Friday, February 24, 2012

non-knitting books I've been reading

It was a sewing book.

Just kidding. After a long stretch of narrowly focusing on that particular aisle in the public library which starts with interior design, moves onto cross-stitch, weaving and knitting before finishing with crochet - I decided that I had enough cardigan patterns.

So I read David Sedaris' When you are engulfed in flames, which I loved. It's one of those blackly funny memoir-type books which I would have loved to write myself (but my protagonist would not have been a gay American ex-smoker). I liked it so much I went back for another one - which title I forget, but it's full of animal stories (as in, there are no people but the animals are people, if you get my drift). It's also funny, bleak and makes me nod my head and go "yes, that's right".

I also have The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgekinson. But it's not as interesting because it's too simular to his How to be Idle. I suspect the author's a bit of a libertarian, as he's always going on about how the government is controlling the population. But he is also anti-capitalist, so that's alright. I can't help feeling though that his way of living only works if you are a free-lancer and if everyone else is still part of the "system".

4 comments:

Amanda said...

I read the Freedom Manifesto & I agree. I don't think the idea of going back to the land and growing vegetables is that liberating. If we all become subsistence farmer/freelance journo's society isn't going to be that much fun to live in for long. I get the impression from the Idler website that these days Hodgkinson seems to be putting a lot of his effort into his London coffee house suggesting the simple life has paled

Violet said...

I also think that in medieval times it was probably only the men who got to lounge about in between bouts of agricultural work. The women would have spent all their waking hours cooking, cleaning, tending children, growing veges, fetching water etc

Anonymous said...

And women probably weren't allowed in the pub in medieval times.

Your reading some terribly highbrow, although also in comparision to (dreadful semi-romance novel I've been reading that my mum gave me for my birthday - which I think has actually killed part of my brain).

Violet said...

Donnasoowho: I'd like to think I can handle the odd highbrow book, but truthfully I've only got enough braincells for pop-high brow.
Now Amanda on the other hand, she can really do highbrow...