So after hitting the wall with Week #4 on the running plan (and repeating the damn thing for three weeks in an effort to get reliably good at it), I threw caution to the winds today and just moved on to Week #5, Day #1. And I did it. So there you go; I guess sometimes you just have to hang in there and move forward no matter what. I still don't love running but I do love knowing afterwards that I did it. I do not however have any interest in running an ultra marathon like Mr. Murakami (it's insane, plain and simple) but I highly recommend his book if you are starting out running. If you are a writer who is running then it is doubly wonderful (which might explain why Jenny D. was so pleased with it as well.) (And for those following that link, I have Martin Millar's latest on tap to read shortly as well.)

Samantha Power had a few words last week in Time on the Georgia/Russia engagement that I thought were rather interesting (and a perspective not found elsewhere). Here's a bit:

When Russia sent shells raining down on Georgia, it seemed initially as if Vladimir Putin was savagely pursuing what he saw as Russian national interests. Moscow claimed Georgian aggression against Russian loyalists in South Ossetia and has objected to both Georgia's bid to join NATO and the Pentagon's arming and training of the Georgian military. But a closer examination of the run-up to Putin's inexcusable invasion suggests that Russia's action had as much to do with its wounded pride as with its alleged impaired security.

Thucydides long ago concluded that people go to war out of "honor, fear and interest." Putin seems to have chosen conflict largely out of honor, or, put another way, out of perceived humiliation — one of the most prevalent, least explored factors behind global violence.

The essay is a short one and has Power's characteristic fearless assessment of the situation - without all the "good guy/bad guy" bullshit. (She doesn't give Russia a pass but acknowledges it's more than just Russia being evil.) (John McCain that comment was for you.) I was thinking about John Kipling when I read it though, and how much of his death in WWI was about his father's honor which made me think how much all of WWI was about one man's honor compounded millions of times over. Geert Spillebeen's YA novel Kipling's Choice remains one of the better titles I have read (and I have read a ton of them) about the insanity of WWI. It's fascinating to me that so many Americans seem to miss how honor and war could be so entwined, when that is certainly how we felt just a few short years ago. (And a few years before that, and before that and before that.)

Author Michael Dobbs also weighed in on Georgia at the Post with a couple of comments that made me spit up my ice tea:

The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton.

Interestingly enough, Woodrow Wilson found himself with the same metaphorical baton at the end of WWI when Congress yanked all of his power away. (Which is why we did not sign the Treaty of Versailles but a separate treaty with Germany later.) So again, 21st century conflict but same old story as 1918. It's amazing how much everything just keeps coming around again.

I'm feeling very nostalgic today - you'll have to forgive me. I think it comes from reading another polar exploration title and knowing how things are not going to end well.

Richard Just has a long list of titles on Darfur over at The New Republic, to which I could add one I just reviewed for Booklist, Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir. Just's point is that this is the most documented genocide in human history and yet it has not been stopped. He is mystified by this fact as I'm sure most of the rest of us are as well. He writes:

There were certainly no independent film-makers in Auschwitz in 1942, and the best-known Holocaust memoirs did not achieve a wide audience until years after the war. The world more or less looked the other way as genocide unfolded in Cambodia during the 1970s, and the slaughter in Rwanda happened so quickly--a mere hundred days--that by the time the public grasped the extent of the horror, the killing was done. But here is Darfur, whose torments are known to all. The sheer volume of historical, anthropological, and narrative detail available to the public about the genocide is staggering. In the case of the genocide in Darfur, ignorance has never been possible. But the genocide continues. We document what we do not stop. The truth does not set anybody free.

Let's just take a few minutes and think about the insanity of the world right now. Pretty hard to believe, isn't it?

My September column is finished, October column is nearly finished (I have three more reviews to write today) and I have half of my November column done (graphic novels). After being derailed by my book and company for the last month and a half I'm almost back in the kind of control I prefer. I have three emails to send out tomorrow on Guys Lit Wire - some contacts to make and that sort of thing - but nothing pressing anymore.

Of course this means that five books from the ALA will likely show up in the mail with 2 week deadlines but hey - for this moment I am chick who has it all together. Let me bask for a few minutes, okay?

PS. If you missed my Saturday post on the bizarre SF YA columns at I09, do take a look. Also see Ed's post on the same subject which also picks up on Lizzie Skurnick's review of Chris Adrian's new collection and her issue with his young characters coming across as too smart. What struck me about that review was she while she was arguing that kids aren't that literary over at i09 they are arguing that YA doesn't let kids be smart enough (some of the folks in the comments claim reading Dune by age 10 - I didn't even understand the damn movie when I saw it at 16).

Which all goes to show how stupid any and all of these sorts of arguments/review really are.