Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Too much mind candy is rotting my brain cells

Like a nicotine addict (I'd imagine) who has finally become disgusted with the sight of all those discarded cigarette butts littering her back yard, I've come to realise that I have to do something about my magazine addiction.

It was a luxury, after years of being a non-earner, to be able to buy whatever magazines I wanted. At first I was devouring magazines about writing, but since I went back to work my creative energy seems to have gurgled down the toilet and the only writing I do is on this blog. So naturally, I turned to fashion and "women's" magazines. They were fun; I was interested in the clothes, and the odd photographs of haggard, makeup-less celebrities were just harmless mind candy.

But rot is setting in. Last week I bought an Australian gossip magazine called Grazia. There was nothing in it other than glossy photos of celebrities copying each other's styles. My starving brain cells are revolting against their junk food diet. It's time to take action.

My name is Violet and I'm a self-infflicted dumb-dumb. Can anyone recommend a good book of modern philosophy?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz - hardly a good book on modern philosophy, but and easy book to get into and possibly a good bridge from Grazia to something a little more taxing on the brain...

Violet said...

What a curious subtitle - "Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality".

Probably the closest I will ever get to a book about spirituality will be Jana Riess' "What would Buffy do?". It's pretty good too.

Lisa Later said...

ooh ooh!

alain de botton

he's so smart but so very readable

his early stuff is sort of written in novel form

Violet said...

lettuce hater: yeah, I've read about half of his "How Proust can change your life" book. I think I would have appreciated it more if I'd actually read Proust, though.