PowellsBooks.Blog

Fact: Eating food and drinking alcohol are two of the joys — some would even call one or both necessities — of personhood. Another fact: my job at the Stranger involves being paid to do these things, as the paper's restaurant (and sometimes bar) reviewer. (Before you're all, THAT IS THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD, which it is, please understand that I am also the managing editor, which involves sundry matters related to making the paper come out every week, herding the catlike editorial staff, etc. Luckily, this is also THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD. I've got two of them! But I digress.) Soooooo, in the writing of How to Be a Person, it fell to me to instruct those seeking personhood in the ways of food and drink. Would you like a taste? (SEE WHAT I DID THERE!!! Sorry about that. Onward.)

• How to Be a Person hates the word foodie: " You are NOT a foodie — you are merely a person who has a modicum of knowledge about, and enjoys a variety of, different foods ... Where should you begin? Eat food!"

• How to ...

Every fall, the inebriates and reprobates at The Stranger — Seattle's Only Newspaper™ and the proud home of foulmouthed superhero Dan Savage — put out an issue of advice for college students on everything from what majors to avoid (cough, sociology) to how to do drugs without freaking out/dying (carefully) to how to come out of the closet (ASAP!).

This fall, the best of our collective wisdom has been assembled in attractive book form, along with tons of new material and Dan Savage's best college sexytimes advice. Lindy West, our erstwhile colleague, current Jezebel writer, and World's Funniest Human™ (you may remember her single-handedly putting an end to the Sex and the City cinema franchise or her complete taxonomy of humanity), put lots of words in a certain order for the book, and that worked out really well. Stranger editor-in-chief Christopher Frizzelle wrote, among other things, a chapter entitled "How to Write Good" that is really good (e.g., "There is no secret to being a good writer. You have to read until your eyes bleed, write ...