So Many Books...

I just got A Life of One's Own today. It's a book Ariel Gore references frequently in Bluebird.

I like the title. And I like the idea behind it, which is that this woman, Marion Milner, (writing as Joanna Field) decides to write down things that make her happy, in an effort to determine what happiness is. It sounds wicked meta and very interesting.

In related news, I was listening to an old podcast from The Economist today, where my favorite angry social commentator, Barbara Ehrenreich, was interviewed about her new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. She basically says the American mentality of "Always think positively and good things will happen, but be mentally negative and it's your fault if things go to hell" is complete bunk.

For example, she talked about getting breast cancer, and how she was really pissed off about it. When she aired this opinion on some of the breast cancer chat boards, she was taken to task big time for being so negative. Why, she asks, is there no room for outrage or anger? Excessive optimism is what took us into the whole mortgage meltdown. And the implication that people who get cancer are responsible for it because they're angry or irritable is cruel and insulting, she says. And I agree.

I mean, yes, if you smoke a pack a day, you'll get cancer at some point. Most of us will get cancer at some point, if we live long enough. That's cheery.

But to say that a bad attitude causes cancer is absurd. Equally so, to claim that victims of tragedies like the tsunami in 2004, or Hurricane Katrina, were asking for it becasue they were too negative, as some American positive gurus claim, is utter bullshit.

So now I really want to read HER book. Dammit.

Ah yes, constant craving. That's not only a Buddhist concept, but an excellent song by Canadian songbird kd lang.

And now, to read.