Then on the way to get your flu shot you start to feel a tickle in the back of your throat and not a good tickle.  A tickle that makes you think, “Why should I spend 30 bucks for a painful shot when I may be sick already.”  Then you think of all the times you heard “flu shots make you sick.”

Is this true?  Was this ever true?  Or… are flu shots the best placebo ever created?  Perhaps a flu shot is just a shot of chicken noodle soup.  Why does chicken noodle soup make you feel better? Because Mama told you it would. Why would Mama lie?

I think flu shots are the most powerful placebo known to man.  Some people get the shot and suddenly they have flu symptoms and this actually convinces them that the shot works.  “That is how you know it is working.”  Working? That is like buying a winter coat that initially makes you cold which indicates “it is working.”

One year, Santa Clause brought me Choose your own adventure books.  When I used to read Choose your own adventure books, people thought I was a slow reader.  I am not a slow reader. I am a slow decider.  Imagine if The Great Gatsby asked you to participate, “if you choose to kiss Daisy go to page 34.”

I just started a audio book this morning while driving to work.  The book is pretty good so far except for the part where I remembered that I forgot my lunch at home.  It is hard to pay attention to an audio book while you are wondering if your ham and cheese sandwhich is worth turning around in the morning traffic.  This is my first audio book but it is not my first time drifting off while I am listening to someone talk.

Thoughts on SABC review of The Night of the Gun:

One thing that the reviewers seem to miss (although I think the moderator gets it about halfway in) is that this book isn’t intended to offer emotional insight to “why I used drugs” or anything of the sort.  In the same way that it eschews catharsis it must then avoid the lure of nostalgia and emotionalizing the situation.  Although perceived at times as its weakness, the coldness and detached nature of his writing may not offer the insight that you’re looking for, but it at least makes an effort at being more of an “objective” account than most of the crap recovery novels out there.  The point at which I am frustrated by the review is when they discuss someone else’s recovery novel in which the author kills himself before the end of the book (and it’s a true story).  The desire and tendency to romanticize the work of those that are gone becomes tiresome.  No, that author can’t engage in the “smugness” that Carr does about his current life, and I too am somewhat suspicious of the complete turnaround Carr had considering the brevity of the process, but that doesn’t make one book better than the other, it just captures two people at their most disparate states: alive, and still struggling versus dead and “at peace.”

Fundamentally however, I like a lot of the points raised, most notably that the book, by design lulled me in and out of caring about it.  On one hand the construct was interesting and on the other the nature of the book had a kind of alienation effect in which I would remember I was reading a book and was not longer lost in the story.  This was frustrating.

Yes, it’s another music book.  Originally I picked up Frank Conroy’s Body and Soul (possibly a nod to the awesome Benny Goodman song of the same name?) because he’s an incredible author.  He penned Stop-Time, one of my favorite books of all time as a high-schooler and I’m re-reading it now, sitting on my bedroom table with my other favorite of all time, The Great Gatsby.

Body and Soul is also the story of a child piano prodigy.  Unlike my last suggestions however, this one is not by a musician but rather cuilds the story and talks about music in a way that the musician can really feel and the casual reader can get an extremely unique view from.  If you read some of the reviews, both trained and non-musician say that the book looks into what the musician feels in a manner that few have ever seen in writing.

Quit reading this review and get the hardcover for $3.48 and free shipping (in the US).  Wow!  Did I mention it’s carbon neutral shipping and money will go to our literacy partners?  But of course you know that already…