Healthy lifestyles and the living dead

Yesterday I came across a book called Fat of the Land. So I wrote a review of it. I haven't read the book, although I'd like to. I tend to do that when I'm short on my own books to review and need something new to write about -review books I haven't read, I mean. I need to get on The Library at Night, but that'll wait until I'm back at school since it's already packed up in a bin and honestly I don't have the stamina to dig through the bins and boxes and bags I'm taking back to find one book no matter how much I love it. Allow me to breathe for a moment -that was quite a sentence.

Anyway, this book. It looks good. I compared the author to Bear Grylls. You know something is being done right when that happens. If I hadn't liked him I'd have compared him to Les Stroud. I hate Les Stroud with a fiery passion that I don't really understand. He just annoys me. I go from annoyance to hatred with spectacular speed, clearly. I also cannot stay on topic today. Not enough caffeine in my system.

Basically the idea of Fat of the Land is that we need to be able to find our own sources of food. Langdon Cook is going to tell you how. And, according to all of the reviews I read and his blog (which I now follow), he's going to do it in a very entertaining manner. All the more reason to drop a few bucks on the book -you could be entertained and save quite a bit of money into the bargain, if you're willing to get your hands dirty.

Awesome.

I've also been writing like a woman possessed for Suite101. I wrote 2 articles yesterday (despite my goal of 3. I do other things with my day than write. Sometimes. Yesterday was just one of them), and of course by write I mean sat down and thumped my keyboard until coherent thoughts formed. It also involved several games on Mindjolt to, you know, get the creative juices flowing.

In the end I got them written, polished and published. Then I went to bed and read a tawdry mystery novel that I didn't really like all that much. If a writer develops his characters so poorly that I can't actually remember their names 180 pages into the book, something is very wrong. But I digress.

Articles!

I reviewed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which you should read. The book, I mean. And the review).

I also wrote about Reading and Understanding Ayn Rand. Because I could.

Why Twilight pisses me off

Okay, okay. I know I've ranted about this over 9,000 times (anyone who knows me IRL should know better than to get me started on Twilight at this point), but I came across something that really irked me the other day. Twilight...is being used...to drum up publicity for Wuthering Heights.

I'll let that sink in for a minute.

Twilight, the shitty series of novels aimed at pre-teen girls with an IQ of 40 and no sense whatsoever*, is being used to promote one of the finest pieces of English literature in existence. I don't care if you didn't like the book when you read it in high school, it's an amazingly complex and worthwhile piece of fiction. And it needs the help of Stephanie f#cking Meyer to get people to read it?

Give. Me. A. Break.

I'd say more about that, but I'm afraid I'd have an apoplectic fit and fall over dead. The absolute atrocity of the entire situation is enough to have me sputtering curses and shaking my fists at my computer screen.

I love me some books and all, and you all know how much I like to trash Twilight, but this is just ridiculous. Since when have the mighty fallen thus far? I am irked. Severely irked.


In other news, I wrote 2 articles about symbolism in The Scarlet Letter that should be up later today. Check back for links. Sometime in the near future there will also be an article about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Ohhhh yeahhh.

Here they are!:

Religious Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter
Social Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter


* Just as a disclaimer, I am in no way implying that all readers of Twilight are tasteless idiots with an IQ of 40 or are lacking in sense, just that the books are aimed at (and read by) a large group that fits that description.