If you ever get a chance to sit down and read a very off-color, but at the same time inspiring and uniquely honest book, read this one for sure.  I don’t even read.  Ok, let me rephrase that.  I hardly read.  If I do read, you can best bet it’s not a book my teacher tells me to read.  I absolutely hate reading a book that is assigned (with the exception going to Catcher in the Rye), and that completely turned me off to literature.

Then today in between classes I went out for some me-time and drove out in the countryside, and then I stopped at the library to grab a book on photography.  On my way to the check-out queue,  I saw a yellow book!  Then I noticed it was in the subject area that I prefer the most-travel tales.  And me being me, I grabbed the book, read the back and ran with it.

Why not? Heck, it’s good to sit down, get your mind away from twitter, facebook, gmail, and all those electronically mind-numbing creations which keep you tied down to your notebook PC.  That god damn notebook PC… Oh how I wish you were screwed to my desk.  “Portable” is the worst invention in this case, because you can take it wherever you go, wherever you feel the most comfortable while being lazy.

Sadly, this is not a rag ‘n rant on that, but rather an epiphany.  I’m going to read this book, and I’m going to read another one after.  Which one? Dunno yet.  Suggest one to me, I dare you.  Heck, I might even attempt getting back into shape…!

But this book is a good one, that’s for sure.  And I’m only on page 15.  It’s the stories of a man who was not allowed to write what he wanted to write, as a travel writer.  He has to write what makes travel look like its meant to be traveled.  He “wanted to write about travel the way [he] experienced it, not the way the travel business wants readers, wants you, to imagine it is.  The presumption that readers have the intellectual curiosity of a squirrel monkey and the moral range of an Amish yam farmer has worn thin.  This book is a small effort to correct the travel industry’s bias against candor and honesty.  Or at least a way to pay it back for both the good times and the trouble it’s given [him].”

And with that, my friends, I’m out.  I’m actually going to step away from my computer, and have myself a nice read.  Heck, I might even make a cup of hot cocoa or tea.  You never know…