Book 17: Good to Go by Christie Aschwanden

I have a whole subcategory of books on my to-read list that are books I heard about on the longform podcast and decided I needed to pick up. This one made the list because I loved the author's interview, and the concept of actually analyzing which kinds of physical recovery techniques make a measurable difference and which ones don't really intrigued me. I am not an athlete, but I am a fan of many sports and someone who is becoming more and more aware of how my body is changing as I get older, and so I read it both with the aim of potentially discovering better ways of living and seeing which tried and true methods are at best placebo effects and at worst actively hinder people.

The answer to the first part of that inquiry is basically that getting a sufficient amount of quality sleep is the most important aspect of any kind of physical recovery, and the aspect other methods of recovery are the least good at mimicking or replacing. Our bodies are simultaneously incredibly adaptable--she goes through a whole section demonstrating that basically as long as our bodies get some kind of food within an incredibly wide period of time post-exertion, our bodies will generally extract the fuel it needs from anything--and also incredibly finicky and demanding, and what it really comes down to is that every body is different, and if you truly believe that something you're doing is making a difference, it probably will, because we're creatures of habit and the placebo effect is real. Most of the things we believe (dehydration kills performance, icing and ibuprofen after exertion and/or injury helps, eating protein within an hour of weight training is vital for gaining muscle) are either probably not true and based on studies funded by industries that only publish the studies that benefit them (and are unconfirmed by independent studies), or are the result of confirmation bias/survivorship bias: we look at how the best athletes in the world train, and assume that their performance is due to their training methods, rather than them being exceptionally talented individuals who would succeed no matter what within a fairly broad framework of methods and techniques, so long as they believed their methods helped. But that's not something that can be marketed, so instead we are told (and believe, no matter how much we tell ourselves we're too smart for this) that Michael Jordan is MJ because he drank Gatorade, and not because he's an exceptionally talented individual.

I actually found the fact that there's no magic pill (aside from sleep) to be extremely reassuring and helpful. It turns out I didn't miss out on a secret that would have made me a natural athlete; bodies are simply different, and the best thing that I can do is actually listen to what my body is telling me it wants or needs, and do my best to provide that. Easier said than done, but at least I won't need to start sitting in ice baths.

Grade: A

Book 16: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

So this was a read that was a classic 'man I wish I actually liked this book as much as I wanted to' book. I read it for my sci-fi/fantasy book club, and the premise of it is really interesting: a meteor strikes the earth in the early 1950's, and in addition to causing initial chaos and upheaval and all that, scientists are also able to calculate that within ten or so years the earth will warm to a degree that will not sustain life. So there is a push for the space program to work to set up a colony in space for the survival of the species, and of course any kind of successful long term colony would require that both men and women become astronauts.

Elma York, who was a female pilot during WWII and is married to a scientist in the space program, is a natural candidate for women to be included in this colony. But the entire book after the initial aftermath to the meteor strike is just two steps forward and one step back repeated ad nauseam, as she's confronted over and over again with sexist roadblocks and red tape, and also learns the same valuable life lessons about how no matter how difficult it's been for her, it's even harder for black women, a truth that she never actually seems to remember that she's learned before. A friend of mine mentioned that the bureaucratic nonsense that she deals with felt very true to life in terms of how government works, but something being realistic doesn't necessarily make it a good or compelling narrative, and I just found myself getting so impatient for the actual story to start. And of course it's actually the first book in a series, and so the story in fact barely does start even by the end of the book.

I actually found the first part of the story to be the most interesting, when the world is dealing with the ramifications of a major meteor strike only seven years after the end of WWII. But the book itself is only interested in that major world event to the extent that it's a good catalyst for the space program to be both fast tracked and forced to include women, and the narrative wasn't compelling enough for me to stop myself from pulling on the thread of how else such a major event would have changed everything. This book has been lauded by many and clearly must work for other people in a way it simply didn't for me, but I felt at many points of the story that I would have enjoyed reading the historical and scientific works that the author read as part of her research far more than I did the narrative result.

Grade: C