful but kind of boring and tedious. I also read one of my Booker Shortlist from 2021, A Passage North. That book is brilliant. I could write an essay but I won't. I'm currently working on the second volume of Malone's Jefferson bio. I'm not zipping through it because I keep falling asleep rather than reading later in the evening. I may be able to pick up something easier and get through it more quickly in the moments that I am not dozing off, but I'm committed to getting through it. These are books I want to read. There is an ongoing effort to erase important historical periods and people. You don't have to like Thomas Jefferson, but he was a key figure in the formation of the United States. Feel free to criticize Dumas Malone's regard for his subject, but that doesn't mean what he says is false. It's like hearing about someone from a friend. The perspective is colored by feelings, but dispassionate and purely rational regard is inhuman. Rejecting all knowledge that violates the tenets of orthodoxy leftist idolatry narrows our world and shortens our perspective. That's by design. I vehemently reject that design so I engage in the subversive act of reading books about slave holding white guys written by admiring white guys. 

35 books read in 2023: Not gonna happen. I'm at 20 for the year. This is an improvement over last year's 18 books. Maybe I will figure out how I was reading 30 to 40 books a few years ago and recapture that frenetic pace, but I'm just not getting through books at that clip right now. I just looked over some of my lists from previous years. There were plenty of quick and easy reads in there, but there are a decent number of serious books sprinkled through the lists. My life just isn't built like it was in 2015 or 2016. I need to recognize this simple fact and move on. I've had so much angst over how my life doesn't fit into that mold anymore. It was great, but I'm not in that place anymore. For all that I was doing things that I felt like I should be doing, I wasn't doing anything to grow or expand my experience. I found a very safe and secure spot where I could do pleasant things and not really deal with anything very consequential. So I read lots of books but otherwise just kind of drifted along. I'm not drifting now. I would still like to read more books.

Read a Dickens work: Nope. I'm just not feeling highly wrought Victorian novels right now. 

Completing various reading lists: I've crossed a few books off of each of my 3 lists this year. A Bend in the River is a Modern LIbrary Top 100 book. That's my second of the year. The first was The Postman Always Rings Twice, which is such a short book it kind of feels like cheating to include that effort in the list. I may read another before the year is out. I've read a couple New Canon titles. Checked off a Drizzt book. I'm working through these things. They don't get any longer and I haven't added any new ones so there is progress being made. I have read enough good books that I would never have thought to pick up if not for these lists that I will continue to pursue completion. They keep me away from so much of that crap that is getting published it's worth going deeper down these rabbit holes to keep escaping from the horrors of the modern publishing enterprise.  

There are others, but those are the ones that I try to keep in the tightest focus. We'll see how the year progresses. At least I've avoided the ponderous time sucks that plagued my reading time last year.