h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is a fact universally acknowledged that non-fiction books are not, as a rule, a gripping read. Interesting they may be, but un-put-downable they seldom are. Except this one. I am currently reading No Logo, by Naomi Klein, ten minutes on the train on the way into work and ten minutes again on the way home. It is a book that is forcing me to reasses the way I look at the world and evaluate the way I look in it and I haven't come up with all the answers yet.

Living in the heart of the city certain things are easier. There are a lot of shops and so long as one stays away from the city centre there are a lot of small and individually owned shops. So I've been buying my clothes in charity shops, yet I still regularly buy food in supermarkets. I commute to work by train and rarely use my car, however I do have one (and mostly it gets used by my sister). Nearly all the pubs and bars in this city are owned by one of three breweries. . . And of course theres the fact that I work for a large multi-national company which supports the new age habit of mobile telophany.

As I said, I haven't come up with any answers and my head's a bit of a jumble.

So how to deal with encroaching multimedia world domination of super-corporations? How to be sure that the innocent looking jar of peanut butter you are buying isn't actually a product from a company foistering its less than healthy products on people too poor to have a choice? How can I ever be sure that the bra's I buy aren't manufactured in slave conditions in a miltary regieme? Where can you actually find the facts that the large companies would rather you didn't have?

Did you know the No Logo is the H2G2 Reading Groups book for March? Or am I stating the obvious? Here's the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A705386k

Hi Ellen,

I didn't know anything about the H2G2 reading group. There's still so much of this site that I haven't discovered. And if I have discovered haven't spent any time deliberating on. I'm currently deliberating on the Environmental Society at the moment, although I'm so used to H2G2 in alabaster that reading the 360 site is taking some looking at.

Still haven't finished No Logo, but it is definately influencing the way I think. I'm hoping that in the next short film I write it will pick up an influence from this book. Hmmmmmm..... Probably need to stop thinking about adapting The Once And Future King to a film first.