Running Journal, Friday, 2020-01-24

Resting heart rate: 82bpm around 30 minutes after running
Body Mass Index (BMI): 25.5 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,098 cal/day
Weather: twilight, clear
Temp: 13 C (55 F) 0 mph wind
Time: 5:50-6:25 p.m. (35 minutes)
Terrain: Hilly
Comments: Lovely twilight view from OPERS field running track overlooking the lights of Monterey Bay. Stopped to walk a few times on the way back after running to the top of a hill.
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): ~3.5 miles
Weight (after run): 87.3 kg (192.5 lb)
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: No
Foods eaten today: oatmeal with banana and crushed walnuts, coffee, almonds, green olives, matcha green tea, ramen noodles, curry sambosa, blood orange, fizzy water

Running Journal, Friday, 2020-01-17

Resting heart rate: 93bpm around 15 minutes after running
Body Mass Index (BMI): 25.4 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,092 cal/day
Weather: partly sunny
Temp: 8 C (46 F) 0 mph
Time: 5:00-5:30 p.m. (30 minutes)
Terrain: Hilly
Comments: Ran through Porter Meadow and found a makeshift meeting spot at the far corner, as well as a wooden bench and an upholstered love seat covered in graffiti (just before Kresge Gardens). Day after heavy rains and a bit slippery and muddy in spots. Felt strong despite the hills and ran across to Kerr Hall and down past the art/music buildings to Oakes Path and ended my run after running up the hill between Oakes and Rachel Carson, walking back up to the dining hall and across the bridge. Just enough to get the heart going.
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): ~1.8 miles
Weight (after run): 86.9 kg (191.5 lb)
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: No
Foods eaten today: Banana, quiche, coffee, almonds, dark chocolate coffee beans, green olives, green tea with ginger

Book Recommendations: 2019

Out of the 144 audiobooks and 3 print books I listened to/read in 2019, these represent my favorites, in no particular order:

• The Idiot (2017) - Elif Batuman
• Everything's Trash, But It's Okay (2018) - Phoebe Robinson
• The Cooking Gene (2017) - Michael W. Twitty
• Educated: A Memoir (2018) - Tara Westover
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It (2016) - Christopher Voss
• Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (2010) - Anthony Bourdain (and his first book as well, but trying to limit to one per author)
• The Last Black Unicorn (2017) - Tiffany Haddish
• As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (2014) - Cary Elwes
• Everything Trump Touches Dies (2018) - Rick Wilson
• The House of Broken Angels (2018) - Luís Alberto Urrea
• The Island of Sea Women (2019) - Lisa See
• No Walls and the Recurring Dream: A Memoir (2019) - Ani DiFranco
• Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood (2019) - J. Michael Straczynski
• The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California (2019) - Mark Arax
• Exhalation: Stories (2019) - Ted Chiang

I would wholeheartedly recommend these and consider reading/listening to them again (in at least one case I have).

Note: a special recognition for audiobook "High School (2019) - Tegan Quin and Sara Quin", for enhancing the narrative inline with musical performances and other spoken word articulations. Brava!

Books List 2020

Ordered by most recently listened to, first.

Audiobooks 

1. Queue:
1. The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III (1982) - Robert A. Caro
2. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III (2002) - Robert A. Caro
3. The Fifth Season (2015) - N. K. Jemisin
4. How Democracies Die (2018) - Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
2. Me (2019) - Elton John
1. Different needles between vinyl and shellac
2. Soccer team
3. Escaping through window for fights when Bye Bye Blackbird didn't work
4. Queen Elizabeth hilarious in person vs formal in public
5. Princess Diana and Richard Gere vs Sylvester Stallone
3. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019) - Jenny Odell
1. Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: "I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more time with your friends."
2. Old Survivor tree: "the last remaining old-growth coastal redwood of the redwood forest that once populated the Oakland Hills in California"
4. Lot: Stories (2019) - Bryan Washington
1. Browns and tans
5. The Sixth Man: A Memoir (2019) - Andre Iguodala
1. Children fight battles parents lose
2. Anyone with tee shirt tucked into their shorts will give you hell
3. Overcoming cheating like a drug
4. Focus on the game feel like yourself
5. College athletes get homework tutors who do their work for them
6. Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (2014) - Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
7. The Hate U Give (2017) - Angie Thomas
1. Incredible book
2. "When it rains like that while the sun's out, Nana says the devil is beating his wife."
3. Black Jesus
4. Momma doesn't cuss anyone out on the freeway. She says ... "Give me strength Lord, give me strength."
5. “Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared.”
8. Warlight (2018) - Michael Ondaatje
1. Someday you might be eating with the king so mind your manners
9. We Live in Water: Stories (2013) - Jess Walter
10. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't (2007) - Robert I. Sutton
1. Fight as if right; listen as though wrong
2. Disagree then commit
11. Americanah (2013) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
1. Racial disorder syndrome
2. Hispanic is Spanish but not from Spain
12. Wolf Hall (2009) - Hilary Mantel
13. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017) - Robert Sapolsky
1. Amygdala tumor
2. Fear anxiety corresponding aggression
3. Cognitive costs of empathizing with people at a distance: Statistic vs person ... put a face to it
4. Gestational diabetes
5. Rice (communal) vs wheat (individualist) cultures
14. An American Marriage (2018) - Tayari Jones
15. The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die (2017) - Keith Payne
1. Egalitarian because food better in others stomachs than wasted
2. Melvin Lerner's Just-World hypothesis
16. Thanks a Lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story (2018) - Roger Daltrey
1. Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle & The Chieftains - Behind Blue Eyes (50th birthday, Carnegie Hall)
2. Heather Taylor was the inspiration for Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady
3. Keith Moon's fear of stage part of alcohol abuse
4. "I used to imagine myself as a duck. An acid comment here, a trashed hotel room there – they were raindrops rolling off my duck's back. A Zen duck. That was me. Quack, quack."
5. Purchased equipment on hire purchase
6. "Let's drive, we used to say before a gig. Drive. Drive. Drive. I used to feel like we were trying to drive our music through the audience. to the back wall. I've always done that, even at Woodstock, with no back wall and half a million people stretching over the horizon."
17. The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy) (2017) - Katherine Arden
1. "But she ate her porridge with wolflike intensity and asked Dunya often if she had grown any bigger."
2. "Everything dies" (the rusulka)
3. "She was rubbed with horrible mustard-seed, and beaten with quick, whisking birch-branches, to liven her blood. They wrapped her in wool, bandaged her skinned hand, and poured soup down her throat."
4. This book feels like Dostoevsky; I'm thinking Brothers Karamazov 
18. The President Is Missing (2018) - Bill Clinton and James Patterson
1. Easy listen; the light beer of novels
2. Pretty easy to tell when President Clinton portions appear
19. Dominicana: A Novel (2019) - Angie Cruz
1. Light pigmented (Spanish) vs. dark pigmented (African) Latin Americans
2. Lots of food references made me hungry
20. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (1959) - Alfred Lansing
1. But then he added: "Hope tells a flattering tale."
2. Salt water boils
3. Enjoyed this one; amazing story
21. Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up) (2015) - Marie Kondō
1. Thought semi-seriously to myself: This book represents a "cry for help" ... then I felt bad when she bravely admitted suffering a nervous breakdown : o (
22. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism (2015) - Fumio Sasaki
1. "There's only one item that I bought again after letting it go. It's a foot massager from the manufacturer Omron."
2. "We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves."
23. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2018) - Kirk W. Johnson
1. 007's name from American ornithologist James Bond
2. Enjoyed this book
24. Beastie Boys Book (2018) - Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond
• Not a big fan, but now I can say I know the names and faces
• They acted poorly toward a lot of people; to their credit, they acknowledge their mistakes and what hasn't aged well
• "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence" (note: they note adding Boys as a suffix represents a redundancy)
• Adam's Toyota Corrola mix-tape listing:
• Come Along - Lee "Scratch" Perry
• People Funny Boy - Lee "Scratch" Perry
• Croaking Lizard - Prince Jazzbo
• I Gotta Stand for Something - Professor and the Efficiency Experts
• Plantagenet - Back Door
• Sweetie Pie - Stone Alliance
• Mr. Brown - Bob Marley & the Wailers
• Fried Neck Bones and Some Home Fries - Willie Bobo
• Answer the Phone - Cheech and Chong
• New Bell - Manu Dibango
• Give It Up or Turn It Loose - Dick Hyman
• I Walk in Guilded Splinters - Dr. John
• You Are the One For Me - Charles Wright
• The Humpty Dance - Digital Underground
• Lovely Is Today - Eddie Harris

Using the Libby app (via Overdrive).

E-Books

1. None

Print

1.  "They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Third edition - 2014) - Gerald Graff (with Cathy Birkenstein)
2. "Solutions and Other Problems" (2020) - Allie Brosh

Suggestions

• Mike Liebhold (via):
• Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah 
• Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God 
• Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
• UCSC LIT 61U - Introduction to SF (online class):
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Book I of the Lilith's Brood Trilogy (1969) - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Dawn (1987) - Octavia E. Butler (note: not on Overdrive)
• Childhood's End (1953) - Arthur C. Clarke (note: not on Overdrive)
• "The Cold Equations" (1954) - Tom Godwin (note: not on Overdrive)
• Sail On! Sail On! (1952) - Philip José Farmer (note: not on Overdrive)
• 2018-01-08: David Finkel's The Good Soldiers (via)
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• John Cole (via):
• The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (2013) - Emily Croy Barker
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (2015) - Sam Quinones
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018) - Anand Giridharadas
• Bookshop Santa Cruz
• Winter 2020 reading list
1. Dominicana: A Novel (2019) - Angie Cruz
2. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (2019) - Casey Cep
3. IQ (An IQ Novel #1) (2017) - Joe Ide
4. Our Homesick Songs (2019) - Emma Hooper
5. Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living (2018) - Karen Auvinen
6. The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy #1) (2017) - Katherine Arden
7. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2019) - Kirk Wallace Johnson
8. Trinity: A Novel (2019) - Louisa Hall
• President Obama's reading list 
• Circa Dec 2019 (via):
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power () - Shoshana Zuboff
• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company () - William Dalrymple (note: ebook only)
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee () - Casey Cep
• Girl, Woman, Other () - Bernardine Evaristo
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present () - David Treuer
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy () - Jenny Odell
• Lost Children Archive () - Valeria Luiselli
• Lot: Stories () - Bryan Washington
• Normal People () - Sally Rooney
• The Orphan Master's Son () - Adam Johnson
• The Yellow House () - Sarah M. Broom (note: ebook only)
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland () - Patrick Radden Keefe
• Solitary () - Albert Woodfox (note: ebook only)
• The Topeka School () - Ben Lerner
• Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion () - Jia Tolentino
• Trust Exercise () - Susan Choi
• We Live in Water: Stories () - Jess Walter
• A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney's Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule () - Jim Rooney (note: not on Overdrive yet; published Nov 2019)
• The Sixth Man () - Andre Iguodala
• Circa Aug 2019 (via):
• Toni Morrison: Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel­
• Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women
• American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
• The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Inland by Téa Obreht
• How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
• Maid by Stephanie Land
• Circa Dec 2018:
• Becoming by Michelle Obama (Overdrive)
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Overdrive)
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Overdrive)
• The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne (Overdrive)
• Educated by Tara Westover (Overdrive)
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner (Overdrive)
• A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (Overdrive: Recommended 01/01/2019)
• How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Overdrive)
• In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu (Overdrive)
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (Overdrive)
• The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
• Note: recommended 01/01/2019 (Northern California Public Library)
• The Return by Hisham Matar
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (read)
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Overdrive)
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes (Overdrive)
• American Prison by Shane Bauer  (Overdrive)
• Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault (Overdrive)
• Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday  (Overdrive)
• Feel Free by Zadie Smith  (Overdrive)
• Florida by Lauren Groff  (Overdrive)
• Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Overdrive)
• Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar (Overdrive)
• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson (Overdrive)
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark  (Overdrive)
• There There by Tommy Orange  (Overdrive)
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Overdrive)
• Josh Marshall 2018 Holiday recommendations:
• Eric H. Cline: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. Nicholas Ostler
• 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History)
• Only History of Ancient Greece available
• Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Barry Cunliffe: By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia
• Nothing as of 01/01/2019
• Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• David Anthony: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
• Recommended 12/31/2018
• Roger Crowley: Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
• City of Fortune and Conquerers recommendable as audiobooks
• David Abulafia: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
• Nothing as of 07/18/2018
• James Romm: Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire
• ebook only (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Peter Heather: 
• The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
• Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
• The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
• Note: ebook only; audiobook not recommendable (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Hugh Thomas: Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico
• Nothing available as of 07/18/2018
• Lionel Casson: Libraries in the Ancient World
• Unavailable in any format (Overdrive)
• Life in Ancient Rome recommendable as Audiobook (Overdrive)
• Josh Marshall 1066 Norman Conquest Discussion:
• Short History of the Normans (2016) - Leonie V. Hicks
• The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (2013) - Marc Morris
• The Norman Conquest: England after William the Conqueror (Critical Issues in World and International History) (2007) - Hugh M. Thomas
• Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 (2011) - Robin Fleming
• William, King and Conqueror (2013) - Mark Hagger
• Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100 (1994) - Brian Golding
• The Normans in Europe (2000) - Elisabeth van Houts
• William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (2016) - David Bates
• Bill Gates - 5 books to enjoy this winter (2019)
• An American Marriage () - Tayari Jones
• These Truths () - Jill Lepore
• Growth () - Vaclav Smil
• Prepared () - Diane Tavenner
• Why We Sleep () - Matthew Walker
• Ask A Manager 2019 recommendations
• The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust () - Diana B. Henriques
• Severance () - Ling Ma
• Educated () - Tara Westover
• The Awkward Age () - Francesca Segal
• The Darlings () - Cristina Alger
• Late in the Day () - Tessa Hadley
• Seven Days of Us () - Francesca Hornak
• The Banker’s Wife () - Cristina Alger
• The Age of Light () - Whitney Scharer
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup () - John Carreyrou
• Daisy Jones and the Six () - Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Italian Teacher () - Tom Rachman
• The Imperfectionists () - Tom Rachma
• Foreign Affairs () - Alison Lurie
• Normal People () - Sally Rooney
• Lights All Night Long () - Lydia Fitzpatrick
• The Farm () - Joanne Ramos
• The Mother-in-Law () - Sally Hepworth
• Tomorrow There Will Be Sun () - Dana Reinhardt
• The Great Believers () - Rebecca Makkai
• Ask again, Yes () - Mary Beth Keane
• Crampton Hodnet () - Barbara Pym
• The Body in Question () - Jill Ciment
• Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad () - Nicole Weisensee Egan
• The Expatriates () - Janice Y. K. Lee
• Supper Club () - Lara Williams
• Mrs. Everything () - Jennifer Weiner
• The Floating Feldmans () - Elyssa Friedland
• Reading Behind Bars: A True Story of Literature, Law, and Life as a Prison Librarian () - Jill Grunenwald
• The Most Fun We Ever Had () - Claire Lombardo
• Reasons to be Cheerful () - Nina Stibbe
• The Dearly Beloved () - Cara Wall
• City of Girls () - Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Lager Queen of Minnesota () - J. Ryan Stadal
• The Secrets We Kept () - Lara Prescott
• Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont () - Elizabeth Taylor
• The Dutch House () - Ann Patchett
• Evvie Drake Starts Over () - Linda Holmes
• Lust & Wonder () - Augusten Burroughs
• Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA () - Amaryllis Fox
• The Dreamers () - Karen Thompson Walker
• Nothing to See Here () - Kevin Wilson
• The Leftovers () - Tom Perrotta
• The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption () - Barbara Bisantz Raymond
• Know My Name () - Chanel Miller
• Be Frank With Me () - Julia Claiborne Johnson
• Us () - David Nicholls
• HackerNews
• Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? 
• Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?
• Ask HN: What book(s) had the most impact for you in 2019?
• Ask HN: Books You Read in 2019?
• Ask HN: What were the best science fiction books that you read in 2019?

Previously, Previously, Previously