annuel

The Ele­ments of Elo­quence: How to Turn the Per­fect Eng­lish Phrase by Mark Forsyth
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

This book was in my Audi­ble queue for a long time and I can’t remem­ber for the life of me how I got in con­tact with it. Boy, was I glad I did and I am very grate­ful to my for­mer self. This was a great book that let me appre­ci­ate lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing in gen­er­al. Like an enthu­si­as­tic teacher with a pas­sion for the writ­ten word, that is rather infec­tive and makes you excit­ed your­self. It did give me insight in the var­i­ous ways to improve my rhymes and learn about the beau­ty of lan­guage instead of just its effec­tive­ness. How­ev­er, I found that due to the sheer vol­ume of top­ics dis­cussed that they are not well remem­bered, so it would be help­ful to read a sum­ma­ry again. Or to write one myself and keep only the things I found use­ful myself.
The way the author linked two sequen­tial top­ics was very tact­ful­ly done and often quite humor­ous. Rec­om­mend­ed book.

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Zen and the Art of Disc Golf by Patrick McCormick
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

Appre­ci­at­ed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between play­ing dis­c­golf and being in the here and now; to focus only on the shot you are about to make. I do think you would have to be a more than aver­age disc golf play­er to get the most out of this book and I am not sure if I meet those require­ments. It was an enjoy­able read, espe­cial­ly while play­ing a solo round of dis­c­golf and try­ing to apply the lessons as soon as I heard them. I think this is true for many applied-type of books, ones that involve ‘mind­less’ tasks, like run­ning and cook­ing. I mean, I can’t wait to read the Kitchen con­fi­den­tial while mak­ing some nice stews.

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Run­ning with the Mind of Med­i­ta­tion: Lessons for Train­ing Body and Mind by Saky­ong Mipham
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

I found this to be a very inspi­ra­tional book and I had a desire to share it with oth­ers. I looked up the author, which is a bud­dhist leader, which all have the for­mal title ‘Rin­poche’. This word to me sounds quite jol­ly to me and do like it. How­ev­er, the author is cur­rent­ly under inves­ti­ga­tion for some #metoo claims. I do think being in a posi­tion like his, that chances are high for them to be true, but who knows. It left a real sour taste and I imme­di­ate­ly lost the desire to share the book. How­ev­er, the con­cept of the four stages, the tiger, lion, garu­da (armed-bird) and drag­on, were real­ly intrigu­ing. This entices me to read anoth­er book about the Bud­dhis­tic teach­ings and see what I res­onate with.

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Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

I must say that this is a very unique book and I wish that I read it when I was the age of the main char­ac­ter, turn­ing fif­teen. It intro­duces you to so many cool con­cepts and new per­spec­tive that I think a lot of chil­dren that have a curi­ous nature would ben­e­fit from. I am not sure as to mark it rec­om­mend­ed read­ing for every high school stu­dent, but I think it makes for a great book to dis­cuss. Over­all great book with lots of metaphors, mak­ing phi­los­o­phy eas­i­er to grasp and over­all a nice sto­ry with lots of meta-awareness!

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Run­ning with the Kenyans: Pas­sion, Adven­ture, and the Secrets of the Fastest Peo­ple on Earth by Adha­ranand Finn
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

The secret is that there is no secret, just a myr­i­ad of help­ful cul­tur­al and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors of which not a sin­gle one is the dri­ving force. Def­i­nite­ly, this book has helped me put the recent break­ing of the two hour marathon lim­it in a cer­tain per­spec­tive. Mr. Kip­choge is def­i­nite­ly a prod­uct of his sur­round­ings and cul­ture, as we all are. How­ev­er, now it is clear what drove him to make these claims and put every­thing on the line to make it so. Most of all it was a great trav­el sto­ry and it enthu­si­asts me to head down south there once myself. 

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The Ter­ri­ble and Won­der­ful Rea­sons Why I Run Long Dis­tances by Matthew Inman
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

Great moti­va­tion­al and relat­able com­ic from The Oat­meal.
Dosed with plen­ty of humor, it takes very lit­tle time to read through this com­ic.
Which is great for rainy days, in which you strug­gle to go out­doors for a run. In the past I came across a short­er ver­sion of this book online and when I found out there was more, I did­n’t hes­i­tate to get my hands of a copy.
I am not famil­iar with the oth­er comics of the author, but I do like his style. 

The part about the DO or DO NOT was a bit con­fus­ing at times, since it was play­ing with sar­casm and not always was that obvious. 

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Altered Traits: Sci­ence Reveals How Med­i­ta­tion Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body by Daniel Gole­man
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

This book tries to explain the ben­e­fits and what is and isn’t proven about med­i­ta­tion. I found it to be very help­ful know­ing the sci­en­tif­ic back­ground in order to estab­lish a new rou­tine. Some­how, the ratio­nal part of my mind needs to be con­vinced of the ben­e­fits for me to make even an attempt.
In the end it comes down to prac­tice and dis­ci­pline. There exists lit­tle doubt that med­i­ta­tion is ben­e­fi­cial, it is just a mat­ter of mak­ing it a habit to reap the ben­e­fits and fine­tune the prac­tice when you are more expe­ri­enced. I do think it can help to focus and resist dis­trac­tions, to get more eas­i­ly into a flow and gath­er your thoughts when you find your­self over­whelmed by what life throws at you.

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How Bad Do You Want It?: Mas­ter­ing the Psy­chol­o­gy of Mind Over Mus­cle by Matt Fitzger­ald
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

Great insights in what moti­vates peo­ple and ath­letes in par­tic­u­lar, with their dri­ve to excel in endurance events! I enjoyed the vari­ety in the exam­ples, includ­ing sto­ries from sports that I nev­er con­sid­ered to be that inter­est­ing, but in the end it is about peo­ple aim­ing to achieve their goals and see­ing how they some­times hold them­selves back sub­con­cious­ly. The sto­ry about the per­son get­ting shot while out on a hunt­ing trip, is the type of unex­pect­ed thing that can change your life for good and to see this type of come­back is heart­warm­ing. This is def­i­nite­ly a book that I would like to read again in the future when I am train­ing for a par­tic­u­lar event that is close to my heart.

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The Hid­den Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

Edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing book about the lives of trees and how they inter­act with one anoth­er. Fas­ci­nat­ing read, espe­cial­ly if you are walking/running through the woods your­self while lis­ten­ing to this book. The dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on time that this type of plant life has is dif­fi­cult to envi­sion. In the end I found myself to be a lot more com­pas­sion­ate towards trees. Espe­cial­ly, know­ing how dis­rup­tive human inter­ven­tion can be with regards to the main­te­nance of forests. Of course, there has to be a lim­it of where we would draw a line as soci­ety towards the feel­ing of oth­er sen­tient being, but trees might be more per­cep­tive than we give them cred­it for.

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