Porn and Brains

I picked up A World of Light by Floyd Skloot at the library, from the 612 section. The back cover said it was a story about a man's neurological degeneration after a virus attacked him. It was nothing of the sort. The man's brain disorder was barely mentioned. The first third of the book was about his mother's Alzheimer's disease, while the second two thirds were about his house, and his well, and other extremely boring subjects. I do not care that your well only yielded 4 gallons of water per hour when it should have yielded 80. I don't care how you drilled for a new one. I don't care how much you hated snow or how your house was too small.
I was so bored. This is why I usually don't like memoirs. Things that are interesting to an autobiographer usually don't matter to anyone else. Honestly, if I weren't hoping for the story to turn back towards his mother in the Alzheimer's ward, I wouldn't have kept reading (note: it barely did).

Next, I read Black Hole by Charles Burns, a long graphic novel. It was awful. It was about these teens who turned into semi-monsters after they had sex with other people with the monster "bug". Basically, the book consisted of a lot of cartoonish nudity. At times I felt like I was reading porn. Really, the entire book seemed to have no purpose other than to display boobs. Plus, there was far too much weed for my liking.

I at least read one good book this week. A Mind of Its Own: How Our Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine was excellent. It was written in incredibly simple language, and it taught me a lot without dumbing the information down too much. Basically, the book highlighted how our brains are delusional, bigoted, weak-willed, vain, and pig-headed. It was incredibly interesting. I think I'll actually have to go out and buy it to add to my collection.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to hit 31 books for this month. Oh well, 27 or so is still pretty impressive.

Total Books: 26
Nonfiction: 14 (53.8%)