Memoirs of Lady Trent Series by Marie Brennan

A Natural History of Dragons, Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, In the Labyrinth of Drakes, Within the Sanctuary of Wings

3/5. Series of fictional memoirs of a dragon naturalist in a secondary fantasy world inspired by eighteenth-centuryish Europe/Asia/Africa.

Excellent fun adventure stories told in a brisk, ferociously dragon nerd style. These books neatly balance the travel and adventure and discovery with consciousness of gender, race, and class privilege and oppression. The fun isn't ruined, but it's definitely not unalloyed either. That's tough to pull off.

But perhaps the most unusual thing about these books, and the thing I appreciated most, is the presentation of a strong, abiding male-female friendship and partnership that starts out antagonistic, warms up, and is never even the tiniest bit romantic. It's amazing.

Content notes: Discussion of miscarriage.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

4/5. A slim set of recollections surrounding running and writing. Ranges from the obnoxious – his casual assertion that there are no metrics in writing performance, because really who cares whether the book sells or not (easy for you to say, bub) – to the sublime – the entire chapter on ultrarunning and what it is like, physically and psychologically, to run 62 miles in one day. Centrally, this book circles around the connection between writing and running in specific to address the idea of the exercise of the body in relation to the exercise of the mind. This is something I have thought about a fair amount, being both a writer and a runner (well, at the moment I have a torn calf muscle and a newborn, but let's just assume that I will do both again one day, hopefully soon). The book doesn't give any answers, as I don't think there are many that can be reduced to words without becoming facile. We run because it helps us think? Well, yes, sure, obviously, but then why is it that the act of truly excellent running involves almost no thinking at all? The truth is they are connected in some profound, strange way, and Murakami can't explain it so I'm not about to try.