The Thin Red Line

When Ron was in the hospital having surgery,  Staci and I did major cleaning and the huge stacks of books that used to live on my couch now have their own place on the bookshelf.   The downside of this of course is that with the books safely over on the bookshelf I may go for weeks without even Thinking about those books.   So from time to time whether off the shelf or the couch,  I have to send back some of my selections, unread and un-reviewed.

Then yesterday I read something on Entrecard about doing a weekly link love to your top droppers and decided that this worthy endeavor would make a great way to dispose of ten books, all of which impressed me in their way, but which I am just Not going to get around to reviewing.    Here then are my top ten droppers and top ten un-read titles being moved to the Return-To-The-Library shelf today.

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First off today,  a sincerest Thank You to Cromley over at Cromley’s World who a few days ago bestowed on me my  very own Arte Y Pico award,  which as I understand it is intended to recognize bloggers who are an "inspiration to others" in terms of   "creativity, design, interesting content, and contributions to the larger blogging community".     Long-time readers of this blog will certainly recall my fuming against "memes"  and probably will not be surprised to learn that I have decidedly mixed feelings about this award.

While I don’t in any way doubt the sincerity with which it was given and would like to believe that in my own small way I have done my bit to bring creativity, design and interesting content to the larger blogging community,   I can’t quite shake the feeling that these awards are something of a distraction, and one intended by their creators to serve a number of purposes quite apart from promoting design, creativity et als.

It would seem that William McCamment over at the Dead Rooster blog would agree.    McCamment,  another recent recipient of the Arte Y Pico award did a bit of digging around and announced on his blog that over Sixty-Five Thousand  of these Arte Y Pico awards have already been given out,  and assuming that most recipients followed the instructions,   created over 65,000 incoming links to the original site,   which as it happens is in Spanish,  making it difficult for me to even know if it is a site I would want to be associated with.  So rather than follow the instructions and post a copy of the rules and tag five more lucky recipients  I decided instead to tag my long lost blogging buddy Saphrym  (who just recently did an amazing post in response to my  The Why We Want To Kill You For Not Understanding Iraq Meme) with the Dead Rooster Award For Diabolical Greatness.   Again,  my sincerest thanks to Cromley along with my sincerest hopes that the memes and awards will disppear again, at least for awhile.

And finally today,  the actual book review.   I have to confess that I have never seen Ed Begley Jr.’s  cable television show or come across his Begley’s Best all natural cleaning products so his recently released book Living Like Ed was in fact my first acquaintance with Begley as a spokesman for "Eco-Friendly" Living.   The book is well written and offers a range of things one can do to be more "eco-friendly",  from the easiest things like replacing light bulbs with compact florescents and participating in curb-side recycling programs.   Begley also goes into considerable detail about more intensive greening activities, like solar power and even organic clothing.     I can’t honestly say that the book made me rush out to start living greener,  but it does provide a lot of information and will at the very least provide food for thought and guidance towards greener choices as time goes by.   Recommended.

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I get so many great recommendations from people I value and it saddens me that I don’t always find time to follow through with reading all of them, vigilant as I usually am about ordering them from the library when the book is first mentioned.   

And right now I am very caught up in reading Untapped–The Scramble For Africa’s Oil, which is both fascinating and timely and I expect to blog about it next week.   And today I happened to come across something very rare.   A meme I found on Haley Hughes’ The Beacon blog, the Page 123 Meme,  that actually seemed to fit well with my blog and that I actually wanted to follow,  even though I was not tagged with it.

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Over  on Chain Drop I talk a lot about making and keeping friends.   And when a contest we recently tried to run completely flopped because no one entered it, except for one contestant, whose entry was eaten by our entry form, Dane says to me  "what we need is to bring in all those Writers like in Tiffany’s writing group….They would write good pieces about how they use social networking".   So I thought to myself, I’m friends with a bunch of those writers.   And some of them I know read my books blog if not Chain Drop.

Feel free to comment about any entries that have been posted.   Each substantive post about social networking and Each substantive comment about a previous post will count as one entry.    

On February 28, 2008 I will close this post to further comments.   I will remove any comments that are inappropriate or insubstantial prior to selecting the winner by  using a random number generator to select one of the comments  as the winner of 3,000 Entrecard credits to be purchased by Dane and Alan just for this contest.    And if you are not into Entrecard you will have the option of receiving from us via Paypal the cash price we would have topay for the credits on 2/28/06.  All of the entries and comments may also be published on Chain Drop in a special post about this contest.    By submitting your work you grant us the right to pubish your submission on both blogs as described.   You retain all other rights to your work.

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I don’t normally post to this blog on the weekends,  and a second off-topic post within less than a week is for me, unprecedented.    But I have these two very interesting and unusual books that have been sitting in my stack unread for several weeks now,  and my good buddy Saphrym  today commented on my old Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist Meme post that he would  Welcome a challenging meme that Really made him think.   And since I today realized that as interesting and important as these two books so clearly are,  I am nonetheless unlikely to ever find the time and intellectual energy to actually read and review them and so decided instead to punt.

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Some days I need to put the computer down and catch up on my reading in order to write about books here every day, and today is one of those days. Sorry, no book reviews today.

If not reading me gives you a couple of extra minutes today, click on the logo and visit the Free Rice web site where a charitable organization will donate free rice through the United Nations food program each time you select the correct definition of the word at the top of your screen. It is a fun and challenging little word game and it’s a nice feeling to watch the little rice bowl fill up as you answer correctly. The software seems to do a good job of switching to easier or harder words so you don’t win too easily or lose too often.

Some folks of course will point out that volunteering at a food bank or donating cash to a reputable relief charity would do more to end hunger than playing this little game on the Internet and of course they will be correct. But it you would likely spend five or ten minutes playing a word or puzzle game online anyway, knowing that you’ve donated a bowl of rice for having done so ‘aint half bad.

Update: Netcritics.info has just posted a side-splitting review of The Thin Red Line. You Have to go read it. It’s a hoot.,

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