Reading, Fast and Slow

Reading, Fast and Slow

The second to last book I read was 11/22/63 by Stephen King. The last book I read was The Appalachian Trail: A Biography by Philip D'Anieri.

11/22/63 is a decent 3 stars out of 5. King is still cranking out (and selling) books almost 50 years, on, but this one, like the Mr. Mercedes trilogy rambled on too long, even though it was a fun read. The basic plot has been around a very long time. Something bad happens, guy (the ladies always seem too smart to try) figures he can go back in time and undo, but makes things much, much worse. The first time I saw it was on a black and white rerun of "The Twilight Zone" when a man finds a way to change history to save his father during WW2 and accidentally causes the Nazis to win the war. Oops.

Back Stephen King. Same idea, but the wrong he is trying to right is JFK's assassination. Jake Epping/George Amberson pulls it off, but the world he returns to is a nuclear wasteland. So he has to go back one more time to undo what he changed. A fun part of the book for long-time King readers is that Jake is briefly in Derry, Maine, the setting of It, and he runs into Beverly and Richie, characters from that book. I'll keep coming back to King.

Why Fast and Slow? 11/22/63 is a fast book. Once I got the gist of the story I turned up the playback speed on Libby to 2x, which moved me through the book fast. I was getting a little tired of it, but I wanted to see how it ended.

The Appalachian Trail, on the other hand, is a slow book. Through a series of short biographies about notable people in the life of the trail, D'Anieri tells the story of the AT. My favorite was Emma "Grandma" Gatewood, the first woman to thru-hike the AT in 1955 at the age of 67. She left her home in Ohio and hiked the trail, end to end. She didn't tell her family until she was 900 miles in so they wouldn't worry. She went on to hike the AT two more times, plus solo hiking the 2,000 mile Oregon Trail at 71.

The Appalachian Trail is a book to listen to, rewind, listen to again and savor. 5/5 stars. D'Anieri covers the history and the 2,190 mile length of the trail, from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine, in a tight 272 pages.

"The mountains are calling and I must go." -John Muir

See you there.

Evgeny Aleksandrov, CFA

FinTech Founder (ex McKinsey, Goldman Sachs) [We're hiring]

2 年

Bill, thanks for sharing!

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Shannon Cragg

Vice President at Nationwide

2 年

I’m going to add the AT book to my Libby list. Have you done the Hike Inn experience at the beginning of the AT? I thought it was awesome and definitely what you make of it. You hike out what you bring in and my favorite laugh was my hubby exiting the shared bath holding his used dental floss asking me what he should do with it… a nice man suggested it could be re-used. :) We laughed and he put it in his pocket for our hike back down. Looking forward to the listen and thank you for your posts!

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