It struck a nerve

Kachin to kita

The running lapsed for two weeks because of the previously mentioned snow and a lack of discipline (but not motivation. Never confuse discipline with motivation, though the two certainly compliment one another). I finally got out there this past Friday for the first time in two whole weeks. While my mind was praising itself for its discipline, my body began protesting violently at about 2 in the afternoon, and continues to protest two days later.

I finally snagged a copy of The Shell Game, which is another rowing book. This one is nonfiction. It’s by a Yale rower who was chosen to but did not go to the Olympics because he was chosen in 1980. Fun to read, but the ending seemed to be a bit bland after the meticulous detail in the beginning. Maybe he planned on writing more when he finished, and wanted to leave the ending open.

Since the Pumpkin City Public Library does not have an extensive collection of books in English, when I want to read something in English, I am almost always obliged to buy it. So now I have The Boys in the Boat, The Shell Game, and Flat Water Tuesday on my bookshelf beside 頑張っていきまっしょい (Ganbatteikimasshoi) and the レガッタ (Regatta) series. Add the couple other books I want to read (including but not limited to Course Correction) and I’ll have the biggest English rowing library in town.

When people see rowing books on my bookshelf, they’ll either think me cool or geeky (but everyone knows that geeky is cool. Right? RIGHT???) What they will think of me if they see Wrong on my bookshelf is another matter altogether. I clicked on this one on Amazon because the author is someone I know from the comments section of a currently dormant website about an American TV show. She was a fun person on the site, so I figured this book would be these things too. And it was. It didn't make me feel things the way Flat Water Tuesday did (that one altered my respiratory function for at least three months). I won't rave about it the way I did about the Boys in the Boat. It was trashy, smutty fun. But...

The basic premise is that there’s this college student who has a crush on a customer who frequents the coffee shop where she works, and he turns out to be a gynecologist at her school’s student health center, and they get into a relationship. This story requires an “other woman” and since the man is a gynecologist the other woman will, of course, be a surgeon. And...I won’t go into detail because someone might actually want to read the book (go ahead, if you’re into smutty trashy fun) but the surgeon is painted in a really bad light and I couldn’t help but wonder if she went through the whole “balancing career with romance and potential family” thing during residency and fellowship, while the young, shiny baggage-free college student...doesn’t. 

I’m probably reading too deeply into something that’s intended to be nothing more than witty, fun porn, but it kind of struck a nerve. I'm keeping this one on a back bookshelf, the way teenage boys hide their porn from their parents (or so I've heard...)