Book, Kindle, or Nook

Last week, I got in quite a bit of time for reading and I'll give you the lowdown. A friend sent me a box of books (he's always way ahead of me) and there was a lot of good stuff in the package. He sent the last three books by Lee Childs, the guy who created one of the better characters around, Jack Reacher, and I read all of them in three days. A good thriller is one you don't want to put down and all three passed that test.



Then there were about ten books from Artruro Perez-Reverte, a first class writer from Spain. I started reading his Captain Alatriste adventures, which are stories about a man of honor, in the decaying Spanish empire in the 17th century. Perez-Reverte is just starting

to get some traction here in the states and he writes as well, or better, than most of the New York Times bestselling authors.



Then, this afternoon, I finally got my copy of Stieg Larson's third book in his trilogy, which unfortunately is the end of the road for his fans. Larson died unexpectedly of a severe heart attack, after delivering the manuscript to Swedish publishers, in late 2008. It

sort of reminds me of Larry Brown, the great writer from Mississippi, who died in much the same manner, the same year.



On Saturday, I was in Barnes and Noble, whilst the wife was shopping, and they were working hard to sell people on their product called Nook, which is a rival to Amazon's Kindle. My wife has a Kindle, but I can't get used to it. I took a cursory look at the

Nook, which has a few better features than a Kindle, but I like the feel of a book in my hands. I also don't like the fact that either one of these companies can delete a book off your machine, if they so desire, even if you have already paid for it. Amazon has already

done this once, but stopped, after a huge public outcry.



Back to the two authors, who left us much too soon. Both of them were in their very early fifties, which is when a high percentage of men and women get a wake up call. Unfortunately, many people don't survive the body's way of telling you something is amiss. Today, instead of that age going up, it is actually going down.



There are a lot of reasons for this, but chief among them are poor diet and little or no exercise. Both of these things are easily remedied and I'll have some new information concerning both of them for you, very soon.



Last week, I got a note from a guy who said he couldn't do pushups because...his knees were a trouble spot. There's a fix for that...you can do pushups standing up and save your knees. This isn't a joke and you can really strengthen your arms, shoulders and back by

doing wall pushups. You can do many an exercise in the standing position, so if you have knee problems, you can rest assured that they'll be safe.



In addition, you can do many exercises sitting down, or sitting on a stability ball, if you have other problems. It really depends on how much you want to succeed. For every standard exercise, there is a workable variation that will move you forward, no matter what your situation.



One of the biggest keys to a healthy diet is healthy fat, such as what you get when you take an ultra pure, enteric coated pharmaceutical grade fish oil.



Your body needs a healthy fat to function properly, especially in two areas, the heart and the brain (which, believe it or not, is over 60% fat). Hence, the insult "fathead" ...is...in reality...a compliment. The great thing about fish oil is that it acts a bit like a drain cleaner, by keeping everything moving. It's what you would call "pushy" and it shoves everything along, not allowing it to hang around and loiter, where it can cause

trouble.



When you combine it with other things, particularly garlic, it also becomes a first class cleanup crew, sweeping out impurities in the system. Fifty something is way too early to check out. I want to be the guy hanging around telling some kid about the 1984 Boston

Celtics...in 2060.