Book Review: Walk with Weight by Michael Easter

I think that Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis is one the best self-help books around. I know that’s not saying much, as most self-help books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but The Comfort Crisis got me to change several things about my life that made it measurably better.

So when I saw that he’s published another book, this time about rucking (walking with weight, or yomping) I immediately bought and read it. I am interested in rucking as a form of cross-training for my running, and I think Easter is a capable writer, good at making scientific papers and ideas accessible to a general audience. My expectation was that this book would be a useful guide to getting more into the habit of rucking, and in a way I got what I wanted. The issue was that I also got a lot of what I didn’t.

I’ll explain.

If you know nothing at all about walking with weight, then this is a good book to get and read. However, if you have some familiarity with rucking, I think you will find this book a disappointment.

The issue is twofold:

Unlike in The Comfort Crisis there’s a lot of repetition and padding and fluffing to get the word count up. This is basically two or three blog posts inflated into a book.
Easter spends a lot of time selling merchandise from his partner company, WalkFully. The hilarious thing is that if you go to the WalkFully website you will find that the vests and backpacks he so enthusiastically touts are nowhere to be found. He currently sells a fanny pack (a form of carrying weight not mentioned anywhere in the book) and some minor weights.

So is this book a complete waste of time? No. There are still two or three blog posts worth of good content in it. There’s just also 100 extra pages of needless fluff – fluff that should have been replaced with an actual rucking experience Easter went through. As someone who regularly goes on long hikes in the wilderness, Easter just should have discussed his experiences if he needed to get to a certain page count. It would have been much more interesting.

If you’re completely new to rucking – this is likely worth the time and effort (it’s not a long book).

If you’ve started rucking or read about it a bit – you’d probably still get some use out of Walk with Weight. Just be prepared to skim most of the first part of it.

If you’re an experienced rucker, skip this book. There’s nothing new that Easter can teach you here.

Either way, carry on…

March 2026 Currently Inked Pens

I haven’t had the time or headspace to post this until now, but here’s March spring themed currently inked fountain pens.

Lamy Vista medium nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu ink. I wanted a pink ink in rotation and this is a new pen that I wanted to use. Kosumosu is a lighter pink so it benefits from wider nibs.

Franklin Christoph 45 Sage fine nib with a J. Herbin Vert Pré cartridge. Spring means grass green ink and Vert Pré fits the bill perfectly and works well with this pen. It was a little light at start but darkened with time.

Kanilea Pen Co Haleakala Silhouette fine nib with Sailor Studio 224. I haven’t used this pen in a while and I like grey inks, which is why I almost always have one in rotation. Sailor 224 is one of my favourites.

Leonardo Officina Italiana Mother of Pearl fine flex nib with Graf von Faber-Castell Deep Sea Green. I love this pen and this nib and I haven’t used this grey green ink in a while.

Lamy 2000 medium nib with Sailor Black. Workhorse pen with workhorse ink.

Book Review: Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

Aaronovitch is back in form with this 10th instalment of the “Rivers of London” series. The series has been muddled, mediocre and meandering since Aaronivitch finished the “faceless man” part of it (the first seven books of the series, most of them very good), but this one flows well and is a fun book to read.

Peter Grant is in Scotland, with his whole extended family (Nightingale, his wife Beverly, his twins, his parents, his father’s jazz band and their manager, and his cousin Abigail) in a bit of a contrived mission to take a family holiday while looking into some strange cryptozoological incidents. There’s the familiar wry Peter Grant humour and Abigail sass (the narrative is split between the two), imaginative world-building (this time with mermaids and selkies) and a nice set of villains to catch.

The setting is interesting, the final battle is suitably epic, and I like Abigail’s new mermaid girlfriend. I think Aaronovitch is facing the issue where there are so many books in the series and so much history to it that it’s sometimes hard to follow who is who and what happened when, but he does a decent enough job of keeping the readers informed about the most crucial parts of the past. Abigail’s brother’s death lies heavy over this one, and Aaronovitch handles her grief with subtlety and heart.

If you’ve read the other books in the series you’re bound to love this one. It does still suffer from the “oh boy, big bad things are coming in the future, look at all these vague portents” issues that the past few books in the series have had. It’s clear that Aaronovitch want another villain in the calibre of the faceless-man but isn’t able to come up with one. It also has the usual overdose of architectural descriptions that you see with other books in the series.

Another peculiar thing about this book is the name. Stone and Sea or even Sea and Sky would have been better than Stone and Sky. You’l understand why once you read it.

A solid addition to a good urban fantasy series, well worth the read for series regulars – but if you’re just getting started, go to book one of the series, the excellent Rivers of London.

Book Review: Witch King by Martha Wells

Martha Wells is a phenomenal world-builder, and she knows how to create brilliant characters that you just can’t help rooting for. She did it in the Murderbot series and she’s done it again in Witch King.

The titular character, Kai, a demon prince, is captured and entombed by unknown enemies. As he frees himself, his witch friend Ziede, and street urchin Sanja, the three go on a quest to find Tahren, Ziede’s wife, and figure out who was behind the conspiracy to capture them. The narrative splits early on, with the main thread following current events and the search for Tahren and her brother Dahin, and a secondary thread following the past – Kai’s origin story and the story of the Rising World Coalition.

Wells knows how to write a fast and intricate narrative, and the conspiracies of the present and rebellion of the past unfold independently and yet somehow also mirror and enmesh with each other. There’s a lot Wells says here about friendship, belonging, loyalty, and courage, but none of it feels obvious, didactic or forced. Relationships are earned here, as are your affections towards Kai, Ziede, Sanja, Dahin, Bashasa and others.

The world-building is rich and dense, with no “standard” human/clothing/culture/architecture. Wells walks us through it, but there’s no hand-holding here. You are meant to jump in and immerse yourself in her world, learning about it as the plot speeds you along. It’s disorienting for the first chapter or two, and then it just flows. You end up wanting to spend more time in this world, exploring it, really getting to know its people, cultures and geography.

The only minus in Witch King is that you don’t get enough time with certain characters. I want to know Tahren and Tenes more, I want to see the group in their home at Avagantum. This is why I immediately bought the second book in the series, Queen Demon, once I finished this one.

A superb fantasy book that is hard to put down and is well worth your time.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 5

Last day of the challenge and I got all 100 (well, 101) people done. Today includes people in the streets near my house as well as people in the shelter.

Field Notes sketchbook and Faber Castell Pitt pens.

The bottom panel was supposed to a panorama in fountain pen ink but this is very unfountain pen friendly paper

As usual this was a fun and challenging challenge to do, and I hope to get to do it again next year.

Book Review: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I picked up this book because I was supposed to go see the West End musical based on it and I wanted to know what to expect before I went.

The book is built to be a tear-jerking, moving affair, and it delivers on its promise. Joyce clearly knows the tropes that we expect, and cleverly weaves her narrative in and around them. The things that you are sure to happen to Harold on his way don’t happen, though the narrative is well aware of their possibility. What you’d expect his wife Maureen to do is also something Joyce enjoy subverting. There is something delicious about seeing a capable writer at work.

In any case, the basic plot is that Harold, a recently retired company man who lives in a village in southern England is stuck in his life. His wife Maureen lives in the same house with him, both of them recluses, and spends her days cleaning the house, finding fault with everything Harold says or does (the couple live in separate rooms and have been for years) and complaining about him to their son David. Maureen keeps expecting David to come visit, and Harold seems to have no friends, no hobbies, no prospects, no future.

This all changes when Harold gets a letter from his friend Queenie, a coworker that he hasn’t been in touch with for 20 years. She’s in a hospice, dying from cancer, and the letter is her farewell note to Harold. It moves him deeply, and he decides to write back to her. Instead of just posting the letter, he starts to aimlessly walk from one postbox to another, each time postponing sending the note – until a chance conversation with a woman at a gas station has him setting on an ill conceived pilgrimage to Queenie’s hospice, 450 miles away in the border between England and Scotland. As he meets people on the way he contemplates about his past, and we slowly piece together what happened that brought Harold, Maureen and Queenie to where they are today.

There are moving bits, frustrating bits, and one big, gut-wrenching revelation that makes you want to hug all three characters tightly. But mostly it’s a story about invisible people, people that seem dull but have huge tragedies and love stories and dreams in their lives, a story about connecting with others and about finding redemption through your feet.

Is this book perfect? No. It’s like Harold – a bit frumpy, sometimes dull, but it has a lot of heart in it, good intentions and it’s worth spending an afternoon with, preferably with some hot tea and biscuits.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 4

Still lagging behind a bit since I’m still sick, but these are today’s batch. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Field Notes sketchbook and Faber Castell Pitt pens

How I Use My Notebooks: Writing Letters Without Posting Them

Since November 2023 I have picked up a new habit of sorts – writing letters without posting them. I address them to people I know, some alive, some no longer so, and they’re usually short – an A5 page or two at the most. I write them with no intention of ever posting them, and I deliberately phrase them as letters to a specific person.

Why would I do that?

This started because I wanted to write about certain things with a particular person in mind, and I knew that with the state of our local post office they would never be posted. This was fine by me as I didn’t have the time and mental capacity to start and maintain a true correspondence with someone.

I wanted to write a letter and not a journal entry because I wanted to address my thoughts to someone. When you write a letter you find yourself shaping your thoughts, points, ideas to fit to the person you’re addressing – whether you’re trying to convince them of something, explain something to them, let them know what’s going on in your life, or argue with them. The writing needs to be clear, poignant, convincing and oftentimes entertaining.

I can be sloppy in my journal writing, but letter writing requires more discipline and care. It’s a good writing and thinking practice even if you have no aspirations of being a writer.

Who do I address the letters to?

Mostly dead people. Dead mentors, dead relatives, people that are no longer in my life. I keep them posted on what’s going on, wonder what their opinion would be of current events, and through writing to them I work out what I think of what’s going on in my life and the world. Occasionally I’ll write to people that are alive and well and in my life – just things that I want to get off my chest but that are better off unsaid. Unlike what social media would have you think, not all thoughts are worth publicly airing.

I use a Rhodia blank steno pad and whatever fountain pens I have in rotation. The medium is less important than the actual practice. I tend to write about one or two letters a month, although there are months that I write more letters in and those where I write none at all.

I’d recommend giving this idea a try, and start by writing to people you know and not celebrities or famous people. It’s easier addressing someone you’re familiar with – like a grandmother, aunt, cousin or teacher. You can destroy the letter after you wrote it – the point of this exercise is the writing process of the letter itself, not the resulting letter.

I think you’ll find that it will give you some clarity and peace of mind.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 3

We had a rocket attack every three hours last night so I was very tired today. Got only 10 sketches out of the 20, although I may be able to get some more tonight.

Field Notes sketchbook, Faber Castell Pitt pens.

Book Review: The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

John McPhee is a master creative nonfiction writer. He excels at bringing people and places to life, bringing interest and life into topics that seem at first esoteric or dull (like oranges).

The Pine Barrens is a huge near wilderness sandy pine forest in New Jersey, enclosed by suburban industrial sprawl. A handful of people live there, (“pineys”) many of them living an almost pioneer way of life, steeped in folklore and local traditions. The pine, cedar and oak forest ecosystem is also unique, tempered seasonally by fire, growing on poor sandy soil, with cranberry and blueberry bogs dispersed among them.

McPhee zigzags across the land, painting a portrait of people and places, moving between past and present, science, history, folklore and myth like the master storyteller he is. It’s clear from the elegiac tone of this book that McPhee circa 1967-68 was expecting the place to be gone within a few years. Plans for a monstrous jetport, a sprawling city, industrial estate and housing was in the works, and the ecology, history and spirit of the place was about to be utterly destroyed. McPhee was there to document the Pine Barrens, preserve what he could before they were gone. They are still there, and the development fell through, like most other Pine Barren real-estate bonanzas.

Being McPhee he also shows you the developer’s side of the story, the state’s view of the place, and the darker side of the Pine Barrens and its people.

While I understand McPhee’s deliberate choice to make this a wandering narrative, much like the sandy trails in the forest that people get lost in, I think that The Pine Barrens isn’t the best of his writing precisely because of this structural choice. The resulting charm of the piece doesn’t make for the lack of “oomph” that other McPhee pieces have. Comparing The Pine Barrens with another elegiac book of his, Looking for a Ship, and you see that the ending lacks something. Perhaps a wildfire would have brought home the fragility and resilience of this unique place.

All in all, a recommended book, well worth your time even if it isn’t McPhee’s masterpiece.

Writing at Large

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