Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Fault in Our StarsThe Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cancer really does suck, okay? Okay.

The Fault in Our Stars is a fairly straight forward novel, telling the tale of two teenagers who meet and fall in love. With cancer. And it has the audacity to treat teenagers, cancer, and life with humour and without being patronising. No wonder the Daily Mail didn’t like it.

Anyone at all familiar with John Green, either via the Nerdfighteria community or his Vlogbrother-ing with Hank, will instantly recognise the casual wit and humour that forms the backbone of The Fault In Our Stars. I can’t claim to be a Nerdfighter, well, aside from subscribing to all of their Youtube channels and supporting their charity campaigns, since it has taken me so long to read one of John’s novels. But I think it is the humour John uses throughout the book that sets TFIOS – as it is known in Nerdfighter circles – apart from the generic “kids with cancer” novels.

I enjoyed TFIOS and would recommend it to most people. Just gloss over the generic plot, stock characters, and scenes that are only there to hold up jokes.

NB: I have the deluxe audiobook version narrated by John himself. Hard to imagine anyone else narrating, what with his dulcet tones.

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Christmas Gift Ideas For Senator Leyonhjelm And Your Other Libertarian Friends

In the wake of the shocking Sydney Lindt Hostage situation our brave libertarian Senator Leyonhjelm struck straight to the heart of the real cause of the events and hinted at a foolproof solution. He pointed out that we are a ‘nation of victims’ and need to have access to guns to solve our problems, because it has worked so well in the USA.

His nuanced dissection of the events is a breath of fresh air. This was definitely not an issue of a man with a violent criminal history, nor his lack of treatment for mental health issues, nor about issues surrounding bail in our justice system, nor about racial and religious tensions in Australia. Nope, this was all about not being able to shoot people you have a problem with.

We should be thanking Senator Leyonhjelm and his fellow libertarians with gifts, which is appropriate timing leading into the Festive Season and our desperate need to stimulate the free market. So make Joe Hockey proud and buy some libertarian gifts.

Gift Idea: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, with foreword written by Rand whilst on welfare.
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a must have for all libertarians. The all-new edition has a foreword written by Rand in the 1970s explaining her principles and complaints about how small her welfare checks were.

Gift Idea: Smoker’s lungs desk ornament, with bonus lungs of their children who rode in the car with them while they smoked.
This is a great gift for libertarians as it acts as a conversation piece to allow them to discuss how over-taxed smokers are.

Gift Idea: Bushmaster AR15 semi-automatic rifle chambered in .223-caliber.
The Bushmaster is the freedom weapon of choice and a must have for defending your rights. Comes as a box set of the rifle, one thousand rounds of ammunition, and paper targets of school children.

Gift Idea: Environmental Goggles that immediately darken and block the sight of disasters.
You can’t have the environment get in the way of the economy, so these goggles help libertarians conveniently fail to see the degradation and destruction of climate change, pollution, and the future.

This article also appeared on The Sauce.

Guide to becoming an omnivore

The internet is filled with guides on how to go vegetarian, and increasingly how to go vegan. Of course the reality of these diet changes is that at some stage vegans and vegetarians are going to have to come back to eating meat, as they discover they lack energy, are anemic and their B12 and calcium levels require them to eat real food.

In an effort to help my malnourished friends before their bones shatter, I thought I would put together this quick guide to becoming an omnivore.

It isn’t as easy as just starting to eat real food again. If it were that easy, vegans would be jumping back on a normal diet all the time. The problem is that the human digestive tract changes so that your body doesn’t starve without meat in the diet. As a result it stops making the digestive enzymes that help you digest meat. Changing back to a meat diet would then mean there is a shortfall in pancreatic secretions required to digest the meat in the short-term. The changed flora in the gut would also be affected. The “sick” feeling is just your body getting used to eating properly again.

Step 1:
Go to your local butcher and purchase meat.

Step 2:
Start off small. The longer you have been unhealthy the smaller the amount of meat you want to start eating to become healthy again. Remember, you are restarting your body, so you need to be consistent and gradual so that you can adapt.

Step 3:
Increase the portion of meat in the diet gradually until you are eating normally again. This will take time, as pointed out. The end goal is to avoid all the problems of not eating meat, so stick at it.

Step 4:
Make sure you are still eating your vegetables, they make a great side dish to meat.

Step 5:
Congratulations on becoming normal again. As an omnivore you are now able to keep up with the kids, won’t have the nutrient deficiencies, will be eating complete protein sources with a good balance of amino acids and will have lowered that osteoporosis risk.

FAQ:

How soon should I make the change to eating meat again?
ASAP.

Will I be healthier as an omnivore?
As long as you eat right (meat+vegetables+fruit+cereals = right) without going all Hurley on the food you will be much healthier.

But I heard meat gives you cancer?
And I heard Elvis is still alive. Most foods contain carcinogens, that’s why you are meant to eat a balanced diet and not get fat. All of the studies that claim you will die of cancer from eating meat are lying, as they forgot to mention you also have to be inactive, fat, not eating vegetables, smoking and drinking like a fish as well.

Will I be sexier eating meat?
There is nothing sexy about salad.

But won’t I be hurting animals?
No. Animals like sheep and cattle have been bred for thousands of years to enjoy being your food. They even try to eat as much garnish as possible to make themselves tastier.

But aren’t animals farting too much for the environment?
Animals fart and burp, that’s natural. Digging up coal, oil and gas to burn for energy is damaging the environment. Plus animals are cuter and friendlier than oil executives.