by Amy Lillard
Well, golly. I wanted to love this but didn't, but then I didn't want to like this but I did. The kapp maker of the Amish village, oddball "Kappy" King, is an amusing and likeable character. She is pulled into detection only to help a neighbor, jailed for suspicion of murdering his mother. So she's not a dedicated detective but she at least keeps her mind on her job and does a decent job of noticing clues and following them down.
Which is in great contrast to a lot of cozy mystery detectives, who seem to stumble and bumble around until they're hit on the head with so many obvious clues that they can't help but notice them. And then they usually get attacked by the murderer and duh! Now they know!
Not so here. She's a good solver. I'll probably read another one, especially if I can get it at the library for free. But her romantic interest is a real loser, and I sincerely hope that the danger signs that the author keeps sprinkling around his feet are real and not just something that irritates me. Frankly, if as smart a person as Kappy ends up with a loser like him, I'll quit reading right then.
But we can hope not. Oh, and a quick warning--I'm not so sure the author knows a lot about Amish people. Some of the stuff she puts in seems off kilter to me, but I'm not the expert. (NOTE: according the the review, she does know a lot. So I guess she just has a good imagination.)
by Mark Schatzker
Once again I managed to forget to make notes of a book's good features at the time of reading. So all I can remember is that his theories were intriguing, and if even a few of them are established as science (demonstrable, testable, repeatable, and all that), we know a whole lot more than we ever knew about human obesity.
And, sadly, we are hopeless to overcome it. The theories I remember are (1) artificial sweeteners or fats cause the brain to become confused and overeat to compensate for the sugar or fat it was expecting to receive based on the sensory cues it received, (2) the modern practice of over-fortifying foods with vitamins is providing the body all the parts it needs to layer on the pounds even if you eat relatively "normal" food. That particular theory is well demonstrated by animal foods that make it easier for pigs to layer on the pounds even when they're eating a diet high in the cheapest and least nutritious grains, and (3) any kind of food uncertainty, even if we don't recognize it, tricks the brain into overconsumption.
He has some good research backing these up. Plus I may have missed some other points he made. So read this for yourself and see what you think.
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