Well, Larisa is off on a whitewater rafting trip this weekend.  And while I’m sure she’s reading Everyman between rapids, like a cat, I pounced on this opportunity to complete my 2nd book, and move ahead once again.  Score!  Not that this is a contest.  It’s really about the books after all, right?  The books, the books…. oh yes, so the book I finished was In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  And while I didn’t find any earth-shattering revelations in this little book, I found it quite interesting.  Pollan writes about our toxic American food culture – the so-called ‘Western diet’ of refined grains and sugars and the changes over the past 50 years or so in how and how much we eat.  While there are probably a lot of Americans who don’t know jack about the topics in this book, I consider myself a fairly informed food consumer and felt like there were many things I was already aware of – like how corn-derived substances have infiltrated just about any type of food you can think of, and the horrors of the industrial farming system.

But I found the section on the Western Diet and diseases associated with it quite interesting and his suggestions on what and how to eat useful.  And it’s only 200 pages.  Now, if I could just finish The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  But it’s just so damn long.

So, I’m still reading Empire of the Sun and A Wild Sheep Chase.  I’m about half way done with both, and while I’m not finding either particular page-turners, they’re both good reads thus far.  I’m shooting to be done with one of those next week.

Generally I like to read 2 or 3 books at once.  Well, not all at once, but you know, switch between several as I read.  So I’ve started 3 on my list and below is a summary of my impressions thus far:

1.  In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan:  when I first started reading this and he started going off about the ‘lipid hypothesis’, I was like, Oh, boy – major snooze-fest.  But since it’s on my list, I didn’t immediately post it on Swaptree – I plowed on.  And it’s gotten much more interesting.   The section I’m reading now is about the so-called ‘Western diet’ – its origins and why it’s not good for people, even Westerners.  I believe the last section of the book which I’m close to approaching, has his recommendations about what one should eat, and I think that should be interesting too.  I’m about halfway done.

2.  Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard:  again when I first started this, I was a tad skeptical.  My first thought was, This is just like the movie – I’m not going to get anything out of this at all. But again, I soldiered on, and it’s actually gotten better too.  The movie always struck me as painting a little too rosy picture of life in Japanese-occupied China during World War II.  I mean, Rape of Nanking, anyone?  But the book seems quite a bit darker.  Which suits me just fine.

3.  So after the slow starts to these 2 above-mentioned books, I just had to go for something that I had no doubt would be good.  So I reached for A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, an author whose imagination and wit never let me down.  (If only I knew Japanese and didn’t have to read in translation – I can only imagine how much more amazing his works could be.)  So he hasn’t disappointed.  I haven’t gotten too far in this, but I know it’ll be pretty awesome.  This is on Larisa’s list too, so I won’t go into the plot or anything, so I don’t ruin it for her.

So I’m planning to be done with one of these in the coming week.  At that time, I’ll post again.

Samara