The Book of Good Habits

One incredible power I have found that this blog gives me: after I write about a book or record, it makes it much easier for me to get rid of it! I guess in the past I sometimes kept things around to help me remember what they were like. Anyway, this book had been sitting on my nightstand, partly read, for over a year. So, I finished it today.

It is just a collection of tips for everyday life. There are a few that are useful (if a python wraps around you, unwrap it by the tail, not the head) and some that are provocative (Madonna claims to have the habit of urinating on her feet in the shower to avoid athlete's foot), but mostly it's kind of dull. It is does try to wake you up by occasionally giving bad advice in a sarcastic way, which is a cute device. And it has some fun quotes interspersed, like Mark Twain's "I do not like work, even when someone else does it," and what Dorothy Parker said when someone asked to meet with her during her honeymoon: "I'm too fucking busy. And vice versa." But my favorite quote by far was a yiddish proverb:

With money in your pocket,
you are wise and you are handsome
and you sing well, too.