Evaluation.

Sometimes when I'm around a lot of books, I get the same feeling I get when I'm about to take part in a big academic competition. I feel really scared and want nothing more than to run away, as fast and as far as I can, forcibly blocking all mental stimulation to the point of total oblivion. Economics, mathematics, philosophy, political theory, physiology, history, literature, music, psychology, physics, chemistry...There's so much out there I think I should know, and the fact that I don't have the time, money or maybe even the mental capacity to know it all freaks me out and makes me feel like no matter how much knowledge I cram through my neocortex, I'll never, ever be good enough.
It's times like that when I have to step back and realize that I'm making progress, no matter how minute it might feel.

Today at Barnes and Noble, I read a selection of personal essays compiled into a book I pulled off the shelf for its title, "When You Are Engulfed In Flames," which I learned actually comes from a badly translated Japanese fire safety manual the author came across in his travels. The essays were creative and down to earth, a collection of simple anecdotes from the author's life turned into illustrated vignettes that captured my attention. Eloquent at times, witty and clever throughout, I feel like I learned from his easy and comfortable writing style.

I also picked up "I Am A Strange Loop," a book I've heard reviewed really well that I put on my summer reading list. However, I was sadly disappointed. Though the material may have been interesting (the subject, consciousness and identity, definitely was), the author wrote with such an absolutely condescending, droll attitude that I was entirely turned off after just a few chapters. The drawn-out, verbose introduction made it disgustingly obvious that he thought himself above nearly everyone else in the world, an assumption confirmed in the first chapter, where he included a chart of relative "soul development" increasing with age. He droned on for a while about how he believed a zygote and a five-month-old fetus to be equivalent (at "essentially zero") in terms of possessing a human soul, placing babies at the bottom of his coldly drawn chart. He then postulated that even adult souls were at different levels in terms of worth, rating people from 0 to 100. The whole time, I couldn't stop thinking, "Raskolnikov complex!!" What a loser. It didn't help that he began the book with a sickly emotional, in-depth portrait of why vegetarianism is the only moral option that went on for pages, leaving me with no more feeling for him than a sneaky desire to look up his address and barbecue bloody pork roasts on his front lawn.

The only thing I got out of that book was a desire to look up Roald Dahl's macabre short story, "Pig," which was referenced in the vegetarianism section. Roald Dahl is my favorite childhood author, and his writing is always creative, witty and oddly meaningful. If you didn't grow up reading him, start now! It's never too late.