(From the back of the book) We are coming apart. We’re a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time. America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal. Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves. Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.
I gave this book 3/5 ⭐️ because it’s a dystopian novel about the future, written in the past, where that future is horribly plausible and is already happening. Also because it’s a story about strong people of color, strong women, human rights, climate change, greed of the wealthy who treat people like a commodity, and hope in mutual help and good sense.
It took me over three months to finish the book. I went weeks without reading it. I hope to get a sense of closure and that the series makes sense, by reading “Parable of the talents” which continues the heroine’s story.
I found the climate change dystopian context riveting (the story, written in 1993, takes place in 2024-2027.)
I did not care for the religious or philosophical aspect of the novel which I found unconvincing and I was surprised and disappointed how little resistance the heroine encounters as she assembles a following to create this religious or philosophical community.
I was disappointed that I found so little character development. That so many things are painstakingly detailed while others are glossed over. It gave me a fuzzy and partial visualization interspersed with very precise events narration. I would have liked more balance.
I think the author made the right choice to write this as a diary. It makes the shortcomings a little less worse. It also allows the young (15-18 year old) protagonist to boast, be a bit smug, and quite manipulative. I still found it hard to believe that however cunning and smart she is, she is met with hardly any resistance from her fellow travelers.
2022 was the third year in a row after I started exercising daily. Before 2020, I was stubbornly against any form of exercise (I don’t even know why.) This is the review post of my exercising year 2022, following the review I wrote last year.
2022 was a good year. Not as impressive as 2021. I think I overdid it back then!
Raw numbers
I covered 2955 km (1,836 miles) walking and running.
I cycled 1315 km (817 miles) in 4 months.
I exercised 688 hours.
I engaged in 625 workouts.
To put in perspective some of these tallies (generated by the excellent and free Fitness Stats iOS app):
In 2022 I walked or ran more than I drove! 2900 km (1,800 miles) vs. 2500 km (1,500 miles)
688 hours of exercise is equivalent to 28.6 days (roughly a month of February)
625 workouts (25 fewer than last year) mean that on average I engaged in almost two different activities per day
Burnout and anemia
I became aware a few years back that I have anemia. I had been giving blood four times a year (following the recommendation for women) until I was advised that however generous I wanted to be, it was better to donate twice per year. I was medicated the first time this was diagnosed but it was just a temporary fix. My body does not absorb iron very well. And since hemoglobin carries the precious oxygen to muscles, anemia leads to fatigue. Meh. I also burned out at work after Summer. So I gradually ramped down exercising to a gentler degree.
My Apple Watch is my sidekick
I respond very well to the daily coaching of my Apple Watch. I start my “activities” on it, launch from it the music, podcasts or audio-books that I listen to via my headphones (Apple AirPods Pro or Bose QC35, both of which have noise cancellation.) I heed its reminders, enter the monthly challenges, the limited edition challenges.
Monthly challenges
In 2022 again I earned all of the monthly challenges. They are determined based on recent activities and are meant to either keep you at the same level or elevate you a bit, so that at the end of the year you have improved.
366.7 km (11.8/d)
17x double move goal
31x close all rings
15x double move goal
3140 minutes (105/d)
23902 kcal (797/d)
31x close all rings
5x double move goals
22400 kcal (747/d)
14x 700 kcal
3x double move goals
5 walking workouts
Notes: The first challenges of each quarter were not easy and required extra effort. In addition to these three (January, May, September), June was also difficult because burning almost 800 kcal everyday of the month on average required intense sessions during the weekends in order to make up for the work week where it’s usually harder to fit longer workouts. The last three of the year were really easy and I welcomed the break!
The January 2023 challenge is to cover at least 4 kilometers a day 14 times.
New gear
I got myself a nice pedal assist mountain bike 😍 early September.
Me next to my Nakamura eSummit 950 (picture by Daniel Dardailler)
Daniel asked me in the Spring if I might like to go biking with him once. To be honest, I wasn’t that chuffed and I said “sure, why not” but I didn’t think of it anymore until he asked again in the Summer. We finally went on the last day of August. It was A BLAST! We biked in the Esterel and I loved it so much that I bought my own e-mountain bike the same evening!
I bike as often as I can. With Daniel or not. To go places.
My longest and furthest cycling was on 13 November: 6 hours, 96 km (60 miles), elevation gain of 1067 meters (3,500 ft). I managed by saving as much battery as I could.
The advertised range of that e-bike is 80 km but in practice in the area it’s more accurate to plan circuits that do not exceed 50 km.
The part that was actual mountain biking was a small 9-kilometer area which I covered in less than 30 minutes! But going there was fun (and challenging) and going back along the coast was really beautiful. Great memory!
Aside: Even less use of my car
Since my teenage boy started high school in Cannes and takes the train I no longer have to drive him. I drove under 2500 km (1,500 miles) in 2022 and refueled only 3 times (180 liters).
I have continued walking, running (and now cycling) to places, to run errands, instead of driving which I do basically for grocery shopping.
Graphs
Daily average of exercise in 2022: 113 minutes (January peaked at 156 minutes per day on average)Daily average of active energy in 2022: 747 kcal (January peaked at 925 kcal per day on average)Daily average steps in 2022: 9,817 (January peaked at 16,712 steps per day on average)Daily average running and walking distance in 2022: 8 km (January peaked at 14.3 km per day on average)Daily average cycling in 2022: 31.5 km per day (August is misleading because I biked about 40 km on one day that month)Activity graphs in 2022: move, exercise (both fluctuated), stand (steady at 19)Weight graph for 2022: 63.12 kg on average, slight decrease
Strava’s year in sport
One of the perks of being a paying subscriber of the sports tracking app Strava is the yearly report. See below.
cover363 days active, top sport: walkingTop 1% of the most active (I’m among 100,000+ as Strava has over 100,000,000 users)Fastest/longest activities: 22 km/h avg speed cycling, 5:41 min/km avg pace running, 96 km furthest cycling Total elevation (34511 m) and distance (2778 km)Top photosStrava’s year 2022 in sport
Ah, the wit of Jane Austen is sharp in this novel, and enjoyable as always.
It is laid out a lot like a theatrical play. Many of the scenes could be played in their own stage. Except perhaps the long walks and the beach strolls.
This novel is her shortest, I think. However, I was stricken by the over-abundance of the word “and”.
I may return to this post with more to add. I only finished it now after starting it yesterday, and I may need to let it sink.
2022-07-27 update: “and” appears 2802 times (*) in a total of 227 pages (24 chapters). That’s 12.3 per page
(*) [After starting to underline them in my book, I found it tedious and unreliable, so I found an HTML version of the book, stripped it of non-novel cruft using emacs and then piped a word count to a grep, embracing the nerddom, but then ran a better grep(**) command which my colleague Bert Bos supplied and explained, because the simpler one would find hand, grand or wander, but not And,]
(Wed, 27 Jul 2022 01:11:29 CET)-(koalie@gillie:~:)$grep and /Users/koalie/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Downloads/Persuasion\,\ by\ Jane\ Austen.html | wc -l
2590
(**) (Wed, 27 Jul 2022 07:11:31 CET)-(koalie@gillie:~:)$grep -E -i -o '\band\b' /Users/koalie/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Downloads/Persuasion\,\ by\ Jane\ Austen.html | wc -l
2802
(where -E = enable regexps, -i = case-insensitive, -o = put every occurrence on a separate line, \b = word edge) [Thanks Bert!]
It’s the second time I read this book. While it took me 2 days only to read it the first time when I was a student in 1997, it took me over a month in 2022.
The book had left me then with a big impression and for years it was the gold standard for “entertainment I thoroughly enjoyed.” Having read it again, I know it isn’t the gold standard anymore. In the 25 years that passed since then, I discovered Jane Austen 🙂
One detail I loved about ‘Mr Murder’: The creative fictitious names one of the characters makes up as titles for the science fiction books another character keeps reading. Since the former doesn’t approve of that kind of literature, he makes up very funny titles.
One thing I hated: The sheer amount of guns and firing arms owned by the main protagonists, who are otherwise completely regular everyday people. So much so that their veneration for guns doesn’t ring true. They fit in the plot but there are way too many, particularly as this is obviously not a satire of gun ownership and worship in the USA.
I found it rather well written, but a bit too long while at the same time the end is rushed and superficial.
