The Library at Night and healthy eating

I finished reading it last night! Wow that took forever to read! (Okay, so it took like a couple of weeks, that is forever to me. I can barely remember back two days ago, so shut up already). It was totally worth going through it slowly though...I'd start it all over again right now, in all honesty. I wish I was as well-read as Alberto Manguel (I also wish my name sounded that cool). He conveniently includes a "non-canonical" list of his favorite books at the end of TLaN, which I think is awesome.

Yes, I'm going to read all of them. I'd read a few that were on the list...but not too many. Less than 10% I'd bet. Sort of depressing, given how much I read, but he's had a lot more time to read than I have!

Also, listening to Queen makes me want to watch Flash Gordon. No, I'm not kidding. I'm hitting up the library after I leave Panera to see if they have that or the movie version of The Fountainhead. I know that a) they won't and b) the movie will probably bug the hell out of me since it won't be as good as the book, but it's Gary Cooper playing Howard Roark. I can't resist that. I just can't.

In other news, I wrote a review of a book about eating healthy smoothies and how good it is for you. I figure since I now have doctor's orders about cooking all my own food at school this year due to severe food allergies (essentially I'm allergic to everything ever*), I should probably start looking for cheap healthy ways to not starve to death. Also this book just came out it and looks pretty good.

*Seriously: I'm allergic to artichokes, MSG, preservatives (including formaldehyde, which is in a surprisingly large amount of foods) -which are ubiquitous in anything that isn't a raw vegetable essentially and soy, which is also in everything. I'm not kidding. It is so hard to avoid eating this stuff (minus the artichokes, they're pretty easy to spot), and it really restricts what I can eat, how much I can eat and where. It's not like I get instantly sick eating stuff, but if I have high concentrations of any of those things within a limited time period, it does not end well. So now you know.

Also, I wrote a bunch of stuff on Suite101. Okay...so I wrote 3 articles and put them up. But still! That's 3 articles! I'm working on a fourth and rewriting a previously written piece about another book by AJ Jacobs (who I love), so I'll have plenty of stuff to start putting up. The Suite articles are

• Writing Good Book Reports (like you couldn't use that at some point in your life)
• Religious Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter (why didn't they have this written when we were in high school?)
• Social Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter (see above)

The ones I'm working on will be of

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Oh yes. It will be awesome.) and
• The Know-It-All (which you should go read right now, because I said so)

4th of July

I was dragged out of bed at 9 a.m. to go canoeing. Not my first choice of activities. Let's be honest -about the most active I normally get is turning the pages of a book. In Athens, I walk a lot more, because of the hills. And because I don't have anywhere to go that would really necessitate a car (except Wal*Mart, but even that distance is pretty easy to walk). Anyway, you get the idea. I'm a bum. So now my arms and wrists are aching tired, and I feel like something sucked all of the energy out of me. I am not in the best of moods.

Yesterday I hit up the library again. I've discovered that if I decide on a topic, instead of a specific book, I can usually find something. So I got a couple of books by/about Richard Feynman, one by Richard Dawkins (the topic was not men named Richard, just fyi), the book Rebecca and a biography of Colette that I wanted to review (and already have). It was a pretty successful trip, all things considered, although I did finally get busted for using my mom's card instead of my own, which is AWOL. I've been using mom's card since I got home. That is upwards of 12 trips to the library, at least 8 of which involved me actually using the card. This is the first time anyone has noticed it's not her....and the woman who did figure it out isn't someone I know. Creepy.

I'm still reading The Know-It-All, which is the precursor to The Year of Living Biblically, which I adored. Also, A. J. Jacobs and I are now friends on Facebook. He read my review! How small of a world is it? I was so excited I almost passed out. Mom made fun of me. I'm glad it was a positive review... But yeah, expect the KIA review to be delayed a little, since I'm trying to get more diversity of authors in the reviews right now. Admittedly, that sounds shammy when I remember that I'm also writing a review of every single Sookie Stackhouse novel, as well as an overall review (which is linked to above), but those are mostly because I know they'll generate hits. And I can link them to my Twilight review, which has over 100 comments. That amuses me. The comments range from really funny and insightful to really funny and stupid. The threatening ones I delete, despite their amusement value. I just don't think they're appropriate for the page, as much as I'm not intimidated by 13 year old girls threatening me on the internet (or IRL, really. I'm hard to intimidate).

I'm also reading Dawkins' book A Devil's Chaplain which is really interesting so far. It's a collection of essays, and although it's not nearly the polemic that The God Delusion is, I still think Dawkins is a pompous ass. As much as I agree with him (which is to say -most of the time, I think he's mostly right, but I'd still argue with him [and lose, since he's much smarter than I am]), he's a pompous ass and he writes to deliberately piss people off. I can tell, because I do it too. It's fun to get a reaction, even a negative one, from writing. And a topic as controversial as the one on which he normally writes is bound to get some negative responses no matter how gently he words it. He's fun to read, I'll be honest. I like to see how long I can go before something needles me, even if it's something with which I agree. Fun stuff, fun stuff.

There'll be reviews of a bunch of books up this week, and blogs to go with them, same as usual. This weekend I'm trying to get a little bit ahead. I figure if I write a review a day, I'll be in good shape when I go back to school and won't have the leisure to sit on my skinny butt all day and read whatever I want. Of course, I'll also have much more academic writing to put up, which will be fun and high-brow than my usual opinions. Good times.

"The Year" is over

I finished "The Year of Living Biblically" today. As I expected, it didn't change me from an agnostic to a Christian (or a Jew or any other religion) -but that's probably good. That's not the point of the book. It's just a really, really, really fascinating read. I loved it.

You can read the review of it here.

And then, I hope, you'll read the book itself. A. J. Jacobs is a weird, weird man.



Also, on an unrelated and personal note, I found out today that the good friend of a good friend has died. He got stabbed at a concert. I met him once, last summer. I was surprised and horrified to hear of his death and its circumstances. He was a young, energetic guy, and I'm so sorry to know that he's gone. This all sounds really brusque to blog about the death of a young man, but I don't know how else to express it. The pain his family and friends must be going through is unimaginable, and I'm sickened by the fact that it all had to happen.

The Year of Living Biblically

So, here's something some of you may not know about me. I'm agnostic (on a good day). This is something I've felt for a long time, but only recently felt comfortable talking about with people (my mom, for instance) because I didn't know how that revelation would be received. And then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my agnosticism/atheism is just what I believe. It's not something that I need to hide or something of which I should be ashamed. The evidence shakes out for me. If there is a creator or a God of some kind, it's certainly not the one of earthly religions -although I love the stories. I love their messages (usually. Some of them are downright immoral if you really think about it). I love the symbolism inherent in religious myths.

Like Plato's Socrates talking to Eurypides about the "truth" in Hesiod's creation story, I feel that the truth is in the lesson, not the "history" of it. The lesson in Hesiod's story, by the way, is to avoid being tryannical and overly proud, otherwise you'll end up losing everything. Eurypides, on the other hand, believes that the poem represents literal truth -that various gods actually lost their thrones to their children until Zeus learned the lesson of sharing power and took over.

I'm with Plato/Socrates. It's interesting to me that the literal/figurative conversation about religion was going on so long ago, and that it continues today. I think it's a fascinating, deep idea and one that I still enjoy discussing. I know where my beliefs are, but I'm always reading more, trying to probe the ideas and make sure I've got my head and heart in the right place.

Which is why the book "The Year of Living Biblically" is so fascinating to me. A.J. Jacobs (author of "The Know-It-All" for anyone who's read that) spent a year living as closely as possible to the laws and rules in the Bible. It's a funny, unsettling, weird book. I'm not quite finished with it, but once I am expect a much more detailed review. Check it out though. It really is an extremely interesting read. Jacobs is the child of a secular, loosely Jewish family, and one of the most compelling parts of the book is his struggle with his own agnosticism as he delves very deeply into religious life.

Expect more in a few days.