2019 Books

    
     
Here is the 2019 list.  Enjoy.
    

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The (RR) ***   Twain, Mark

After the Miracle                              Shamsky, Art

Ball Four (20^th Anniv. Ed.)                    Bouton, Jim

Bird King, The                                 Wilson, G. Willow

Bowlaway                                       McCracken, Elizabeth

Burglar, The                                   Perry, Thomas

Child Finder, The                              Denfeld, Rene

Don’t Let Go                                   Coben, Harlan

Farewell To the Horse                          Raulff, Ulrich

First Conspiracy, The                          Meltzer, Brad

Forever Summer, The                            Brenner, Jamie

Give Me Your Hand                              Abbott, Megan

Glass Houses                                   Penny, Louise

IQ                                             Ide, Joe

Last Cruise, The                               Christensen, Kate

Last Widow, The                                Slaughter, Karin

Lost Children Archive                          Luiselli, Valeria

Love and Ruin                                  McLain, Paula

Manhunt                                        Swanson, James L.

Miracle Creek                                  Kim, Angie

Mother Land                                    Theroux, Paul

Noise Downstairs, A ***                        Barclay, Linwood

Out of the Clouds ***                          Carroll & Rosner

Palisades Park                                 Brennert, Alan     

Paper Ghosts                                   Heaberlin, Julia

Paper Hearts                                   Wiviott, Meg

Pieces of Her                                  Slaughter, Karin

River, The ***                                 Heller, Peter

Separation, A                                  Kitamura, Katie

Summer Wives, The                              Williams, Beatriz

They Said It Couldn’t Be Done                  Coffey, Wayne

What We Were Promised                          Tan, Lucy

Wolf and the Watchman, The                     Natt Och Dag, Niklas

2018 & 2019 Running Wrap-up

Personal

   
Since I never posted a 2018 wrap-up, I will cover both years in this one.  2018 was the first year in which aches and pains from old age started to affect me.  And in August an annoying knee condition shut me down for three months.  I finally got around to running again around October but any hope of getting 1,000 miles was lost.  I was much healthier in 2019 but in mid October kidney stones derailed another 1,000 goal. 
   
As noted in a previous post about books, the computer crash affected my running stats as well.  Both personal and team X-C.  Fortunately I had a paper record of my personal daily runs, but it was distance only.  I lost my times for the run, the mile pace, and the places I ran.  And I was just as lucky that any X-C info I needed was contained in the two team blogs. 
   
Stats for the years:
   
2018
    
618.24 Total Miles
187 Days Running
Average/Day = 3.3060
    
2019
   
821.182 Total Miles
246 Days Running
Average/Day = 3.3381
    

Racing

  
2018 would have been the first year in which I ran seven road races.  In 2017 I ran in only six due to one being canceled fifteen minutes before the start due to a massive thunderstorm.  Problems came in the same race this year.  It was the fourth race of the year but a nagging knee pain was getting worse every day.  I managed to struggle to the finish line and then shut myself down for about three months.  In November and December I was.running on and off waiting for the leg to get back to 100%.  
   

   
Video of the Stomp the Monster 5K.  I am crossing the line at 13:42 of the video and 26:08 on the clock.     

    

    
Video of the Jaycees Firecracker 4 Miler.  I am crossing the line at 17:12 of the video and 37:15 on the clock. 
    
2018 Races
    
April 21   Colonia 5K   27:37.07
June 3   Marlboro 5K   25:56.5
July 4   Cranford 4 Miler   37:14.5
August 2   Colonia 5K   27:21.8
    
Although I was healthy again during most of 2019, the speed had somewhat diminished and I decided to not race during the year.  Kidney Stones shut me down for good in October but as 2020 dawns, I feel healthy and will probably race in April despite any drop in speed.
     

Coaching

   
I will be omitting this section from this and all future running wrap-ups.  Anyone who is interested can follow either or both of my team blogs during the year.  The links for these other two blogs are at the top right of this blog.  There will be postings throughout the year but the majority will take place during the actual season.  Cross Country runs from mid August thru mid November and Track is from March to May.

2018 Books

     
In November my personal computer crashed.  Efforts to have a repair shop recover the hard drive proved to be futile.  It was a minor catastrophe.  It probably could have been a blog post on its own.  The stand-alone tower contained not only all the lists of the books I have read but also my financial data, personal running stats, everything dealing with my X-C teams for the past four years, baseball stats, tons of documents, tons of pictures, and many more things that I can't recall.  It felt like a large part of my life had disappeared.  Being an anal being, I live on EXCEL and WORD.  So many of my daily activities were in a spreadsheet or a document.  And now they were all gone!!
   
I had to start all over from scratch.  For everything.  So how did I come up with a list of my 2018 books?  Well, at first I hoped that my Library Lending System would be able to provide a list of all the books that I checked out during the year.  I was devastated when I found out that there was no internal record for me.  And then my anal side kicked in.  I remembered that I save every e-mail from the library whether it is to let me know a book has arrived or that I have a book due.  The only books that would fall through a crack would be a book that I checked off from the shelves and returned early or a book that I either bought in 2018 or already had on my own shelves.  I am pretty sure I accounted for these and overall I am 99.9% sure that the following list represents all the books read for 2018.  
   
As for my starting a new life on a new used PC that the repair shop sold me, I will be backing up the data EVERY week!!!
   
Here is the list.  Enjoy.

     

Bird In Hand                                                   Baker Kline, Christina

Caleb’s Crossing                                              Brooks, Geraldine

Case For Solomon, A ***                                  McThenia, Tal

Clock Dance                                                   Tyler, Anne

Daughters Of Rome                                         Quinn, Kate

Falling Together                                              de los Santos, Marisa

Final Girls                                                       Riley Sager

Friend of the Family, A                                    Grodstein, Lauren

Garden State Gangland                                    Deitche, Scott

God Gene, The                                                Wilson, F. Paul

Go-Between, The                                            Chambers, Veronica

Last Time I Lied, The ***                                  Riley Sager

Library At the Edge of the World, The              Hayes-McCoy, Felicity

Lighthouse Beach                                            Noble, Shelley

Magpie Murders ***                                          Horowitz, Anthony

Melmoth ^^^                                                   Sarah Perry

Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions ***                 Stewart, Amy

Moriarty                                                          Horowitz, Anthony

Munich                                                            Harris, Robert

Music Shop, The                                              Rachel Joyce

My Abandonment                                             Peter Rock

My Name Is Memory                                         Brashares, Ann

Panacea                                                           Wilson, F. Paul

Saints For All Occasions                                    Sullivan, J. Courtney

Saving Agnes                                                    Cusk, Rachel

Some Die Nameless                                          Stroby, Wallace

Stowaway, The                                                 Shapiro, Laurie Gwen

Two Girls Down                                                 Luna, Louisa

Varina                                                              Frazier, Charles

White Houses                                                   Bloom, Amy

Woman In the Window, The ***                          Finn, A.J.
World of Tomorrow, The                                           Mathews, Brendan