Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Back In The Sad Saddle Of Blogging

Sorry I've been away for so long. I've been quite busy. But now I make my triumphant return to the sorry art of blogging to satisfy the needs of the two of you who actually read this thing. So let's celebrate my return with some book reviews, shall we?

1) Scared Of Santa: Scenes Of Terror In Toyland. Denise Joyce and Nancy Watkins have assembled 274 pages worth of pictures featuring terrified, screaming, crying children sitting on Santa's lap. It's a picture book (very little reading involved for those of you who are not avid readers) with laughs on any random page you open to and would thus make an especially great addition to any bathroom magazine/book rack. It will be released October 14th.

2) Brocabulary: The New Man-I-Festo Of Dude Talk. Daniel Maurer's compilation of guy phrasing is admittedly kind of funny but it's also sort of sad in the way it highlights an annoying and possibly dangerous trend in society. You see a great deal of this stuff now. The Man Show, Man Rules beer commercials, etc.. There was a time when men aspired to marry and have a family, be successful at work, and be a solid citizen. Not so today. Nowadays men are encouraged to extend their adolescence, and all the bad form that accompanies it, for as long as possible. A great article describing this trend can be found here. Anyway, you'll have a laugh over words like "holaroids" (naughty pictures of women), "mammouflage" (something that makes it hard to gauge the size of a girl's boobs), and "cock bottom" (the low point of your sexual career), but you might - if you're an old-fashioned guy like me - ultimately find this a bit childish.

3) Never Shower In A Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts And Misleading Myths About Our Health And The World We Live In. I absolutely love this one. It's a book you will burn through in no time at all. New York Times columnist Anahad O'Connor has put together a compilation of answers to many of the questions we've all asked and worried about. Will shaving make your hair grow back thicker? No! That's an old wives' tale. Does alcohol really kill brain cells? No, thank God, or I'd be long dead by now. Can you fight off a shark by punching it in the nose? Not really. There's over 200 pages of this sort of stuff. Highly recommended.

No comments: