Turn OFF the TV and Read

So many channels, so little worth watching! Do you sometimes find yourself
muttering those words? Next week is TV Turnoff Week ( http://tvturnoff.org ) so give that TV a well-deserved rest, and instead say: So many books worth reading, so little time!

People in the US watch TV for more than four hours a day. That's equivalent to sitting in front of a TV for two full months nonstop every year. It's not for nothing that TV has been called the plug-in drug, the boob tube, and the idiot box.

Don't know what to read? Two recent books of note are The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Bobby Henderson and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

The FSM Gospel explains how the Church of the Flying Monster began. Don't bother looking this week for the Gospel localy. GQ bought them out. Try Amazon.
The Ominovore's Dilemma (a natural history of four meals) is a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, that will make you rethink your eating habits. He points out that an average American diet is keeping America dependent on fossil fuels.
We may not sit down to bowls of yummy petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to get to our tables. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country, and the packaging in which they're wrapped. We're addicted to oil, and we really like to eat.
Pollan's book is at Jo-Beth, as well as other stores, but the best deal is probably at Amazon.

Have any other book recommendations?

No comments: