new authors

One of the goals from my list is to read 10 novels by authors that I haven't tried before. On the face of it this one should be a soft touch. I tend to race through books at speed. So much so, that it is only my aversion to shopping (even online) that seems to limit how much I read. I usually blow through ten or more books during the summer vacation fortnight* and my London commutes are long enough to read a chapter or two each way.

I do tend though to only buy books by authors that I already know or I rely on the functionality within Amazon that lets me see which books are being bought by other people who have bought from those authors. Nothing wrong with any of that; but it can only be a good thing to try to expand my horizons a little looking for new authors, different genres and a variety of writing styles.

The problem now will be to work out how I am going to identify these new authors.

In other news:

and recorded here because I still haven't decided on the best repository for my training log

I was very pleased with today's run. 38 minutes to run a 4 mile loop on mostly flat roads.

After several runs on rural footpaths it was interesting to feel how much better my rhythm was on a more predictable surface and without gates, stiles and other obstacles.

The time is laughably slow, but I think I was fairly consistent all the way round; and those are what makes it a good baseline. Hopefully when I repeat this run I will be able to show improvement upon improvement. 10K would be a better distance for a baseline run, but my fitness is so low at the moment that I doubt I could run 10K at a consistent pace. I do however know a 10K route that starts and finishes on the roads I used today so really it's all good.