Sun Lamp Review

 

Last winter was really bad for me in turns of experiencing SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I was even giving serious thought to moving down south to where the sunshine is. Of course, there is also heat down south and I'm not sure I could handle that, but when you're in the throes of SAD, reason doesn't play much of a part in decision making. Thankfully, talking with various people, I decided to try a sun lamp, one that mimics the wave length of sunlight.

I bought it in February of '25 and by March had noticed absolutely zero difference. I was still grumpy and depressed and just plain unhappy. But Spring had sprung and I did begin feeling better but chalked it up to the change in season. I continued to use the sun lamp as a regular floor lamp all year. By the time Winter had arrived this year, I was just used to the sun lamp being my regular light source and didn't give it much thought. Winter brought more snow and clouds than usual and by the end of January I suddenly realized that I wasn't feeling like killing other people or desiring to stay in bed and ignore life. That was a remarkable change from last year.

My lamp has several settings of brightness and I keep it at its brightest all the time. There is also a setting to go from white to yellow light and I always keep it at the yellowest setting. While it might just be in my head, it feels more like sunlight that way. So I've been using this for a solid year now and there is a noticeable difference. If you suffer from SAD, even if just a mild case, I'd highly recommend getting a floor sun lamp like this. My recommendation would be to get one in the spring or summer and begin using it then. It probably won't help a lot if you buy it in December ;-)

I like feeling normal during the winter again. While the model I bought on Amazon last year is no longer being sold, the closest similar one is here:
Amazon Floor Sun Lamp

That at least gives you an idea of what it looks like. Assembly was very easy, getting the settings to brightest/yellowest was also easy and once set, things just stayed the same and I only had to deal with turning it on and off.

Once again, if you suffer from SAD, I highly recommend a floor model sun lamp. I can't guarantee that you'll experience the same results as me, but if it helps you even a little bit, that will be good.

Book Reviews ≠ Book Reports

I’ve been mulling over book reviews and what they are good for over the past several years. I’ve written several drafts and most of them descended into rage fueled rants that I was simply not comfortable with. So it’s just been an idea floating around inside my head.

Until today.

For me, a book review is simply a blog post with my thoughts (random, scattered, tangential OR completely ordered) on the book as I read it, as I thought about it beforehand and afterwards. As you get to know me and see how I rate and write about various books, you begin to learn the ins and outs of what I’m looking for or not in a book. My book reviews are tiny little snapshots of me as a whole person, glimpses into my soul as it were. I’ve always known this and operated this way, but hadn’t mentally codified it.

A book report on the other hand, is a medium by which you the reader hope to convince someone else, probably a tyrannical evil stepmother, that you have read the book and comprehended the basic plot and perhaps some of the deeper meanings if the author was the kind of jerkwad who thought their words were akin to gold.

I can understand why book reports exist. Kids need to be forced to do certain things and reading books is one of those things. They might not comprehend everything in the book, but their minds are like rubber, it must be stretched. If you just give it stuff that doesn’t challenge it, it will never grow.

But once you start reading for pleasure, all that changes. Once you start reviewing, the reasons that drive you onward, while not infinite, are so much greater that trying to nail it down to even a handful is a fool’s errand. Why I review and more importantly, HOW I review are going to vastly different from you.

That is why I had to leave the site Goodreads (which I now refer to as Devilreads). They enforced a certain way of writing a review that was more akin to a book report than an actual book review. When everyone says the same thing about a book, with just tiny, minor variations, it makes for a very bland experience. The whole point of having a place with thousands of different people is to get thousands of different views and thoughts and ideas.

That is why I have always used my blog as my main book review outlet. Here I can say what I want, how I want and any old thing that enters my head is perfectly acceptable in my review. If I’m reviewing “How to BBQ a Raccoon” and I end up spending the whole post talking about a camping trip the book made me think of, that’s my choice. Now, if you don’t like that, the wonderful thing about blogging is that you can stop following me at any point.

Give me the freedom to speak my mind as I wish.

[Rant] I Will Not Be One of the Masses

When it comes to books, I refuse to be one of the yapping drones parroting the same lines about the same books about the same authors that 1000 other bloggers are yapping about all at the same time. Yap, yap, yap…

Which is why I will read the books I do, in the very faint hope that just maybe ONE of those brainless drones will take a chance and try one of the books that nobody else reads any more and begin their own unique reading adventure through life.

STEP OUT OF LINE AND READ SOMETHING NONE OF YOUR PEERS ARE READING!!!

Of all the sorts of people in the world, I would have thought book readers would be the first to go their own way and do their own thing. Instead, all I see is a mass of faceless non-entities. Bowls of oatmeal, without even flavor to distinguish one from the next. Even their bowls are all exactly the same.

If I have to be a bowl of oatmeal, I will be a bowl of oatmeal like this:

Thankyou for listening. Just needed to get that out of my system. Crabby old hermit mode is powering down now. Normal functions will resume in 3….2….1….