“Eating Animals” - The Book, The Message, The Plea.

A confession: I am vegan.

Some of you may know this, having followed me on my journey to conversion, but I do my best not to throw this fact into people’s faces, particularly ones I have recently met. After all, the stereotypes of the Dreaded Vegan were one of the reasons it took me so long to make the plunge (that and I couldn’t imagine a life without frozen yogurt and traditional baked goods… which seems ridiculous to me in retrospect, as there is no shortage of divine vegan sweets in my current diet). I simply didn’t want to get grouped with the crazy types spoofed on “Portlandia” - the image of the self-righteous, super-pale, hippie-dippie vegan still, unfortunately, pervades our modern society’s consciousness and is a massive hinderance to the diet becoming widely accepted any time soon.

That fact is simply heartbreaking, because as I’ve discovered on my short little journey of living off of plants alone, we, as a global community, and as a species, simply cannot afford to continue our modern eating patterns.

I recently read a book that I know you won’t read unless you’re already vegan. That’s the problem with posts like these; I’m only going to be preaching to the choir. I get that. Anyone who learns that I’m vegan quickly puts up a protective barrier, defending their right (or their proclaimed “need,” which is just plain ignorant) to eat meat before I even utter another word. The concept of NOT eating meat strikes a very personal, emotional chord in us - which I think is immensely indicative of its very importance as a topic we desperately need to confront.

The book I read was “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, who eloquently describes the complexities involved in eating - it’s a social act, a personal act, a traditional act, a communal act, a historical act, a ethically challenging act, and an environmental act. Whatever we choose to put in our mouths resonates with meaning, whether we’re connecting ourselves to our ancestors, trying to stave off global warming, or digging ourselves further into a grave formed by obesity.

Whether or not humans were “meant” to eat animals (as my Christian parents argued over dinners of meatloaf while turning their noses up in disgust at the prospect of vegetarianism - one of the many reasons I could not go all-veg until leaving home), eating animals at this point in time is not the same as it was even 100 years ago. With the advent of factory farms, the entire concept of “food” was transformed into something so horrifying most of us can’t bear to face it (when I have offered to lend the book “Eating Animals” to a couple of friends, they have all vigorously shaken their heads and backed away, saying “No, no, I better not…”). We can’t bear to face the truth precisely because we understand that it will force us to change our ways, which would be inconvenient.

We humans like the taste of meat. But do we also like the taste of animal suffering, environmental destruction, economic turmoil, human labor violations, and looming viral epidemics? A piece of steak is no longer simply just a piece of a steak - it is a vote, a choice, and a statement. If you choose to ignore the facts, then you are voting in favor of all of the aforementioned by omission.

“Eating Animals” is probably the most intelligent, well-thought out consideration of the modern food system in America I have yet read. Foer (the brilliant author of the fictional novels “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”) gives careful consideration to all sides of the To Eat Meat Or Not To Eat Meat argument, and lays out the facts while writing in an engaging and impassioned style.

I am wary of venturing into the preachy mode, as I know how easy it is to begin to sound like a self-righteous asshole. But read the book, and you’ll understand as I do why these issues are too important to stay silent about. Or don’t read the book, and don’t think about what you eat. That’s your choice - but is it the right one?

The Homeless Reader.

Photo Source: Natalie Albertson

I am very much like everyone’s favorite protagonist, Mr. Holden Caulfield, in that random, simple demonstrations of everyday life have the ability to make me extremely depressed.

To wit: the other night, while walking home from work, I passed a homeless man huddled up underneath a store awning, sheltered against the rain and the cold with nothing more than a stained rag of a blanket and some newspaper. In Los Angeles, homeless people are unfortunately commonplace, so I wasn’t disturbed or even mildly surprised by his presence. Normally, I would have just walked on by without a second thought. What got me, though, was the fact that the man was reading a book.

The sight of this frail, threadbare man, with not much to hold on to in this life except the promise of tomorrow, curled up in a ball, shivering, with a book in his hands, reading by the dim flickering light of a streetlamp on a drizzling November night made me burst into tears.

Like I said; it’s the little things that get me. I can endure the most devastating tragedies with a set jaw and dry eyes (when I was a child I thought I was physically incapable of crying, that’s how stoic I am - my parents were worried about my emotional development), but a tiny detail, such as the appearance of that book, will set me off into a snot-filled, red-eyed sobfest.

While I didn’t quite understand at that moment what it was that made me cry with such devastation, I grasped it better as I continued stomping along the sidewalk on my long journey home in the quiet night. It was the beauty of it, really, that was so depressing - the fact that a story might be able to provide comfort to someone who was probably suffering on a level so profound he probably didn’t even feel it anymore. I thought about the author of whatever book it might have been, and how he or she had devoted hours upon hours to placing one word down after another in order to express a tale that was built up inside of them, begging to be let out, and how he or she probably had no idea at the time that their words might someday be the only thing a soul could hold on to in the quiet hours of the night, long after the rest of the world, so cruel and uncaring, had gone to sleep.

I wondered if my own words might ever do the same.

That’s probably the greatest end goal a writer can aspire to; not accolades or wealth or book tours, but just the assurance that the words one chooses might be another person’s sole companionship as he continues on his vast, stark journey through this life. There are perhaps other, grander, more obvious gifts one can bestow upon the world - there are humanitarians and inventors and environmentalists who can be confident that their life’s work has been for the greater good. But I think perhaps we underestimate the power of the written word to have just as strong of an impact on an individual level.

Who knows what book landed in the hands of that man, or how; I imagine it was probably a reject, perhaps one that was about to be tossed out by the public library because no one else cared to check it out. But that book, no matter how forgotten it may have been by the wider literary world, landed in the hands of someone who needed it, and appreciated it, and hopefully enjoyed it, who accepted the gift that the writer had offered the world with gratitude.

My words may just be a blip in the universe, but I hope that one day they matter that much to someone, even if just one person. Life is so depressingly difficult that sometimes the companionship of another, even if it’s only through the one-way path of communication from writer to reader, is all we can cling to in order to get by. And sometimes it’s enough to carry us to tomorrow.

Book Review: “The Art of Racing in the Rain”

I have never done this before in my life, which is odd considering how many books I read on a consistent basis, but this last Sunday afternoon I sat down, opened “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein, and read the entire novel in one day. I had nothing else planned for the afternoon and the book was simply so engrossing that I let it sweep me away until nearly midnight, when I turned the final page, grabbed another Kleenex, and sighed out of exhaustion from immersing myself so fully in such an emotionally compelling tale.

Sometimes I look at my dog, and he meets my gaze, and I am a little bit taken aback; I catch a glimpse of something at work in his brain that I can’t fully understand and wonder if there’s maybe more to him than we humans usually attribute to animals. My dog follows me around everywhere, to the point of annoyance at times, and is often the one I talk to when I feel I can’t talk to anyone else. He’s always there, he always listens, and he always loves me.

This book expands upon the notion that perhaps our dogs are indeed conscious observers as well as active participants in our lives by telling the story of a broken family through the eyes of their dog, Enzo. Enzo’s owner is Dennis, a professional race car driver (Enzo is named for Enzo Ferrari), whom Enzo loves and adores more than anyone in the world. Dennis marries the love of his life, and together they have a daughter. Dennis is excited about his career, which is just beginning to take off, and their family unit is firmly bonded in love; their lives appear to be rich and full of promise.

And then disaster strikes. And strikes again. And strikes some more… All while Enzo watches in his helpless position as a dog who cannot do much more than observe while Dennis suffers.

Stein elegantly draws parallels between the art of race car driving and the art of simply living in language that is simple, compelling, and concise. The exquisiteness with which he describes cars and the delicacy of racing made me want to become a fan, even though I don’t even know enough about cars to change my own tires. Enzo is a lovable and entertaining narrator (at one point he lists all of his favorite actors, in order of preference, since watching TV is one of his favorite pastimes) whose perspective on the tragedy that befalls Dennis is refreshingly honest while also optimistic. The dog’s ultimate longing is to be reincarnated as a human, as he already feels he is nearly there in spirit. Enzo certainly knows more about what is essential to being human than most humans do.

The title indicates the novel’s theme - that we must triumph over that which we cannot control, that we must accept whatever life throws at us and learn to overcome. If it begins to rain, we must adapt and drive our lives in such a way that we move with the fates instead of against them, so that we may come out ahead.

If you are or have ever been a dog owner, if you’ve ever known love and loss, or if you simply like cars, you will fall in love with this book. Basically, my guess is that if you’re even remotely interested in a compelling drama, you’ll feel as pulled into this story as the rest of us - for at its heart, this tale is about the undeterrable drive of the human spirit, a theme that is universal.

I honestly have never cried so hard at the end of a book before, for all its beauty and heartbreak. I had to stop reading at one point, just a few pages before the end, because I was sobbing so hard. And that’s when my dog jumped up onto my lap and nestled into me. I could feel his heart beating against my stomach, and he met my tear-filled eyes with his own, and I was reminded yet again why our dogs are so very important to us: they teach us how to love, forgive, and endure, no matter what.

Blog of the Week: The Streetlight Reader

My day was made the other day when a reader emailed me to let me know how much she enjoyed my review of David Levithan’s novel “Every Day,” and shared with me her own thoughts on A’s fascination with Rhiannon. This rockin’ gal’s name is Savindi, and she runs a fantastic blog of her own that I encourage you all to check out, if you’re as obsessed with reading as she and I are. It’s called The Streetlight Reader, and it’s all about this adorable Canadian university student’s critiques of books.

Is there anything better, really, than talking about a book you just read with someone who’s read it, too? You can share your favorite moments, talk about the parts that you struggled over, and recommend other similar must-reads. Svandi breaks down each book she reads with intelligent and thoughtful criticism and passion, and rates them so you know whether or not they’re worth your time. The girl knows what she’s talking about - I’m convinced she’s destined to become the next leader in book publishing. Go check out her thoughts and see if she’s read any of your personal favorites!

By the way, if you’ve read/liked “Every Day,” like the two of us, Svandi recommended two of David Levithan’s other works: “The Lover’s Dictionary and Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. Especially Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares because Christmas is coming and it’s a nice book to read for Christmas.” I know I’m going to add those to my reading list!

Book Review: The Cranes Dance

At first glance, “The Cranes Dance“ by Meg Howrey might sound like a bad YA fiction ripoff of last year’s film “Black Swan.” It’s a novel about a dancer in the New York City ballet company who feels competitive with her young sister, who’s also far more talented than she is. The opening chapter is all about a performance of “Swan Lake.” Some dark crazies get involved.

So yes, there are similarities between the two works, but the differences set the surprisingly gripping novel apart, proving its own worth. The novel (which is decidedly NOT aimed at younguns) is narrated by Kate Crane, the older sister, in the wake of sending her younger sister, Gwen, out of their shared NYC apartment and back home to live with her parents. Kate is struggling to reconcile her personal reality now that she’s thrown out her sister, thrown away her passion for dance, and, incidentally, thrown out her neck.

She’s not sure why she’s a ballerina any more. She’s not sure why she’s anything, anymore, actually, and that’s what makes the book so intriguing. Kate is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. She has carefully constructed the way she lives by pretending that an invisible audience is watching her every move (unless she’s masturbating, or something else unseemly; then she pretends her audience is temporarily blinded), and this instability transmits into the book’s construction. Kate addresses the reader, her audience, outright at times. As she spirals downwards, her thoughts become less linear, and the reader gets drawn downwards with her, muddled with her confusion and dispair. Kate becomes addicted to the Vicodin she stole from her sister to help mask the injury in her neck, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, and feels herself “diminishing,” as the company director puts it, although she doesn’t want to do anything to stop it.

Because it’s Gwen that has the real problem. Gwen has something wrong with her, and we only learn glimpses about her disorder from what Kate tells us. The two girls had lived together, Kate enduring Gwen’s erratic behavior until she couldn’t shoulder the burden any longer. Except that now that she’s rid of Gwen, Kate is ridden with guilt over abandoning her sister, her best friend.

Meg Howrey is a classically trained dancer who performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Ballet of Los Angeles, which makes her insight into the world of ballet all the more intriguing. One wonders what aspects of Kate’s life Howrey herself experienced; the reader definitely gets the sense that Howrey may have shamefully eaten broken off pieces of a blueberry muffin hidden inside a paper bag at least once during her career as a dancer. 

The dance world in this novel is so beautifully painted that we really get a detailed sense of what is normally such an exclusive lifestyle. We get to feel the sweat behind the grace, the bruises behind the beauty, and the fear behind the poise of being a ballet dancer.

Oh, and the inspiration for the title? Discovering it may have been my favorite part of the book. It’s brilliant in how effortlessly it pulls the themes of the novel together.

Howrey elegantly questions the fine line between sanity and insanity, between reality and fiction. This book is so engaging you will propel right through it, albeit always a little bit on edge, praying that the sense of foreboding you get from reading Kate’s words won’t lead to an unfortunate ending.

Do they? I would never spoil such a thing. You’ll have to read this compelling novel yourself to find out.

Book Review: “Every Day”

I need to stop reading books that wrench my heart from my chest and throw it into a blender on the “Liquidate” setting and then pour the pulpy remains down the kitchen sink with the disposal turned on. Alas, I cannot stop, because the books that have been slowly destroying my heart and abandoning me to wallow in tears like someone who just got dumped (Is that not how you feel when a beloved book ends? Like it has effectively walked out the door, leaving you shattered in its wake?) happen to be way too good to quit.

My most recent gem of a discovery was David Levithan’s 2012 novel “Every Day.” How can I assure you that Levithan is worth your time? Well, he’s friends with (and once collaborated with) our much adored friend John Green, and after reading this book, it’s easy to see why. The two of them together must just ooze empathy and understanding of the eternal.

“Every Day” is about a character named A who wakes up each morning in a different person’s body, borrowing that individual’s life for a day. A can wake up as anyone: a suicidal girl, a boy who was born a girl, a lesbian, an obese boy… anyone, so long as that person is the same age as A, who’s existed for sixteen years. A adopts the lives of his/her hosts with general contentment, until one day A wakes up as the boyfriend of a girl named Rhiannon and falls in love.

What follows is a tale of young romance, but one wrought with complications and questions: Who is A? What is A? Why is A? Is it possible to have a relationship with a person without considering his or her appearance? How far would you go to get everything you want if it means hurting someone else?

Levithan touches on a lot of potentially sacharine teenage-relevant topics (Self-acceptance, tolerance for those who are different, first love, etc.) without going too far in the preachy direction. Instead, he teaches the readers what the adage “Spend a day in someone else’s shoes” is really trying to convey. Each life that A experiences is both radically different and astonishingly similar. Because of A’s special “condition,” A gets to experience the world from all sides, in all variations. In this way, A’s life is full, crammed with perpetual newness; but because no one even knows that A exists, A can never have what makes life really worth living - human connection. Which is why A decides to seek out Rhiannon and make the impossible possible.

I personally wish Levithan had gone into more detail about what made Rhiannon so special to A, why she was the one to knock A off his/her course. A says that he/she loves her, but Levithan doesn’t explain exactly why this is so. And there are a plethora of questions left unanswered at the end of the novel, which is to be expected. But those mild bumps did little to change the fact that I fell helplessly head over heels for this book from start to finish. It will make your imagination run wild, it will make you feel alive, and, yes, it may also break your heart - but only in the best way possible, as first love is known to do. 

Book Review: “The Fault in Our Stars”

Last night I stayed up until 2:00 am reading a book. That’s how you know you’ve found a gem - you simply can’t put it down until you plow your way through, devouring it fully as quickly as you can while also stopping repeatedly to underline, circle, highlight, scribble, fold down page corners and then re-read your favorite passages.

This was such a book: a book you wish you could read again as soon as you finish the last word on the final page. It’s “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green.

It’s a relatively new book; it was published at the beginning of the year, in January 2012. Reading it in the same calendar year is what I will call an accomplishment, as my “Must Read” list is generally impossibly long. If yours is similarly long, I urge you to move “The Fault in Our Stars” to the top of your list. I know everyone says that about all their favorite books, but believe me - few books can rival the literary level of perfection achieved by this great work.

The novel is beautiful, poetic, funny, intelligent, and tragic all at once. John Green brilliantly tackles some of the most terrifying existential questions about the meaning of life in a way that feels lighthearted and humorous, but also incredibly philosophical. The novel follows Hazel, a quirky and brilliant sixteen year old girl who loves to read and watch “America’s Next Top Model.” She looks like a “V for Vendetta”-era Natalie Portman. And she’s dying.

Hazel has terminal cancer. After her mother grows concerned that Hazel might be getting clinically depressed, she insists that Hazel attend a weekly Support Group meeting. This is where she meets Augustus Waters, a seventeen year old boy in remission from osteosarcoma. Augustus is aggressively attractive, shares Hazel’s aversion to idiots misusing the word “literally,” and changes Hazel’s life completely.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is not just a book about cancer. It’s also not just a book about teenage love. It’s a book about, well… everything. What is the meaning of a life? What happens to us after we die? Will we be remembered? Will the marks we leave on this world, like dogs pissing on fire hydrants, really amount to anything? Is it selfish to love and be loved when you know that the relationships will inevitably end in pain? And what happens to the characters in a book after the story ends?

This was one of those rare novels that spoke to my heart in a whisper; it feels like it’s resided inside of me my entire life but suddenly lit up in a warm, all-encompassing glow. I can’t sum up my feelings better than Hazel does: “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books [which] you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.” “The Fault in Our Stars” is certainly the latter, for precisely the reason that it contains such swoon-inducing passages as that one. And yet, because I care about you, dear reader, and wish for you to share in this little globe of magic that the novel will encase you in once you open it for the first time, I am sharing it with you, advertising my affection as loudly as my words can broadcast themselves. Also, it’s already a #1 “New York Times” bestseller, so it seems that the power of this novel is already broadcasting itself just fine.

I leave you with my favorite passage in the whole entire novel:

“I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

Book Review: “Tiny Beautiful Things”

I had a happy accident this week: I discovered the most captivating, wonderful, amazing book that also happens to contain tidbits of wisdom that answered the recent cries of my heart. The book is “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed, aka Sugar from the popular online magazine The Rumpus. I have no idea how it ended up in my iBooks Library - I can’t remember when I purchased it or why - but I’m so very glad that it was there when, on a quiet day at work, I went searching for something to read.

If you hate reading (who are you?), don’t shy away - this book is essentially a collection of advice column pieces, which means it doesn’t require any great time commitment or consistency. It’s a book that you could pick up in September, flip to a random page, read the entry in question, then put back on your bookshelf to revisit in October. Not that I believe that’s possible - once I read the Introduction, I couldn’t put it the book down… I’m just saying that it’s not as intimidating as some more hefty works may appear.

I hesitate to call “Tiny Beautiful Things” JUST a bunch of advice column pieces, because it’s so much more than that. Cheryl Strayed is perhaps one of the most elegant writers I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering. She writes all of her responses with the clarity and fullness of a graduate thesis, while pulling in personal anecdotes and therapist-worthy tidbits of wisdom. She lays her own life out for the reader in order to empathize with the plights of the individuals seeking her council, and her rawness and authenticity make the book exactly what its title claims: beautiful.

If you’ve ever wished that you had someone to talk to who understood everything you were going through, or if you’ve ever felt like you were so lost you couldn’t be helped, or if you’ve ever wondered if you were weird and different because no one seems to have experienced the same hardships you have, then you need to read this book. Sugar, Strayed’s columnist moniker, is the best friend/mother/Rafiki we all wish we had when we’re at our darkest moments of dispair. And the fascinating reality is that Sugar isn’t some imaginary character or persona - it’s Strayed, through and through, a real person, a real mother, a real wife, a real woman, a real writer. Invite her in for a cup of tea and you’d probably find yourself spilling all your deepest secrets to her while she nodded her head knowingly and then responded with exactly what you needed to hear. Her advice may not be coated with “sugar” - this woman tells it like it is - but it’s always spot-on.

If nothing else, this book offers the most delectable of guilty pleasures - you get to take a peek into some people’s innermost lives. You’ll hear all their dirty secrets and worst deeds and painful memories. And that’s always fun, isn’t it? But the brilliance of this book is that Sugar will force you to step out of your snide little role as a voyeur and make you examine your own life, just as she examines the lives of those people who are hurting enough to write her.

Book Review: “How Should A Person Be?”

As I mentioned earlier, I was quite sick last week, which basically sucked overall but which also graciously allowed me plentiful time in which to catch up on a book that I started a couple months back and that had been, frankly, causing me a great deal of suffering, because I wanted to keep reading it so desperately but I couldn’t because I had no time because life truly does, even when you’re not sick, suck.  But then there are bright spots (having my dog curled up on my lap whilst reading, getting paid for not working, clearing out the deep phlegm-coated regions of my lungs with all that hacking) and life is forgiven for all the shit.  For a moment, anyway.

The book that tormented me with its relentless flirtations?  Sheila Heti’s absolutely beyond brilliant “How Should A Person Be?”

If you are any of the following, you will enjoy this book:

a) Between the ages of 20 and 50.

b) Female, or not female.

c) Someone who doubts themselves from time to time.

d) An artist, or an admirer of art.

e) None of the above.

What I love most about this fictional novel is how incredibly unique and unconventional it is.  The short summary of the plot is this: it revolves a character named Sheila (who is the author, but also not) who lives in Toronto and wants to be a writer and has a best friend named Margaux who’s a painter.  Sheila is trying to uncover who she really is after escaping a stale marriage, but she goes about her self-discovery in all the wrong ways: she tries to fashion herself after some grand societal notions of how women/artists/anyone “should” be, which is not sustainable.  She throws herself into contrived sexual relationships and begins a play which she cannot complete and compromises her friendship with Margaux because, at its core, the identity she tries to adopt is not genuine.

I could not have found this book at a better time, because it so perfectly echoes my own personal grievances, as well as that, I think of my generation and those that followed - a mass of young people who were given entirely too much room to “discover” themselves with no resources and no real grounding.  I don’t mean that in the “poor spoiled rich girl with too many options” a la HBO’s “Girls” sense (although it was through a recommendation from Lena Dunham in some magazine that led me to seek out this novel); I mean merely to point out that our current societal tendency to encourage people to have it all, to be everything they want to be, while also forcing them to conform to some pretty strict ideals of what that SHOULD be is something that will inevitably threaten individuality, and, subsequently art, altogether.

In an interview in the August 2012 issue of Nylon magazine, Heti explained her use of unconventional format in the book, which incorporates normal narrative, dialogue (with no action), and a play format of breaking the story up into acts:

“The book is about how to be ugly in the world - and that maybe it’s OK to be ugly, maybe you need to be. For me, ugliness is a lack of control, so the book had to have that feeling of looseness or freedom or ugliness or lack of inhibition. I guess when you’re inhibited, you’re trying to hide parts of yourself. And the idea of this book is, ‘What is it like if you allow all those parts of yourself to exist in the world?’”

What is normal, anyway, and what is ugly?  Who’s to say that the ugly isn’t beautiful?  The thoughtful discussion of these questions are why you should go read this book right now.  But, of course, that’s only if you want to… who am I to tell you who to be?

The Only Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need: “Fuck It”

I have a new spiritual mantra, courtesy of John C. Parkin’s self-help book, “Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way.”  Naturally, that mantra is “fuck it.”  And I now find myself saying those two words in my head pretty much constantly.

One of my friends shared this gem with me after we joked about a potential problem at work.  I shrugged and said, “Meh.  Fuck it.”  And he immediately recommended that I read this guide to actually turning those words into a way of life.  This book contains the most brilliant bit of advice I’ve ever received, and I’ve devoted many hours of my weary little life to therapy and other soul-searching ventures.  As it turns out, finding inner peace may be a lot easier (and more fun) than I originally presumed.

The first quality that makes this book stand out is author Parkin’s irreverent British humor.  This guy has no qualms making jokes about shagging goats, which, obviously, made me love him instantly.  His writing style is casual, captivating, and very, very funny.  This isn’t your standard, hit-you-over-the-head-with-my-wisdom-until-you-buy-everything-I’m-selling obnoxious, self-satisfied spiritual guide.  Rather, reading this book feels just like having a pleasant conversation with someone who seems to have his shit together - someone who tried living with stress and depression until he finally figured out that, remarkably, his life didn’t actually have to be that way.  

It may seem like rather obvious advice (just don’t let things bother you! …like that’s easy), but many of us have grown up with tension literally knitted into our musculature so tightly that we feel like it’s an essential part of normal life.  But sometimes the stress gets to be too much to bear, and then we desperately seek out means to make the anxiety go away.  The idea that we have the ability to dispel it ourselves, without the use of expensive medications or hours of intense meditation with Yoga masters is really kind of revolutionary.  An entire industry has been constructed around the idea that finding inner peace requires a hell of a lot of time, energy, and money.  But really, all you have to do is say “fuck it” to everything that’s weighing you down, and what used to matter suddenly doesn’t matter so much anymore.

In the couple weeks since I first started reading this book, I’ve found myself getting far less stressed out by my life and finding more reasons to enjoy it.  If you want to feel that kind of liberation, pick up this book.  Then freely wander around shouting “fuck it” to everything that tries to bring you down.  This book is a joy to read (it’s also short, so really, even if you hate reading, it shouldn’t be that hard) and it may help you start to regain control of your life.  At least, I hope it does.  If not, fuck it - that’s not MY problem.