First Lines of Chris Voss "Never Spilt the Difference"

 "I was intimidated.

I'd spent more than two decades in the FBI, including 15 years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East, and I was on top of my game. At any given time, there are ten thousand FBI agents in the Bureau, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. That was me.

But I'd never experienced a hostage situation so tense, so personal."

- Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference

Essential reading for anyone who needs to negotiate anything. I think about this book all of the time.

The first lines of Becky Chambers "A Psalm for the Wild Built"

"If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you'll get seven different answers."

- Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild Built

A quirky tale by the author of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Entertaining but felt lightweight, despite the interesting world building (the details about the different gods, history and evolution of robotics and their withdrawal from humanity). I wasn't sure why it left me cold, but after reading Clark Seanor's essay about Chambers at Strange Horizons ("Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday") I think that there's very little danger in the book. I never really felt like the characters were in any real danger - either physical or psychological. Perhaps this is because I knew this was the first book in a series, but without that edge it was hard for me to really invest in the plot.

 

First Lines of Alex Hutchinson's "Endure"

 "The broadcast booth at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, a historic Formula One racetrack nestled in the woodlands of a former royal park northeast of Milan, Italy, is a small concrete island suspended in the air over the roadway. from this rarefied vantage point, I'm trying to offer thoughtful guest commentary to a live-streaming audience of an estimated 13 million people around the world, many of whom have rousted themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to watch. But I'm getting antsy."

- Alex Hutchinson, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Hutchinson book examines what goes into the physical and mental limits of human performance. And there's a lot to cover! At times the book feels likes a collection of articles rather than a cohesive narrative. Regardless, learning more about what drives fatigue and what science is discovering  about overcoming it is fascinating. Much of what he presents is on the cutting edge, with many techniques (e.g., electro-jolts to the brain!) out of the reach of an average athlete. I had some good takeaways, including that simply "swishing and spitting a carbohydrate drink" without consuming it provides endurance benefits: 

"...the mouth appears to contain previously unknown (and as of yet unidentified) sensors that relay the presence of carbohydrates directly to the brain. In Tim Noake's central governor framework, it's as if the brain relaxes its safety margin when it knows (or is tricked into believing_) that more fuel is on the way." (p. 190)