The hard part is the follow through. We hear all the time about the dangers of processed foods, and many of us have experienced first hand the benefits of a healthy diet, at least a healthy meal or two, and the satisfaction of real food. I feel better physically if I eat my vegetables and my conscience is soothed by naturally raised meats. But at this point, I have a modern life: I do my shopping at a supermarket, and have little time to cook. The best part of Micheal Pollan’s book is the last chapter, where he expounds on a set of simple rules to guide our food choices.
Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
This is great advice, and not hard to remember. Don’t eat things when you can’t recognize the ingredients on the label, don’t eat products processed and packaged beyond recognition. He goes on to suggest several other rules:
Shop on the edges of the supermarket, stay away from the center.
The real foods in the market are on the periphery. The dairy and meat, the produce, the bakery. Everything in the middle is unrefrigerated and packed in cardboard or plastic. I found myself thinking about this the last time I shopped, and consciously stayed out of the aisles I didn’t need. The rest of the book is heavy with research and history on the economy and evolution of the food industry; an interesting read if you’re interested in all that, but if you just want a few good ideas about how to eat smarter, skip to the last chapter, read twenty pages, and change your experience buying food. Plus he gives you permission to have butter and wine. Great book.
All my blogs have been on hiatus over the holidays, not so much because of the usual events, but because I moved twice in the last three months. I have finally settled in Culver City, a couple of blocks south of the Ballona Creek Bike Path. I live just ten minutes from the beach now, and am still wandering around learning the neighborhood. My initial impression is that its a better place to be a cyclist; less traffic and better roads than Downtown, not to mention cleaner air. As the sun set on Wednesday I stopped to snap a few shots seaward on the trail.
Augusten Burroghs is a talented writer with a tormented past. His memoirs have made best-seller lists; he is riding the cutting edge of literary trendiness. Memoir! You should write a book! Its all the rage these days; I hear it myself at cocktail parties. How flattering to think we could finally be recognized for all of our sufferings, given credit for our foresights, appreciated for our nobility. Mr. Burroughs had a sociopathic father; he was distant and manipulative. Father’s games were complicated: a pastor and philosophy professor has detailed dysfunctions. And on top of everything, Mother was a hopeless wreck. Still, I never quite fell for it. My childhood was no picnic, but I rarely ever discuss it. One good friend of mine (if it adds cred, let me say she was victim of incest), “Your parents have you, for the most, for eighteen years. You can’t take more time to recover than what it took for them to do the damage.” This is a hard rule: we live in a culture of pity and excuses. I couldn’t help feel that Mr. Burroughs’ writing was a painful revel. There are people who need to read this book. No doubt it will heal them. But Augusten was rarely beaten, never sexually abused, generally neglected. The Wolf at the Table is a sad book, not just because a child was abused, but because it took him so long (until the death of his father) to separate himself from his abuser. I’m not a fan of Jesus either, in the context of celebrity suffering.
I found this hipster-lit vid on YouTube. I will probably soften up on Augusten Burroughs as I read more of his work. At the moment, though, I’m asking myself, “If you got famous for making art out of your most miserable experiences, would you ever stop thinking about them, and just enjoy your life?”
Here is a book that knows what the modern novel is about: a postmodernist classic. David Mitchell makes skillful use of his writer’s bag of tricks. The storyline is chronologically creative; a series of short stories link through coincidence and theme. The characters are unique, while the theme develops historically and ideologically. By the end of the book, its hard to tell the winners from the losers. Ambiguity is part of the lesson. It is ultimately a book about the politics and mechanics of oppression, I think. I have long taught that each of us will be at some point an oppressor, oppressed, and a witness of oppression. Witness becomes an important idea in the novel. The testimony of bystanders, be they live or on camera, is an impetus for action toward freedom, either because the victim senses support, or is motivated by the recognition of their plight. Though not an easy read (I’ve met several people who gave it up early on) the second half of the book pulls it together, and the reward is a story worth reading, and recommending. A final note is due: the top paid authors of the last decade were all genre authors; the first lit author made the list at number fifty in a recent internet article. Cloud Atlas is an homage to genre. It runs the gamut from historical fiction to mystery to sci-fi. Rarely do we see a ‘serious’ author commend and imitate the styles of the mere genres, but it makes the work entertaining on a technical level, beyond the author’s obvious eloquence.
This absurd and compelling animated trailer reminds me of Mike Whiteside’s stories, which all began, ” I was sitting in this bar in Hollywood..” I may actually read the book, since I dug the flow of the prose.
Jonathan Safran Foer, the novelist best known for Everything is Illuminated has written a new book about meat. Here in the trailer he discusses his inspiration, and we meet some of the key characters. I linked to this via an article in Slate which was a discussion about whether or not a book ought to have a trailer. Personally, I enjoy the form. It’s only a commercial really, but I’m informed by the internet, and video in particular, so these trailers effectively let me know when a book comes out that I may be interested in.
When I say I liked it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good book. It was just a good read, at the right time, and had some redeeming qualities. Like the first book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire is an intentional blockbuster. It reads like a screenplay (and immediately became a movie) with chase scenes, violence, sex galore. The interesting part is the locale: the whole book is set in Sweden, and not just Stockholm. Part of the tension is about the inability of the villains to get lost in the crowd; in such a small country it’s just a matter of time before the police catch up. The bad guys tend to be chauvinist as well. I can’t argue with that. I wonder if the author was aware of the impressions he gave of his country, or if he was just writing naturally for a domestic audience. The hero is actually car-free. He chases down clues on the train, or has his sister drive him. Another crazy detail is the tobacco. In modern novels (especially on screen) the heros don’t smoke, much less the heroines. Stieg Larrson was a smoker, it seems, and the lead characters will light up every time they a.) finish having sex, b.) have a close call. Do not read this book if you’re trying to quit. The jones is on you. Sadly, Stieg Larrson passed away from a heart attack shortly after turning the manuscripts over to be published. He had an affinity for classic mysteries, and no shortage of energy as a writer. To his credit, the suspense in this book had me skipping ahead at least twice, though I was laughing at the results.
I just finished reading the second book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire. It wasn’t much better than the first, but it did move along faster. I decided I would read the third book. These are surely blockbusters, and full of cliches, but I am enjoying the quirks of the Swedish locale. Here’s a trailer from the movie made in Sweden based on the first book. A little research brought up Stieg Larrson’s ideas for the books: he added sex to please his readers even though he was a fan of old school mysteries. Too bad he passed away immediately after the trilogy was released. It may have been interesting to see how he developed, once he enjoyed the success of these books.
The hard part is the follow through. We hear all the time about the dangers of processed foods, and many of us have experienced first hand the benefits of a healthy diet, at least a healthy meal or two, and the satisfaction of real food. I feel better physically if I eat my vegetables and my conscience is soothed by naturally raised meats. But at this point, I have a modern life: I do my shopping at a supermarket, and have little time to cook. The best part of Micheal Pollan’s book is the last chapter, where he expounds on a set of simple rules to guide our food choices.
Augusten Burroghs is a talented writer with a tormented past. His memoirs have made best-seller lists; he is riding the cutting edge of literary trendiness. Memoir! You should write a book! Its all the rage these days; I hear it myself at cocktail parties. How flattering to think we could finally be recognized for all of our sufferings, given credit for our foresights, appreciated for our nobility. Mr. Burroughs had a sociopathic father; he was distant and manipulative. Father’s games were complicated: a pastor and philosophy professor has detailed dysfunctions. And on top of everything, Mother was a hopeless wreck. Still, I never quite fell for it. My childhood was no picnic, but I rarely ever discuss it. One good friend of mine (if it adds cred, let me say she was victim of incest), “Your parents have you, for the most, for eighteen years. You can’t take more time to recover than what it took for them to do the damage.” This is a hard rule: we live in a culture of pity and excuses. I couldn’t help feel that Mr. Burroughs’ writing was a painful revel. There are people who need to read this book. No doubt it will heal them. But Augusten was rarely beaten, never sexually abused, generally neglected. The Wolf at the Table is a sad book, not just because a child was abused, but because it took him so long (until the death of his father) to separate himself from his abuser. I’m not a fan of Jesus either, in the context of celebrity suffering.
Here is a book that knows what the modern novel is about: a postmodernist classic. David Mitchell makes skillful use of his writer’s bag of tricks. The storyline is chronologically creative; a series of short stories link through coincidence and theme. The characters are unique, while the theme develops historically and ideologically. By the end of the book, its hard to tell the winners from the losers. Ambiguity is part of the lesson. It is ultimately a book about the politics and mechanics of oppression, I think. I have long taught that each of us will be at some point an oppressor, oppressed, and a witness of oppression. Witness becomes an important idea in the novel. The testimony of bystanders, be they live or on camera, is an impetus for action toward freedom, either because the victim senses support, or is motivated by the recognition of their plight. Though not an easy read (I’ve met several people who gave it up early on) the second half of the book pulls it together, and the reward is a story worth reading, and recommending. A final note is due: the top paid authors of the last decade were all genre authors; the first lit author made the list at number fifty in a recent internet article. Cloud Atlas is an homage to genre. It runs the gamut from historical fiction to mystery to sci-fi. Rarely do we see a ‘serious’ author commend and imitate the styles of the mere genres, but it makes the work entertaining on a technical level, beyond the author’s obvious eloquence.
When I say I liked it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good book. It was just a good read, at the right time, and had some redeeming qualities. Like the first book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire is an intentional blockbuster. It reads like a screenplay (and immediately became a movie) with chase scenes, violence, sex galore. The interesting part is the locale: the whole book is set in Sweden, and not just Stockholm. Part of the tension is about the inability of the villains to get lost in the crowd; in such a small country it’s just a matter of time before the police catch up. The bad guys tend to be chauvinist as well. I can’t argue with that. I wonder if the author was aware of the impressions he gave of his country, or if he was just writing naturally for a domestic audience. The hero is actually car-free. He chases down clues on the train, or has his sister drive him. Another crazy detail is the tobacco. In modern novels (especially on screen) the heros don’t smoke, much less the heroines. Stieg Larrson was a smoker, it seems, and the lead characters will light up every time they a.) finish having sex, b.) have a close call. Do not read this book if you’re trying to quit. The jones is on you. Sadly, Stieg Larrson passed away from a heart attack shortly after turning the manuscripts over to be published. He had an affinity for classic mysteries, and no shortage of energy as a writer. To his credit, the suspense in this book had me skipping ahead at least twice, though I was laughing at the results.
