Books Under the Blanket (with a flashlight)

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When you’re sliding into first and your pants begin to burst….”

If you’ve seen the movie Parenthood, you know what comes next in young Kevin Buckman’s song. Disgusting, smelly, and just a normal part of everyday life, poop is funny in any conversation with a kid. And if you’re talking about poop with an adult…. Well it’s probably still funny.

Don’t believe me? A quick search for “poop” in the Books section of Amazon populates more than 10,000 results. More than 3,000 of those are listed under Humor & Entertainment. And with the birth of the poop emoji in 2010, poop for entertainment purposes took on a life of its own—pillows, Halloween costumes, slippers, dog toys that actually make noise, blankets, balloons, and even (maybe the most disturbing of all) a bag of brown cotton candy called Original Bag of Poo with the tagline “Freshness You Can Taste.” (Yes, really.)

Poop is funny, and it’s especially funny in the story of Andy Bellows who we first meet as he discovers and downloads an app called HowUPooing. Andy’s story is a work of fiction, so the app doesn’t really exist, but I bet that you could probably find something similar because there really is an app for everything. But if you find yourself looking for it, you probably need to follow Andy’s detox program because, even though poop is funny, we really don’t need an app for that.

Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Logging Off by Nick Spalding

314 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: April 23, 2020
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher’s Description

Andy Bellows is in a right state. Plagued with insomnia, anxiety and neck ache, he’s convinced there’s something seriously wrong with him. And the worst thing is that his doctor agrees. The diagnosis: Andy is in the grip of a self-destructive addiction to technology—he just cannot put that bloody mobile phone down.

Texting, tweeting, gaming and online dating—technology rules Andy’s life. His phone even monitors his bowel movements. So how will he cope when he’s forced to follow doctor’s orders and step away from all of his beloved screens?

From having to leave the flat in search of food like some kind of Neanderthal to engaging in conversations with actual people, Andy’s about to discover just how bewildering—and scary—the analogue world can be. And when his sixty-day detox hits the headlines—making him a hero to suffering technophiles everywhere—Andy is sorely tempted to pack it all in and escape in the nearest Uber.

Can he get himself out of this mess, and work out how to live a better, technologically balanced life…without consulting Google even once?

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Nick Spalding’s Logging Off is one of those books that I had to think about for a couple of days before I reviewed it. For me, it wasn’t “laugh-out-loud” funny and I had a hard time figuring out why Andy Bellows is sooooo obsessed with his poop, but the book did make me smile and shake my head a lot 🤦‍♀️, and I really liked the ending.

In a world where access to information is instantaneous, where there’s an app for everything, I have found myself many times wondering why we all spend so much time with our faces in our devices and trying to remember how we got anything accomplished before the rise of the Internet. (And yes, I absolutely see the irony of posting this review on a blog that will be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram after having read a digital copy of the book on my Kindle.) We have become so connected through our devices that we have disconnected from the world around us, and Andy Bellows is feeling the physical consequences of being a slave to his digital addiction.

Andy’s doctor recommends a digital detox, and yes it’s a real thing. What this book details is Andy’s difficult attempt to log off. The results are downright ridiculous, but the point is to demonstrate how dependent we are on technology. I mean, does anyone get a phone book anymore to look up the number of the local pizza place?

Andy clearly would have given up the fight if it weren’t for his friend Fergus writing an article (or two or three) about Andy’s detox. Fergus basically made Andy the figurehead of the local digital detox movement, and Andy, a major introvert, didn’t like it one bit.

This is a fun read. It’s heartwarming at times, and a bit gross at times because of Andy’s focus on his poop. The more I think about it, the more Andy reminds me of Greg Heffley from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, just all grown up and still getting himself into really bizarre situations. 

All in all, not a bad way to spend some quarantine time. 😉

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