September + October 25
Life Events
September and October went by in an absolute blur. I’ve started my new job at Harvard VPAL and am happy as a clam going in to an office again. It has added a new logistical layer of stress into my life by needing to meal-prep/organize myself without the same midday errand-running capability, but overall I believe is a net-positive to force some more scaffolding in to the way I spend my days.
Training
Finally feels as though I’ve settled back in to my regular lifting program again! weights still aren’t quite back to where they were pre-foot-in-boot but they’re very close! I’m running outside again (this will stop as it gets cold) without too much foot pain as well!
Making
One (1) sock for Lucas with yarn we bought in Nanaimo. The second will come eventually.
Media
BOOKS
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid. 4.5/5. so! good! i picked this up after hearing a comparison to Great Big Beautiful Life (which I have not read) but I kept waiting for the rival journalist to show up for ~60% of the book. I particularly loved the way the book covered different types of love & relationships and how self-assured of a character Evelyn Hugo was. it’s not a perfect book, there was some biphobia expressed by characters that I felt wasn’t addressed super well but regardless would recommend this to just about anyone.
Oathbound, Tracy Deonn. 3.5/5. The weakest of the series so far, imo, but I am so invested in the series that it would have needed to be Awful for me to not look forward to the fourth book. Took a lot of sidequests/pivots which ate a lot of page space.
The Will of the Many, James Islington. 5/5. Just a very fun good time. Main character is a special boy who is just better and smarter than everyone and so does experience very few real setbacks, but I’m very very interested to see where the future books go with their commentary on empire/rebellions. The author writes in a very visual way so it’s easy to picture everything happening.
Ten Thousand Stitches, Olivia Atwater. 3.5/5. Not as good as the first in the series (Half a Soul), but enjoyable!
The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin. 3.5/5. The pacing was a bit meandering, it’s tricky when one of the characters is staying in a single place for the whole book. It carried on a lot of the themes from the first regarding race, slavery, climate change, community but i’m not sure much was new. it was still a good book!
One for My Enemy, Olivie Blake. 2.5/5. I dunno man, I just did not buy the intensity of any of the relationships in this book! Perhaps that is just the romeo and juliet of it all. The amount that the motivations and decisions of the characters were believable and/or relatable followed a U curve, it started at a decent level, dropped to almost nothing, and then a bit of an uptick at the very end. Wouldn’t really recommend this one.
The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett. 4.5 and 4/5. one thing about me is that I love to read the author’s note first so I know going in what sort of themes/morals they might be trying to get across. The first book gave a lot of credit to the grunt-work, the cogs in the machine, the everyday people who keep a government and system running. The second was more of an anti-king manifesto, but I felt it was weakened by being in contrast to an empire trying to absorb said king’s land. However, both are very fun mysteries in their own rights and the world is a fun one to explore.
The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club, Timothy Schaffert. 3/5. This has the same issue as One for My Enemy does, which is that I don’t believe any of the characters should feel as strongly about each other as they do. I do however, find the premise of “we rolled our eyes at the same thing so now we are allies” as a dynamic in a group environment very compelling, lol
Locker Room Talk, Melissa Ludtke. 3.5/5. Written by one of my teammates!! Melissa sued Major League Baseball to be allowed into the clubhouse along all the other male reporters after Bowie Kuhn overruled the players and clubs to ban her. The reason it doesn’t get a higher star rating is that it’s an extremely nitty-gritty look into the actual court play-by-play which may be a bit dry if someone is just looking for a higher overview. Personally I enjoyed that aspect, it was interesting to hear how much of the anti-discrimination case came down to deciding if the state of New York had a vested interest in keeping women out in order to apply the 14th Amendment.
podcasts
The Ethics of Wearable Technology, PT Inquest
Hades 2 1.0 & Greek Mythology in Games, Get Played
Jules Mitchell: Do we actually need stability and proprioception training?, Mindful Strength
Games
Literally just Hades 2. It feels like a better game than the first in that there’s more to do and a more interesting mechanics BUT isn’t as much of a revelation because it is, in fact, a sequel. Extremely glad it has been made, extremely excited to see what Supergiant does next.
Articles
Stay In It!, Ask Polly (paywall)
“My biggest insight this year has been that I can experience hurt and discomfort without telling a story (Why am I so thin-skinned to feel this way?), treating the situation like a problem that needs to be solved, […] or vowing to solve this puzzle by disengaging, feeling less, doing less, caring less (I won’t say goodbye to my daughter in the morning because it obviously annoys her.)”
What the Right Gets Right About What's Gone Wrong with Public Education, The Education Wars.
“… the right is offering a vision of education that is explicitly positioned as an alternative to soulless workforce development. We may be uncomfortable with the focus on patriotism, western civilization, or outright religiousity […], but what’s key here is that the goals—of cultivating wonder in children, encouraging students to get lost in the magic of storytelling and to wrestle with profound questions—are compelling to all kinds of parents”
How Do We Write Now?, Patricia Lockwood.
“That your attention is in one sense the most precious part of you, it is your soul spending yourself, to teach you that there’s always more. That your attention is a resource that can be drafted, commandeered, militarized and made to march — like youth, passion, or patriotism.”