Goodbye, Sweet Elixir

Posted on 02/18/2008 by chick

I am thinking about giving up the Elixir of Life, what most people call “coffee.” Coffee itself is not that bad, but I would be much better off without all the cream, creamer, and sugar that I use in support of the habit. Faithful Reader is concerned that the lack of caffeine will turn me into a Morning Monster (this from the man who got me addicted in the first place!), but I have faith in the power of tea as a substitute for coffee.

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Sometimes

Posted on 02/18/2008 by chick

Sometimes I use the word “sometimes” too often.

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Embarrassingly Slow

Posted on 02/18/2008 by chick

Sometimes I can be embarrassingly slow. Take the other day for example. I was reading a book about food and the author mentioned “coffee whitener” and I could not for the life of me figure out what he meant. I had never heard that term before. The next day, as I was adding non-dairy creamer to my morning coffee, it dawned on me. Duh.

Could I be any slower?

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Blog Until You Drop

Posted on 02/18/2008 by chick

Sometimes I get so hung up on the idea of blogging well that I can’t blog at all. The only way to get past that feeling is to write and write and write and post it all, even if it sounds like crap.

Here we go again.

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Valentine Musings

Posted on 02/14/2008 by chick

I love you, Faithful Reader. You add magic to my life. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Lazy Reading

Posted on 02/10/2008 by chick

I finally got my revenge against all those mediocre writers of modern fiction. I read a nonfiction book!

Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz

Grade: B

I found this book in a display at the local library. The theme of the display, if you can believe it, was the Seven Deadly Sins. This book was one of the representatives of Sloth, my personal favorite of the sins. How could I resist a book on a topic so near and dear to me?

I really enjoyed the first chapter in which the author discusses his own contradictory feelings about work and the anger he experienced when he felt that his son, out of high school but not yet employed, was slacking. I think we all have mixed feelings about work, both as it pertains to ourselves and others, and it’s good to know we’re not alone in that. I also liked the parts about famous slackers, not all of whom are traditionally viewed as slackers, such as Ben Franklin, Samuel Johnson, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack Kerouac.

The book’s big failing is that it is just a little too long and covers a few too many slackers. My eyes started to glaze over at points, and I admittedly skipped some paragraphs here and there. That is one of the good things about nonfiction. You can often jump over parts without missing anything vital to the rest of the book.

With a little extra focus, Doing Nothing would have been 100% fun. As it is, I would estimate it at roughly 80% fun. For maximum reading enjoyment, just be a slacker and skip the boring 20%.

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My Addiction

Posted on 02/08/2008 by chick

I haven’t been completely honest about my book-buying addiction. You see, around the holidays, I sort of fell off the wagon and bought a bunch of books. When that bunch was added to the pile that people gave me as gifts, it turned into a mountain.

Meanwhile, I have been trying to borrow books from the library so that I don’t buy them, but I have been spending more time on library books than on the GLP. Consequently, I haven’t gotten rid of many books lately.

Books coming in. No books going out. We will be squished flat when the cat knocks the mountain over. And he will knock it over. It’s what he does.

I’m going to have to read fast if I want to avoid this tragic fate.

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Super Extra Nice

Posted on 02/07/2008 by chick

Did you know that my Faithful Reader often makes coffee for me in the morning? Isn’t that super extra nice?

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Blue-Footed Reading

Posted on 02/07/2008 by chick

I will miss Galápagos. It was a nice-looking book. It had a blue cover featuring a pair of blue-footed boobies. Inside, there was a page with a picture of an iguana. A previous reader had colored it in prettily using two different colored pencils. The world’s next Renoir, no doubt.

As for the story, I was not quite as impressed.

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Grade: B

Galápagos is about a group of people who sign up for a tour of the Galápagos Islands, made famous by the great Charles Darwin, and who end up as participants in a new era of human evolution. How will a million years in the Galápagos change homo sapiens? His brain will shrink and his hands will turn into flippers and that, says Vonnegut, may be for the best. You can’t make big weapons without a big brain nor can you wield them with flippers.

Vonnegut likes to flaunt his narrative omniscience. He often makes himself, the author, a character in his stories. He changed the formula for this book by making himself a ghost, the ghost of Kilgore Trout’s son. One way in which he showed his omniscience was by putting asterisks before the names of the soon-to-perish. If any of the characters had been likable, maybe that would have meant something, but all it did was ruin any chance of suspense. All in all, not Vonnegut’s best, but it contains some information about the Galápagos. The blue-footed booby is mentioned often (yay!)

I returned the book to the library this evening and replaced it with Bluebeard. We are down to the final three!

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Next Classic

Posted on 02/06/2008 by chick

The next classic I’ll be reading for 2008 is Thoreau’s Walden, which I will start any day now.

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