Things are Changing, but Trees will Still Suffer

My wife had almost convinced me to start another blog for the purpose of reviewing books. However, you may have noticed that maintaining one blog seems, at times, too much for me. Therefore, this blog will henceforth have a dual purpose, united under the banner of Harming Trees. The banner is, of course, unnecessarily large and made of paper.

I will still be posting photographs of my artwork, when I can muster the effort it takes to retrieve the camera from all the way down there in the drawer by my elbow and bring it all the way back up to my eye.

I will also be posting book reviews. I like reviewing books, as it helps me make something of all of the time I spend reading, and it helps me pay closer attention to what I'm reading, because it's as if I'll be tested on the material--even though I'll be the one administering/grading the test and will certainly turn a blind eye when I catch myself cheating. Yes, plenty of trees will be harmed in the printing of the books I'm going to read, but I urge you to print out several copies of each review and then nail each copy to a tree.

I wish I could tell you what I'm going to review first, but I can't. I've been buried in a big pile of literary crap-o-la as of late, and don't have anything worth talking about. However, because I'm am a good American, this won't stop me from talking.

Here's the book I've been beating my head against the longest:

This book weighs almost three pounds. It has cured my insomnia. It is so dry that Smoky the Bear is on guard in my library. I'm sorry Mr. Taylor. I do find your book interesting, but only five minutes at a time. I do intend to finish this book, so perhaps someday, when I am eighty, I'll be able to give this book a proper review.

(When I say, "in my library," what I'd like you to picture is me reading in a grand two story room that is hideously decorated with lots of velvet pillows and golden ropes, has a walk-in fireplace, a ladder on wheels, charts on the walls, a wet bar inside the clock, and a string quartet playing--but not too loud--in the corner. Because that is exactly how things are in my library.)

Here's a book I read this year that I sadly don't remember a single thing about:

Here are two books I read last year that sort of look alike:

Here's a Pop Quiz:

If the zombies had taken over, and you had sheltered up in a public library, and you had to light a fire to cook the glowing, eight-legged squirrel you caught by the leaking nuclear facility, which one of last year's (2010) most popular novels could you read by the firelight in order to send you into a kind of cerebral arrest and thus make you, presumably, of little interest to the zombies?