Images from Goodreads

[93] Inside a Marathon: An All-Access Pass to a Top-10 Finish at NYC, Featuring a new Boston Marathon Chapter by Scott Fauble and Ben Rosario
Sports / Non Fiction, wanted to read last year and could not get from the library and forgot about it, then saw Hungry Runner Girl post about it and saw it was on Kindle Unlimited! Yay!

Synopsis: Northern Arizona Elite (NAZ Elite) coach Ben Rosario and marathoner Scott Fauble “Faubs” documented Fauble’s 18-week training plan leading up to the 2018 NYC Marathon on a week by week basis.

Review: This book is legit a training plan, with commentary by coach, then athlete, so stay far away if you aren’t a running nerd. But if you are, dive right in! Each chapter covers a different week of training, and what’s neat is that they wrote them separately and didn’t read them together until after the race, as to not influence each other’s writing, or the training. Some of it is kind of boring (hi, reading a training plan) but Faubs is really funny and I loved all his little footnotes (but hated how hard it was to select the tiny number to get them to pop up on my Kindle). I wish it would have covered his nutrition and what he was doing in strength training, but I got a lot of valuable insight out of it. I hadn’t read a training plan of an elite marathoner before, and it was eye-opening to see the amount of “easy” days (10 miles in the am, 4 in the pm) vs “workout” days.

Recommend? If you are a running nerd, yes. If not, then NOPE!

[94] A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
Fiction / Coming of Age, second in the series (first book An Absolutely Remarkable Thing mentioned here and here)

Synopsis: I can’t really share the synopsis without spoiling the first book. So, in the first book, these giant robots show up all around earth and a group of twenty-year-olds finds internet fame trying to solve what they are (um, if I am remembering correctly?).

Review: Here is the problem – I could remember cliffhanger ending of the first book, but not any of the supporting characters or what happened with them, and this book didn’t do any sort of obvious recap or story retelling, so I felt pretty lost and bored for the first 30%, as chapters went from character to character, and I couldn’t keep them straight. Things picked up but I still could not remember exactly what happened, so I should have read the two books back to back. I liked the social commentary and relevance of the story, but it was way too preachy and soap-boxy. And just kind of slow and boring and hard to follow, overall. Even at the end I couldn’t keep some of the characters straight because their narrative was so similar.

Recommend? No

[95] The Bolds to the Rescue by Julian Clary
Juvenile Fiction / Humorous Stories, second in the series

Synopsis: Word has gotten out that the Bold residence is the place to go if you are an animal in need of help! The Bolds (a family of hyenas posing as humans) begin training other animals how to “act” human as well.

Review: This is a clever and funny follow-up to the first novel, with a touch of commentary on animals rights (although, why are they so shocked about the horses going to a slaughter house when they talk about eating sausages, especially after taking any kind of animal in their home? Ha, this is middle grade, and kids won’t be thinking that). I bought this series for Luca and wanted to read the second book so I can chat with him about it when he reads it. I also just wanted to read something quick and easy, because my last two books felt like slogs.

Recommend? Yes, for middle grade