Playing Catch Up

I've been trying to grow grass and scrape my porch stairs this week - two very laborious processes. While I move my sprinkler around every 1o minues, I've managed to squeeze in brief bits of reading that have resulted in the completion of two books . Neither of them were one of my Southern Reading Challenge books but I hope to start that this week. Gotta finish my book group book first though! I'm a lousy book reviewer but I will do my best.

Last Sunday I finished Garrison Keilor's Pontoon. As usual he manages to create a varied collection of "unique" individuals from Lake Woebegon and weave together a very entertaining story. The conclusion had my laughing so hard I was in tears which doesn't happen to me very often. I could so picture the complete chaos he was describing it was incredible.

I also read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. This was an extremely interesting book and I think I will have to see if my library has his other book The Omnivore's Dilemma. The premise of the book is that as a result of "nutritionism", the FDA, the marketing industry and other scientific entities (just to name a few) we've gotten away from eating "food" as a result of focusing on nutrients - antioxidants, omega-3s, etc. In our quest to eat "healthy", we've gotten so confused by all the various claims and counterclaims of assorted diet fads and nutrition recommendations that have not really resulted in making us healthier. Pollan's premise is that the "western" diet most of us eat is actually worse for our health than if we ate traditional diets our ancestors did - a Mediterranean, Asian or other ethnic culture. I found the book very thought provoking.