geekent's Buy Nothing Year

Format: Hardcover

Release date: October 9, 2007

Date acquired/borrowed: January 8, 2007

Pages: 240

Start reading date: January 8, 2007

Finished reading: January 16, 2007



All the fake smarmy, self-importance, ignorance and obtuseness you've come to expect from Stephen Colbert's parody of far-right media blow-hards (ala Rush Limbaugh) now in printed form. Akin to the Daily Show-derived "America: The Book" which satirized American history textbooks and Jon Hodgman's Areas Of My Expertise which took on the feel of an almanac, "I Am America" adopts elements of both, only written from the perspective of an ignorant egoist.



From the opening pages, we're made aware that this fictional persona Colbert adopts has opinions, so many opinions that 4 TV episodes a week can't contain them all. This book is just some of those opinions spread out over topics such as sexuality, sports, and religion.

Format: Hardcover
Release date: October 16, 2007
Date acquired/borrowed: December 25, 2007
Pages: 672
Start reading date: January 16, 2007
Finished reading: February 21, 2007

My earliest recollections of the Peanuts gang was a green felt wall hanging with Linus on it, the slogan "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere" sagely written above Schulz's deceptively simplistic character drawing. It hung in my room for some time as a wee lad, I recall, but don't remember when or why it was removed. From my grandmother's house I had claimed my Uncle's old Snoopy toy as my own. You could pop his limbs off easily, I remember frequent pullings-apart, but he always went back together. I watched various"...Charlie Brown" specials on tv featuring Great Pumpkins and Christmas pageantry, and I read Peanuts in the Sunday color comics, but not as frequently the dailies. I'm sure most of us born a few years before Charles Schulz's retirement from comics have (or will have) similar recollections from our youth, scarcely a life in North America -- and millions more globally -- that hasn't had some exposure to Snoopy, Charlie Brown and company.

If you were a child of the 50's or 60's, you probably remember a much different Peanuts than what the rest of us grew up with, the commercialized property with seeming omnipresence, inescapable, unavoidable. Perhaps, like me, you never cared as much for Peanuts as what came after it: Garfield; For Better Or Worse; Calvin and Hobbes; Doonesbury; The Boondocks.... Virtually every newspaper comic strip since Peanuts came on the owes a debt to its creator, and whether you truly appreciate the man's craft or not, you can't deny Charles "Sparky" Schulz' influence on the field of cartooning.

by Michael Pollan

Format: Hardcover
Release date: January 1, 2008
Date acquired/borrowed: April 2008
Pages: 256
Start reading date: April 2008
Finished reading: May 21, 2008

My cousin is a very earthy fellow. He's not a hippy or a tree hugger, he's a hunter and a survivalist, I guess you could say. He (and as you will find with many hunters) has respect for the land and what it can provide him. I haven't interacted a lot with him in the past decade or so -- distance and disparate lifestyles do that sort of thing -- but recently spending time with him during a family funeral I quickly developed a real sense of respect for his attitudes and philosophies about the way humans and the surrounding natural world interact. Oh, I also get the sense that he enjoys the modern comforts that civilization provides (trucks and snowmobiles and whatnot), but he also has a deep respect for the logic of old society... that we're part of something bigger, that what we contribute to the Earth should likewise contribute back to us, and if you poison the land it will poison us back. No, he didn't say this, not directly, but statements like his half-serious sentiment that he's going to get a goat rather than use a lawn mower was just one tip-off to his sensibilities. He likes to venture off in the woods for weeks on end, out of range of cell phones and gas stations, surviving rather than simply camping, fishing or hunting for nourishment not so much for sport.

He also hunts to put food on his family's table, stating it's infinitely better food than what you'll find in the grocery store. At the time, I understood somewhat the ideological different between wild game and industry-generated meat, but I didn't really get the instinctive difference, which is one of many things Michael Pollan details in his new book In Defense of Food.

Format: softcover
Release date: July 3, 2008
Date acquired/borrowed: October 7, 2008
Pages: 416
Start reading date: October 8, 2008
Finished reading: October 10, 2008

Danny Wallace was turning thirty. Recently married, and a new homeowner, the realization that suddenly he wasn't on his own, that he had responsibilities and that, once he hit the big three-oh, he was supposed to be a man, not a stunted man-child who would play video games instead of varnishing the patio table. The proverbial straw that threw him into an utter tizzy about his coming-of-age was a request from friends that he and his wife be godparents to their new child.

With his sense of self collapsing around him, Danny took refuge in the past, courtesy of a parcel of childhood memories sent by his mother. There he found an address book within which contained twelve names, twelve people whom he considered his best of friends at different times in his life growing up (his family moving between cities in England and once to Germany following his professor father around), all of whom he no longer is in contact with.

Format: softcover
Release date: April 3, 2008
Date acquired/borrowed: October 7, 2008
Pages: 384
Start reading date: October 11, 2008
Finished reading: October 13, 2008

British humourist Dave Gorman had toured America with his one-man show, 40 cities for the better part of the year. Throughout the whole experience he clashed time after time with the organizers of his tour resulting in an altogether miserable experience, exacerbated by the fact that Gorman wasn't touring America at all, instead just sleeping in the same cookie-cutter hotel room in many different locations, eating the same food, finding practically the same experience everywhere he went. Growing up, he'd heard the legend of America, seen the glory of it's diversity on TV and in movies, it was something full of awe and wonder, mystery and majesty. But it would seem it's devolved into a melting pot not of people and cultures but of products, brands, labels, and trademarks. After returning home to London, Gorman seriously wanted to know if there was anything left of the America that those who grew up idolizing it (in a sense), and, as those familiar with Gorman's previous work would surmise, a plan was hatched.

The idea behind America Unchained was to see if Gorman, without any advanced planning, could arrive on the west coast, buy a car and drive to the east coast without ever gassing up at a branded gas station, eat at a franchise restaurant, use a corporate repair shop, or stay in a chain hotel. Of course, that's the simple version and Gorman throws a severe monkey wrench into the works when he insists on buying a "proper" American car, something older than him, which, at 36 years of age, means an ancient (relatively speaking) and untrustworthy beast indeed. He lucks out and finds a well-maintained, single-owner Torino station wagon in San Diego, but even a well maintained car will produce plenty of problems after 30+ years.