The Sunday Salon – Charles I

I’m a bit all over the place this week with my books. After finishing Before I Die on Monday, I started The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, a rather alarming non-fiction book with the power to turn me positively socialist. Describing how there are groups of men in power (and trying not to be sexist here, I’m sure there are a few nasty women to), who hang round waiting for natural / man made disasters to occur and for the populace in the effected area to go into shock, they then use this period of shock to implement policies that would have otherwise met resistance in more peaceful, calm times. For example, after Hurricane Katrina the majority of the schools in New Orleans were changed to a more capitalist system. I am currently in the middle of a rather unpleasant chapter about shock on a more personal scale, the use of torture.

I also received in the post this week Salmon Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, I want to try and read at least some of the Booker longlist and as The Enchantress of Florence (from what I’ve read) is widely tipped to be the favourite, I thought I’d read that first. I’ve only managed a page (propped open with my pestle and mortar in the kitchen whilst cooking tea one night) but the opening page has the most beautiful description of a golden lake, so if the first page is anything to go by I think I’ll enjoy this book. I will definitely be reading this next week.

Today’s read (during a very busy day) though was on the subject of Charles I: A Life of Religion, War and Treason by Christopher Hibbert, one of my books for my work-in-progress. Hibbert is an incredibly readable history writer, with the book reading more like a splendidly detailed novel. So far I’ve read about Charles’ younger years and his father’s courts, I loved the descriptions of King James’ drunken court masques, a particular topic of interest for me. Currently Charles has raced across Europe in disguise in an attempt to woe a Spanish princess, no where near the particular era I’m interested in but excellent background and great fun to read.

I still have a lot of work to do

Just less than a month to go now before the Global Nike+  10K Human Race and I still have so much work to do. I’ve been running three times a week now for about two months now, maybe a bit less but I’m still a long way from 10k, maximum I’ve run was 8.67km (and that was only because I got lost!) but my average run is about 6km if I’m running at the weekend and have more energy and 2 – 3km if I’m running at night during the week, once the kids have gone to bed, when obviously I have noooooo energy!

Today was an organised challenge on Nike+ as part of the training, to see how fast I could run 4km. So I ran at a faster pace than normal, knowing that it was ‘only’ 4km and managed it in 32 minutes and 32 seconds, which I was quite impressed with until I saw the times from the other challengers, 15 minutes! Argh I could never do that! Also looking at my distance - speed graph I was all over the place today, whereas normally my graphs are a little more straight and I’d deliberately chosen a non-hilly route today (I normally run hills to help build up stamina).

from nikeplus.com