Should You Be Thirsty on a Raft in the Pacific

There's plenty more to say about the SCBWI Conference (see previous post), but I've chosen to preempt that with Important Survival Tips, should you be adrift on a raft in the ocean, awaiting rescue which may never come (did I mention I'm reading KON-TIKI by Thor Heyerdahl?).

1. If your body is losing lots of salt through perspiration, and freshwater supplies are limited, you may dilute your ration with 20%-40% salt water. This will replenish the depleted salt in your body, conserve the fresh water, and slake your thirst. Feel free as well to take plenty of morning and evening dips in the possibly shark-infested waters to keep the skin cool.
2. No need to starve to death, even if fish aren't constantly circling your raft or flipping up onto the raft itself, as Heyerdahl and his compadres experienced. They simply dragged a fine-mesh net behind the boat and trapped plankton. Toss out the phytoplankton, keep the zooplankton, and you're set. Heyerdahl compares the tiny micro-shrimp to "shrimp paste." Hey, it works for whales.
3. To satisfy both hunger and thirst, should time be an issue, put a fish in a piece of cloth and just suck on it, raw. (This may have inspired that nasty baby product where you put any piece of food you're too lazy to cook and puree into this mini-bag and give it to the baby to suck on.)
4. Don't harpoon whale sharks in the head. This ticks them off.

Hope this helped! The great thing about being an armchair survivor is that, should these dreadful things like being castaway, being swept away in an avalanche, finding myself in a blizzard, etc. ever happen to me, you won't catch me not knowing what to do.

Waving the White Flagg

Okay, so I've given up on FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE. I know, I know, lots of you have read it and loved it and still wax nostalgic when people mention it, but I found a copy of KON-TIKI at Goodwill, and I'd rather read that right now.

I was reading TOMATOES to brush up on books that go back and forth in time (hence JOY LUCK CLUB a little while ago) because I have grand ideas about writing such a book to capture stories from my husband's family, but it has started to bug me that so many Southern novels have characters-who-were-all-about-civil-rights-before-civil-rights. In TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD it was fresh and moving, but now it's become run-of-the-mill. Cliche. Every book seems to have its Atticus Finch, which makes you wonder why there needed to be a Civil Rights Movement in the first place, if everyone was secretly already so stinking progressive.

One day I might try again, since trusted friends recommend it--THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV took me about five attempts to get through, after all--but for right now I think I'll go hang out with Thor Heyerdahl on his raft.

What's the latest book you've given up on, and why? Anything you later returned to and loved?