The Reading Corner.

[Mart]

Reading the second book of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Gambit. by Karen Miller.
These books are in the star Wars timeline between the second and third movie: The Clone Wars. Anakin and Obi-Wan on a spy mission. It's easy reading, for someone who likes the Clone Wars it would be interesting story.

[Lorizael]

You mean between the fourth and fifth movies. 

[Geo]

You mean between the fourth and fifth movies. 

I'm assuming he meant the second and third episodes. 

[Lorizael]

Ack. Fifth and sixth! 

[Geo]

 

[Mart]

You mean between the fourth and fifth movies. 

Yeah, that's what happens when you make a/the fourth movie first.
But yes, considering their release dates, that was between 5th and 6th.
And considering, now, octology order, it is between 2nd and 3rd.
Next year we will have ennealogy . nine-ology...

[Rusty Edge]

GENIUS FOODS
Becoming Smarter, Happier, and More Productive
While Protecting your Brain For Life


by Max Lugavre with Paul Grewal, MD


The author was a tv journalist when his mother was stricken with Alzheimer's disease at 58. This was particularly frustrating because his mother had always been kind of a health nut. She ate whole grains and avoided oils. He spent his time supporting her and trying to find effective treatments. As a journalist he had access to doctors and scientists. Without getting into the explanations and statistics, I'll try to simply share his recommendations.


* Get enough sleep ( better yet keep your bedroom cool and dark, take a warm bath or shower first, and don't read or use your cell phone there. Stop drinking alcohol and caffeine well before. Stop eating at least an hour before.) Get direct sunlight within 20 minutes of waking.


* Try intemittent fasting.


* Use a sauna. ( for a variety of reasons including it serves the purpose of exercise. ) Also, exposing yourself to 60 degree F temps for six hours a day is beneficial as well.


*Reduce stress in your life.


*Have a purpose.


* Meditate, don't medicate.


*Spend time outdoors.


*Get a massage.


* Practice deep breathing.


DIET- Good Foods-
Wild Salmon, other sea foods aren't bad, either. 
Avacados
Almonds and other tree nuts.
Dark chocolate 80% or more
Brocolli
Eggs
Grass fed Beef
Dark Leafy Greens
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Blueberries

Bad Foods-
Processed
Grain derived oils
Carbs for breakfast
Wheat and wheat gluten
Sugar and other concentrated sweeteners
Anything with polysorbate 80 or carboxymethylcellulose in it. ( salad dressings , creamers, nut milks, and ice creams are most likely.)
Aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, acesulfame-K
Fruit juices and sodas

You probably read this and thought "BUT saunas and exercise and fasting are stressful, etc. AND you said stress was BAD."   Well, yeah. Some of this stuff works because it is stressful, and causes the body to prioritize. Apparently brain health is high on the list. So blood flow gets improved and plaques get scavenged. Sustained stress is bad. Sometimes and some kinds of stress events are a net good.


You probably also thought that this sounds like my current diet, or Keto diets, or diabetic diets. Some Alzheimer's researchers call it Type III diabetes. So, avoiding grains, starches and sweets dovetails with those goals.

[Elok]

My elder son's godparents got him The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind for Christmas.  It's about a kid from Malawi who builds a windmill to power his village.  My boy was quite unenthusiastic at first, because the initial chapters are about life in Malawi and people believing in magic, etc.  But now the boy in the story is thirteen, and learning to fix radios.  My son is captivated.

[Lorizael]

I'm finally reading The Martian. All the extremely technical science/engineering stuff is fun, but you can definitely tell this is a debut novel.

[Elok]

You really can't.  His followup novel Artemis is written in basically the same voice, only pretending to be a woman.  It's just Weir's style.

[Bearu]

.
The article discusses the importance and challenges of women across the centuries of existence in the world; the women of society exist in a state of disadvantage, and the disadvantage results from the persecution of women under the misogyny and patriarchal attitudes, both implicit and explicit. The book discusses the importance of women in a struggle for liberation.

[Lorizael]

You really can't.  His followup novel Artemis is written in basically the same voice, only pretending to be a woman.  It's just Weir's style.

Oof. I mean, it's not terrible writing, but it's very prosaic, and some of the dialogue is clunky, and his sense for how to create dramatic scenes is not as well honed as, say, Ridley Scott's is.

[Elok]

If it makes you feel better, just use Amazon's "look inside" feature to scan the first few pages of Ready Player One.

[Syn]

Finally decided to give Ilona Andrews a try with the Innkeeper series. First book was okay with a rough beginning. Second was decent. Third is, thus far, quite good.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Just finished A Dance with Dragons, having read the whole A Song of Ice and Fire series in the last couple weeks, and now I need a bath.

I'm seriously taking a bath tonight, fer realz.

You know, because of the HBO softcore series catching on the way it has, this stuff has turned into required reading for nerdz, like Dune and Lord of the Rings and Star Trek and Star Wars - you don't really speak the language and get left out of entirely too many geek conversations if you're not familiar.  So between that, and loving the Dunc and Egg stories, I gave it a try.

First thing I'll mention is that it a series by a fat man in love with food. 

More importantly, it's vile, it's 75% padding (a significant portion which is about meals eaten), and I doubt it's going anywhere satisfying even more than I doubt it'll ever get finished.  It was a good enough yarn that I made it all the thousands of pages of way through, mostly not skimming the padding, but, like trying to watch Twin Peaks and giving up, concluding Lynch was just screwing around, I feel cheated and dirty.

When they're not eating everyone suffers - *everyone*, for five very long books.  It's ugly and it's mean-spirited, and it's way short of any good guys worth anything.  Dolorous Edd is one of the very best people of hundreds of characters.  I'm ashamed to want to know how it turns out.  I loved it, but I hated it, too - and would volunteer to contribute to a Reader's Digest version one quarter as long for free (which is totally doable).

Food and sadism, little else.  No wonder Oerdin is such a big fan.