Reading, singing, reading

The Beatles: The Biography
by Bob Spitz

If you have any fond memories of Beatles music at all, and if you have an annoying tendency to get songs stuck in your head, don't read this book!>  Because you'll then have an irresistible urge to get the old Beatles CDs out of the box, or maybe even check them out of the library if you can't find the box, and then there you'll be. All the old songs stuck in your head for days.

Beep beep uh beep-beep, yeah!

I listened to this as an audiobook and it would have been so awesome if they'd done the mixing for me.  Maybe a few songs in between each chapter. Sigh.

While clearly engrossed in his subject matter, Mr. Spitz doesn't overlook his subjects' character flaws.  You get to meet The Beatles as people, not paragons.  Very enjoyable.

Habit-breaking!

The Power of Habit: 

Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

It starts off with a man with a damaged hippocamus and almost no memory at all, who could still function almost like a normal person--by habit. He could get up and cook himself breakfast and often did--several times a morning. He could do it, but couldn't remember he'd done it.  Habit?

Then the book speeds into an understanding of "the habit loop" and convinces you that habit rules your life...but maybe not your destiny.  It's all about the habit loop: cue--routine--reward. Understanding this and analyzing your own bad behaviors will allow you to improve your life, make money, delight your friends and eat more cookies!.

Just kidding. He's onto something, I'm sure, but you need to remember a couple of things:
1. Change still takes effort.
2. Sometimes you have to manufacture the "cue".
3. Some habits are hiding coping mechanisms for underlying problems.

His description of breaking his afternoon snack habit walks you through #1. #2 is described in the the amazing success story of the Pepsodent toothpaste advertising--and the long-time failure of the ads for the Febreze odor eliminator.

But #3 is one of those examples of Jesus exorcising a demon only to have seven other demons leap in. Breaking any habit that is helping us deal with problems is difficult, period. Alcoholics Anonymous has the habit solution--it teaches people to replace the comfort of hanging out with friends in the bar to talking to a sponsor or attending meetings with supportive people.
But he writes,

Alcoholics who practice the techniques of habit replacement, the data indicated, could often stay sober until there was a stressful event in their lives--at which point, a certain number started drinking again, no matter how many new routines they had embraced.
However, those alcoholics who believed ... that some higher power had entered their lives were more likely to make it through the stressful periods with their sobriety intact.

For people who can't deal with the higher power hypothesis, support groups can fill the void.

After that the book goes onto a description of corporate change; then a great chapter called The Neurology of Free Will. It describes how a sleeping person having night terrors and fighting off an imaginary enemy could be compared to a compulsive gambler.  And that raises the complex question of culpability--if a sleeping person commits assault, is he guilty of a crime? If a compulsive gambler takes a line of credit from a predatory casino, is he liable for the loss?

I almost wish the author gone on to discuss the American response to drug addicts--when is it a crime and when is it a sickness?  Which is more helpful in the end--punishment or treatment? I'd like to see what he says.

Okay but no banana

Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman behind the Legend

by John E. Miller

Really good...until Rose grew up. Seriously, I mean it. The author did his stuff and churned out a delightful biography, but I think he really wanted to write a literary biography. If the title tells his intent, it was to describe how an ordinary girl with no apparent writing goals ended up being the children's author of the day, maybe of all time. And he couldn't. Or didn't, anyway.

 He did well with the history of her early life but I wanted more about the places, people and times. When you can't find letters or diaries to flesh out a portrait, you have to fall back on newspapers, magazines, and other writings of the times...but I can't see he did much of that. He just relayed the history; well-written, enjoyable, but not deeply satisfying. I prefer reading the annotations in Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

When Laura's writing career became the focus, it was clear he wanted to dig deep and see how in the world she pulled it off. Where did she start as a diarist, and how did she progress to a master storyteller? Did her non-fiction articles get editorial help, and if so, how did that develop her writing?  Why were some characters included and others suppressed? How did three real-life girls become one Nellie Oleson? How much of the book was written by Rose?  (Almost none; it seems, but she clearly had an influence.)

He tried to answer all these questions and more, but he didn't have a lot of first-hand material about Laura Ingalls Wilder--no diaries, not many letters except travel journals. However, he had plenty of material about Rose Wilder Lane and her writing career--and that's what he included. A lot of it. Her thoughts, feelings, personal angst, and anger at her parents.

Fine. I get that. It's what made her a writer. But it's not what made Laura Ingalls Wilder a writer.

All bellyaching aside, it's a good book. I just wish it had been titled, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder lane: The Women Behind the Legend.

Charles Dickens had good writing genes

One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens

Maybe not as surprising as One Pair Of Hands, because I knew what to expect--but just as much fun. She brings the same energy, enthusiasm, and snarky wit to the profession of nursing that she did to cooking, and oh! the poor patients!

Maybe she's not quite as untalented as she seems to be.  She didn't kill anyone, and may have helped to save at least one paitent. In Britain in those days (1939 or so), nursing was taught by apprenticeship. They started off working on the first day, learned on the job and gradually earned more responsibility as they went along. They took classes, too, but I can't tell they learned much from it.  What is a cell? and did they ever find out?  Her first year exam questions were to describe personal hygiene and tell about the proper design and operation of sewers. She aced 'sewers'.

Lots of laughs, giggles, and smirks; a few groans; and one hearty cheer! at the end. Loved it.

  

Another Japanese know-it-all but I love her

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen

by Naomi Moriyama, William Doyle

A celebration of her mother--with recipes!  The best kind of memoir + how-to + recipe book. Lots to read and lots to learn. Of course it's preachy and authoritative--that goes with the game. But it's all told from personal experience. You can argue--oh, but a diet of fish, soy, rice, vegetables and fresh fruit may be fine for her, but that doesn't mean it's for everybody. And you may be right. So what?  There's a lot more to the book than just lifestyle advice.

And, even though the first part is awfully preachy, it's gentle. She writes about first coming to study in America at a college near Chicago. The portion sizes of American foods shocked her--
    Nobody ate like this in Japan, and I assumed I never would either. Little did I know this was the beginning of my journey through the American way of serving and eating, or more precisely, the beginning of My Fat Years.
 ...
Within a few months of arriving in America, I had gained 25 pounds.

When she went back to Tokyo again, she moved in with her family and resumed eating home cooking, and--

Between the walking-intensive Tokyo lifestyle and my mother's home cooking, the extra 25 pounds began to miraculously melt away. I didn't do anything conscious to lose the weight; I simply went back to my mother's Tokyo kitchen and the Japanese urban way of life.
And suddenly one day I found I could easily fit into all my old clothes.

And the rest of the book is a delightful, chatty, celebration of her mother's cooking.  With recipes, techniques, ingredients and all kinds of helpful notes. It's all about the food--fresh food, lightly touched, beautifully arranged, gratefully consumed.

For most of my life, my knowledge of Japanese cooking consisted of two words--sushi and tempura. Raw fish and batter fried vegetables.  That's as silly as thinking that all of American cooking consists of steak and potato salad.  This is real home cooking--Japanese style.

Winter cheer

Definitely a hermit thrush hanging out in my yard!  I wish it would sing for me. Most beautiful bird song in the world IMHO.

History lesson alive

Maya Lord

by John Coe Robbins

I assumed this was a novel with made-up characters in real historical times, keeping to fact on the big names, places and events, but totally fabricating the characters. But the cover implies that all the people were real, and so does an internet search. So I was wrong, but I don't think that would have changed my opinion. He seems to have done a great job. The details of daily life are so very, very detailed  that it reads like a volume of history. And that, I fear, is my problem.

Historians love history, and of course they want to cram in all the facts they can uncover. Here's a couple of fact-filled examples:

They walked among palaces of magnificent stone and cedar with great rooms and courts covered by awnings of woven cloth. The buildings were shining with lime and decorated with different kinds of stonework and paintings. Countless multitudes of men, women and children stood in the streets and on the rooftops or sat in canoes on the canals to see them.

And,

He walked through gardens with a myriad of red, white and yellow flowers, blooming trees, and ponds of fresh water with an array of colorful fish. There was an aviary with every from of bird he had ever seen in this land and more. Everything was built of stone and plastered, including baths, walkways and the large open rooms where Montezuma's entertainers danced and sang.

I liked reading this, and I'm not saying the book is overloaded with detail--for example, he didn't list every color and type of fish. I was just about the right balance of description, dialog, action, and reflection for my tastes, but I expect some people will say it should have had more detail.

But my issue is...he writes like a historian. Historians cultivate a certain degree of emotional reserve between themselves and their subjects. It's necessary, I guess, to keep things accurate--but it left me cold. I liked the people, I understood their struggles, but I didn't feel their struggles.

So maybe not a great story, but definitely a great history.

Intensely supurb mystery

When you listen to an audiobook, you can't speed up when the action gets intense and you can't skim forward when you realize you're reading the exact same soul-searching angst you read in the previous chapter.  At least I can't--I'm usually driving while I'm listening and can't fiddle around with the controls.  I can, however, with a tap of the thumb, redo the really good parts.  This book has a lot of those.

It's marvelous, intensely psychological and vaguely spooky. I can describe it better by saying what it isn't--it's not action-packed, except in the minds of the characters and the dialogue between them. It's not shocking tales of serial killers who eat the victims. And it's not in the least predictable: you never know what anyone's going to do, least of all the detective.

That's not a bad thing, either. She doesn't know what she's going to do, either. And I don't mean that she's not a great detective. She can search a house, act a role, and manipulate a suspect with the best of them. She's awesome, basically.

Early on she does one thing that seems out of character--I yelled at her, out loud--but as I learned more about her, I began to realize why .  Not only was it an excellent plot enhancer, it also made a bit of sense.

The only--and I mean, only--thing I had to complain about was the length and repetitiveness of the detective's soul-searching in the beginning, when she is trying to decide whether or not to volunteer for the job. (She needed to volunteer for this particular job for reasons I will not reveal)  But it was obvious that she was going to do it, so why drag it out?

That's a pretty small gripe for a pretty great mystery. Many stars!

Enjoying a big personality

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
by Bob Spitz

Not being a scholar of the subject, I'm not qualified to say this is an excellent biography of Julia Child. But I liked it a lot. All it lacked was a video component that followed Julia and Paul around on their early days in France, like the movie Julie and Julia but more.

When are some clever people going to get a commercially available holodeck programmed with periods in history? I vote for this one! I can visit France and imagine what it used to be; I can cook the food (but with modern ingredients); I can play the old-time music. But I can't be there.

This book didn't quite take me there, but it's a good, solid biography.

Flirting with French, funnily

Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

by William Alexander

You know how it goes when old dogs try to learn new tricks.  Not so well, maybe, but it makes a good story. His struggle with learning the language is both hard and hilarious. If he were to fail, it wouldn't be for lack of effort.  But you can't laugh at him for trying....

Well, actually you can. Here's a couple of bits.

I ask one of the instructors who speaks English (as well as Spanish) whether she thinks English or French is harder to learn. "Oh, English!" she says without hesitation. ... Her biggest problem learning English was the strange pronunciation (I imagine she's referring in part to r's that don't originate from your rectum) and the vocabulary.

I belly laughed at that, but I know what he means. I can't do a Spanish R or a French one either--they take superhuman effort and sometimes make you fart.

On their last dinner at school, they're drinking a bottle of wine that happens to have an  English translation on the label. It goes like this:

The vintage is resulting from the assembly from Viognier type of wines and white Clairette 88 years, entirely collected with the hand, in cases. That gives a wine of yellow color pale with flavours of fishings and fruits white. To be useful between 10 and 12 degrees C, with aperitif, with foie gras, cooked fish or white meats.

Good solid memoir

No Dogs in Heaven?: Scenes from the Life of a Country Veterinarian

by Robert T. Sharp


As the reviews say, here we have a few scenes in the life of a country veterinarian. Sometimes the people were the stars of the scene; other times the animals. Occasionally the vet himself pulled a tricky one and I found myself grinning sneakily .  Sorry I have no direct quotes--I took it back to the library too quickly.

Short and sweet and happily forgettable. Sometimes books like this hit you in the gut and leave you hating the human race and wanting to go adopt all the poor, unloved animals in the world. Not this one--and that's just what I was looking for at the moment. If it were a mystery it's be in the 'cozies'.

Not unlikely to be good

Unlikely Companions: The Adventures of an Exotic Animal Doctor (or, What Friends Feathered, Furred, and Scaled Have Taught Me about Life and Love)

by Laurie Hess
One of those books you gulp down like a drug. Her adventures occur in a small practice in a small part of New York but her patients come from all over the world. There's a nice mix of pets with problems, people who cause problems, and her own,  home-family problems. She's beautifully frank about how her unpredictable work schedule affects home life--and doesn't apologize. It's an issue to be dealt with by effort on all sides.

But the one problem that keeps you reading is this: what is suddenly sickening sugar gliders adopted from malls? Her adventure of unraveling the mystery is what makes the reading shift into higher gears, and that's almost a shame--its over too soon! now that I know the answer, I'm thinking about reading it again to pick up things I missed along the way.

So good I can't believe it went out of print

One Pair of Hands
by Monica Dickens

I couldn't recommend this to a thriller addict. The most suspenseful bit is whether or not her perfect souffle will survive waiting for the overdue dinner guest.  Thriller addict--what's the point?  Me--hilarious!

It's about this young lady who gets bored with the society rounds of tea/party/theater and decides to take up a profession. She'd tried acting school and got kicked out on her duff--couldn't act--so she decides to take up cooking. And by "take up" I don't mean dabble in a little haute cuisine on her own--I mean "hire out as a paid laborer."  And labor she did--plus a good bit of acting.  I say it takes one fine actor to smile and say, "Yes Sir, I'll get right to that," when she's really thinking, "You fat lazy slob, where do you get off expecting me to do all this work for twenty-five shillings a week?"

Not that she thinks that sort of thing out loud. Not very often, anyway. She just describes her employers, jobs and labor in as dry and descriptive voice as she can muster. She lets her readers supply the laughter.

Doing more reading about running than I am running

The Little Red Book of Running
by Scott Douglas

Advice, lots of advice.  And suprisingly, none that I really disagreed with.  It consists of a thousand or so short essays on different aspects of running, from when and where and how often. And in almost every case, his conclusion is this: it doesn't matter. Do what works for you, try not to get into a rut, and enjoy yourself.

Here's an example:

Always be open to new running experiences. Who knows what aspects of the sport will appeal to you at different times in your running career? After all, have you always like the same kind of music, watched the same kind of movies, eaten the same foods, read the same kind of books?

And so on. Although it has a lot of tips of the how-to of running, this is primarily a book about the feel-how of running.  On the how-to side he has an amusing note about why you shouldn't run to your medical checkup appointment--hard running causes short-term changes that could be taken as signs of disease--and he gives a few concrete examples of this.

Now that I look back at it, this will be a useful book to keep around and re-read a time or two--get some inspiration; pick up the points I missed.  I recommend it, but with this warning--the articles are very, very short. Some of them could have been five times as long.

State of the Garden Report , October ends

With a frost. Bye, bye, tomatoes.














But these guys weren't affected at all--





until the second night, which hit worse than the first.  Now it's 90 degrees again...but it's too late. The turnips looks good and the meagre amount of kale I've managed to grow looks better.  Next time, plant EARLY!

and a killer poodle

Fifty acres and a poodle

A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

The poodle was good. Also the mule, the horse, the ladybugs, and even the invasive multiflora briars. Loved the neighbors and workmen, especially Billy and all the Joes. Billy is a hoot--

"When I was a kid, everybody took a gun to school," he says. "Not with the intention of shooting anybody. But just to kill supper on the way home. What else was there to do with your spare time?"
"Um, well, we watched TV," I say meekly. "Did you ever see Green Acres?"
He smiles. "I'm a little older than you," he says. "But I've seen reruns."

One funny thing--I noticed after finishing that the entire story is written in present tense. Present tense usually annoys me, but I didn't even notice it. But possibly, just possibly, that's why I found the book so easy to put down and so hard to pick up again.

The author's interior dialog and attempts to relate her struggle with aloneness just didn't grip me. They seemed to be repetitive, unchanging, and boring. And sadly, (having to admit a defect of my character here) I found myself skipping or skimming those parts. Frequently I skipped too far and missed some of the good stuff. Which sucked.

But the book didn't suck. It was great. Laugh-out loud a couple of times and excruciatingly painful only twice when it had to be.

Gotta get me some omega-3s!

The Queen of Fats:

Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them

by Susan Allport

Didn't quite fit the subtitle -- the topic of "Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet" was a very small part of the whole. In a nutshell, here's why: they oxidize faster (aka go rancid), which makes them more expensive to preserve in processed food--it's cheaper to remove them. The experts in the early days didn't know they were important--fat is fat, right? And it took a long time before they realized the importance. And as we well know, our food industry is a business, not a non-profit. If people aren't demanding it and willing to pay for it, we don't get it.

A better subtitle would have been something like "the slow but exciting discovery of the essential need for Omega-3s in the diet--and why nobody cares." Because that's what the story was all about--by the time researchers actually had some evidence about the subject, western consumers had seen so many fat fads come and go, that finally, when there is some actual evidence, they're too tired to care.

can you blame 'em? My parent's generation (in the 1950's) were told to quit eating butter, lard, and egg yolks because of the bad animal fats and cholesterol. They were to substitute the 'good fats' from plant oils. My generation (the 1980's) were told to avoid all fats and switch to high-carb. My kid's generation (2000's) were told to restrict the carbs but load up on saturated vegetable fats and lean animal fats, with an occasional side of bacon. It's clearly a game of good fat/bad fat, right?

It shouldn't have been, because it should have been obvious to anyone who took a minute to look at the numbers--American's fat consumption has been steadily decreasing but our rate of heart disease has not--and we're fatter than ever. There never was and never will be a causal relationship between the quantity of fat consumption and bad health.  Just as there never was a causal relationship between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. (To make matters worse, blood cholesterol levels have never been demonstrated to be linked to heart disease.)  As usual, it's like this: people make up shit and other people believe it.

But not this book. It's about people who were determined to get to the truth, wherever it led. And it's about where the truth did lead them.

And one more thing, in case you read this blurb but never read the book: Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids are both essential to human health. This is not a speculation--there is real, evidence, of many kinds. It is also known that adding omega-3 fatty acids to the diet can improve babies' vision and brain development, and can slow down or reverse adult heart disease.

 Is the "cause" of heart disease a deficiency of omega-3s? Probably not. But is the cause of conflicting nutrition advice our human tendency to over-simplify the complex? Most likely.

Almost very good

Legal Tender
by Lisa Scottolini

An action heroine for our times, and a lawyer. Weird, huh? Co-owner of a law firm that's making money to boot. But unfortunately, one night after a fairly hard day she goes out rowing--sculling if you will--all by herself, just at the time when a certain someone is being murdered.

And she's the prime suspect.

Where she goes from there is anyone's bet but I'll tell you one thing--she's not a wimp nor stupid. She knows how to get dressed and put on makeup in a public restroom, then walk into a law office like she owns it. Which she does, technically, just under a slightly different hair color.

Good, almost very good.

State of the Garden, mid-October

Not really. All I can say is the broccoli have succumbed to insects after the heat and drought stress, and the kale doesn't look much better. I've not been taking care of them--I've been off looking at Other Peoples Gardens. For shame!

This is a lovely little peninsula they made into a garden! I don't know the history of it but I do know it's worth the trip.  Even in fall--pumpkins, chrysanthemums and coneflowers abounded and even some flower I would have thought done for the season, like begonia. But they're having the same unseasonable heat as we are.






My favorite!  The fairy garden -->











And good sandwiches in the snack bar, too! No pic--gobbled it down before the camera could come out.

Lost and darn near forgotten, but fascinating

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

by Bart D. Ehrman

I hadn't planned to finish reading this, but...it just happened. It was so very readable.

When I originally put it on the to-read list back in January, I was fresh off a couple of other books on the subject. But now I've grown a little bored with the subject--not to say that it's a boring subject. And not to say it's not a great book--it is, or I wouldn't have finished it. Mr. Ehrman is working on questions like these--did Christianity start out homogeneous and later became diverse; what happened to all the offshoots of the early religious communities; where did their writings go and what do we know of what they were all about; and most interesting, why did orthodox catholicism "win" and all other sects lose? The  last chapter has some very interesting thoughts on that latter question.

Anticipation not rewarded

When choosing a book to read, I try not to read too many reviews. If the publisher's blurb sounds interesting and the Goodreads community star rating is 4 or above, that's enough--I add it to my list and preview no more.

The 'official' review for The Princess Diarist starts off thus:

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie.

I stopped right there and sent it straight to the to-read shelf.

But the review goes on...

Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty.

Also, he says?  How about, almost entirely?!?!?

Now, my general approach to writing my own "reviews" is this: if 24,000 people have already reviewed a book, then you doesn't need mine. I can write whatever I want; I don't have to stay on topic,  be objective, or even stick to the facts. I simply have to report why I loved or hated the book.

But not this time. I consider it my duty to make a few corrections to the official review.

The book starts off with a little biographical information. Then it relates her interview for the role in Star Wars and her reaction to being chosen. At this point I'd gotten accustomed to her writing style and was even little charmed by it--it was like an aimless amble around a poorly planned goat trail through the brambles of her brain.

Then the book relates in excruciating detail how she ended up sleeping with a certain person. Then it goes on and on and on and ON about that person and her feelings about him. When that topic is sufficiently beat into the ground, the author's narration abruptly ceases and another voice starts reading from the actual diaries. They were about the same as any diaries written by any other teenager of any day and age...although I suspect some of the entries were written under the influence of a mild hallucinogen. Even when they weren't confusing dreams with reality, they were pretty lame listening to the person outside her head.

I had to start skipping at that point. I'm not so big a fan that I really want to listen to stream of consciousness, fever dreams, or random ramblings of anybody's brain anytime.

Eventually Ms. Fisher's narration resumed. She jumped to the present time and began relating the things fans said to her while she was signing autographed pictures at comic cons. Mixed in with the inane chatter were her own thoughts and reactions. Random, amusing, and interesting.  Very interesting--for about two minutes. Then it was enough already!

And that's all. Nothing else about the movies or the making of them, behind the scenes or otherwise. My recommendation for my friends is this: borrow the book, read the first few chapters and skim a little of the rest. Sorry.

So very adorably British!

Thus Was Adonis Murdered

Sometimes authors of detective fiction will attempt to enhance their mystery by pretending that they are as ignorant of the outcome as the readers are. Not so for Professor Hilary Tamar--she modestly admits on page one
that,

If the events in which Julia Larwood became involved last September had not been subject to the penetrating scrutiny of the trained scholar--that is to say, my own--well, I do not say it is certain that Julia would even now be languishing in a Venetian prison.

(But she would)

Fans of P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy Sayers should give this a try--Ms. Caldwell has somehow managed to capture the wry wit of the British in a tangled weave of mystery, motive, and murder. But in true detective form, the mystery is unraveled through pure attention to fact--not psychological mumbo-jumbo, motive analysis, or from the killer making a second attempt when the detective gets too close to the truth. I really hate the latter--you know those books where the "detective" stumbles around blindly until he happens to trip over the murderer's big feet and gets shot at? This is NOT one of those. There are no fortuitous confessions, either. Pure logic, observation and deduction rule the day.

I even suspect that if I'd been a more careful reader and not got distracted with the comedy, I'd have figured out the clues myself. But I was in too much of a hurry to get to the next funny part--and it was indeed very funny. And distressingly erudite.

Let me just mention that a few readers were put-off by the writing style--they complained about things like "big words" and "run-on sentences". Silly! That's the whole point! If you can't make yourself slow down and enjoy the language, you should get the audiobook.

Beautiful absolutely...and all in their heads

 

Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

by Sue Monk Kidd and,Ann Kidd Taylor


How come Sue Monk Kidd gets dreams that are relevant, foreboding, and full of symbolism, while I get dreams about not being able to find my car? Is my car a symbol of my independence and I'm afraid I might lose it? Wow! Maybe there's something to this dream analysis thing after all. And I really need to get one of those car finder key fobs.

But despite her incessant and sometimes unconvincing interludes of "I woke from a dream...", I loved this book and adored the authors--Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. They're going through exactly the same existential crises that I am--and dealing with them better. Pretty much everyone goes through crises like these, except maybe people who have to struggle with basic human needs on a day-to-day basis. The questions are: Why was I rejected? What am I going to do with my life? How do I face the end of life? Just who am I, anyway?

Maybe not as globally important as, Why are people born? Why do they die? and why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches? But the questions recur and go on recurring and a person can spend a lifetime searching for the answers.

That's what I took away from this book--answering those hard questions is a process and a journey, not an arrival. It's not a sudden flash or a single, life-shattering insight--it's a lot of life-shattering insights. And I admire both authors tremendously in the way they searched for meaning and shared their journey with the rest of us. Applause!

One thing I'd like to discuss with Ms. Kidd, though. In her struggle with our society's denial of the 'old woman', did she ever read up on native American mythology? Sure, I can't argue that in our shallow 'modern' culture, the old woman is perceived as worthless, weak, and should-be invisible. Once past childbearing age, women have no role to play in society. Funny, isn't it, that women could once choose a career of 'childrearing' and consider themselves fulfilled? It's a career--until the children leave. Then it's nothing. If the kids don't move back home with grandchildren, there is nothing left to do but sit in a rocking chair and knit afghans.

Not Spider Grandmother. She brought the gift of fire; taught the art of weaving; stood up to Coyote when he did magical mischief. I am not myself a native American but I think it's time we rejected the testosterone-driven patriarchal society of Christianity and bring back the wise old women of yore. The Kidds have their Virgin Mary--I have my Spider Grandmother.

A wild ride indeed

No Baggage:

A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering

by Clara Bensen
 

The book jacket says: One dress, three weeks, eight countries--zero baggage.
And that's it! She carried a purse with a small assortment of personal care items, two pairs of underwear, a phone, a passport, and a tube of Chapstick.

I'll leave the suspense for the reader, but let me just remark that in spite of the lightness of her physical load, she carried the full load of emotional baggage.  I came to love this not-so-crazy lady taking a wild leap into the unknown with a partner as scared of commitment as she was. Or maybe he was scareder--he wouldn't even commit to a hotel reservation. Or a tube of toothpaste.

It ends up as a lovely love story...somewhere between surrender, contest and compromise, with bad hygiene thrown in for comic relief:

[in Istanbul] It briefly occurred to me that I had no idea which continent I was on as I battled my flight-rumpled hair in the bathroom....
Jeff and I would have to skip the early, always-look-attractive stage of dating...the roots of my hair were dark-tinged with grease. my eyes were dim crescents. My dress smelled like stale fingers on airplane cushions. My armpits had begun their gradual descent into bacterial petri dishes. Oh well.

I have to admit I was getting a bit dizzy halfway. So many places in so little time! But a surprising depth in her growing self-knowing kept me reading. I appreciate many authors who share their travels with me, but I especially thank you, Ms. Benson.  Journey on!

State of the Garden Report, October but still summer

The "cold front" was a bust. It's very likely to be in the 90s again next week. My Bok Choy likes it hot!

And the pumpkins!





             This little mystery --->> 
appears to be Hairy Vetch, one of my winter cover crops.




And this fellow is a gem. Every time I moved the camera to take a picture, he shuffled around to the opposite site of his pepper. Finally I got the bright idea of holding the camera still in one hand and using the other hand to tease him out of hiding. But he never let go!













But wait--breaking news--all of a sudden the forecast is for mid-eighties with a chance of rain. There may be hope.

He goofed on the opposable thumb, but the rest is rock solid

Second Nature: a Gardener's Education
by Michael Pollan

If you're a gardener, you'll enjoy this very much. If not, you probably won't read it. But that's a shame because he has a bit to say about man's place in nature and nature's place in the man-made world.  Short answer: front and center.

One sad little passage describes a small forest of old-growth white pines trees that were destroyed by a tornado. The nearby town had to decide what to do--harvest the timber and replant the pines; replant another species of tree; burn the area over to encourage the pine seeds to germinate; or do nothing in reverence for natural processes. But that latter was not an option, because the dead timber created a fire hazard that would endanger nearby houses.

One approach to this problem would have been to have a town meeting and let everyone have their say. You might have to have a human spokesman stand in for the birds and animals who occupied the forest. And when everyone had spoken, everyone would work together to choose a solution.

Sad to say, this approach wasn't taken. The "owners" of the forest--The nature Conservancy--chose to take the natural approach and didn't invite discussion. They were forced to allow a fire break to be dug all around. Spoiler alert--so a beautiful grove of pines is now a weed-choked field surrounded by an ugly ditch.

Leave it to mankind to jump on simple solutions ("let nature take her course") to complex problems. For one thing, it wasn't a wilderness to begin with. For another, what guarantee do we have that native species will regenerate the land and not the Norway Maple, an invasive species?  What if a heavy rain washes out all the topsoil and trees can never grow there again? We. Just. Don't. Know.

Nature has no grand design for this place. An incomprehensively various and complex set of circumstances--some of human origin, but many not--will determine the future of Cathedral Pines. And whatever the future turns out to be, it would not unfold in precisely the same way twice.

I can't repeat the entire argument here, but I urge you to seek it out and read it yourself. You'll come off a little wiser about the cheap, easily digestible fables about "natural succession" vs. "human desire", and you'll think a little more carefully about human's place in nature--neither above it, beneath it, or even outside of it. We're right in there and we need to accept that and go with the flow.

This episode of insight only occupies a small section in the book--the rest is pure entertainment. He talks about the snobbery of rose fanciers--I never dreamed that the "tea rose" was a irreverent upstart, not worthy of the notice of the stately, long-lived and well pedigreed old garden roses. He does a survey of garden catalogs, from exclusively snooty to novelty upstart to ecologically aware. And he cracked up when he independently discovered the reason why I plant seeds in rows. (Hint: try weeding a 4x4' square of scattered, mixed seeds of radishes, spinach, and kale.)

note: his opposable thumb quote below was wrong--most apes have one--

according to the anthropologists, it was the opposed thumb that gave us an edge over the apes and supplied the basis for civilization.

Wish he'd included mockingbirds and robins

Unseen city:

The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness 

by Nathanael Johnson

Perfect airplane/boat/train/[your choice here] reading. Light, short, and engaging; plus and you get to learn the mathematical pattern of a snail's shell, the reason pigeons usually have deformed feet, and the appeal of stinky ginkgo trees.

Warn your co-travelers before starting--you're going to be interrupting them with annoying informational tidbits. You'll become the "Did you know...?" bore in the break room. I didn't read it while traveling but I did sneak it in during restroom trips at work. In this way I spared my coworkers the "did you know...?" interruption; they would have caught on if every time I returned from the restroom I was determined to share a new, enticing tidbit.

He has one important point to make. Why do we revere the natural world only when it occurs far away from human habitation? Shouldn't we give a glance or two of admiration for the plants and animals that learn to live with us? They're pretty smart, you know, to figure out what humans are up to and stay out of their way while getting on with their own lives. Or sometimes, to even wheedle what they want out of us.

One thing for sure--you'll never again tee off a crow.

That's some good runnin'

Running Past Midnight:
A Woman's Ultra-marathon Adventure
by Molly Sheridan

Could be subtitled, "What to do with the Second Half of My Life?"  I liked the beginning best--she's 48, facing empty nest syndrome, and a younger friend asks her to do a marathon. She starts off training, almost immediately gets a stress factor, and is told by a young, know-it-all doctor that she shouldn't be running. No questions. No discussion. Immobilize the food for six months and never try to run again.

It turns out she's not the kind of person to listen to bad advice, as you already know since it says right on the cover that she becomes an ultra-marathoner.  Did she spend the next seven years proving the doctor was wrong, or was she simply trying to answer her own question--how far can I run?

At the time of writing of the book, the question doesn't appear to have been answered. I like that--and maybe, there is no answer. Maybe a better question would be, "How far do I want to run?" and it appears that for Ms. Sheridan, the answer is, "as far as someone can plan a race for."

The writing is often so matter-of-fact that it makes running 100 miles seem as do-able as driving to work on a crowded Monday morning. (And as pleasant)  And reading about the times when she had to stop--or should I say pause and try again next time--gave me a new sense of determination to not give up myself even though the heat of Texas summer is beating me down. I've been doing shorter and shorter runs at slower and slower times. But that's not the end! Ms. Sheridan might make a reasoned decision to stop, knowing that pushing on with an injury is just going to result in a longer healing time before she can race again.  But...stopping is not the same as quitting.  The battle is lost--the race goes on.

What's she racing against? Mortality? Immortality? Just pure pig-headed stubbornness? I don't know, but I hope she figures it out and writes another book.

State Of the Garden Report, Why Ain't it Fall Yet?

 All I have to report on is turnips, growing like weeds. Some people think they are weeds.   I was thinking something dug up a bunch of my broccoli, but it looks more like something was digging in the perimeter (where the wood chips are) and accidentally buried the poor little dears. When I started to replant them, I scratched the surface and started finding the baby sprouts under two to four inches of soft soil. I unearthed as many as I could and replanted nearby in case they don't make it. Probably an opossum--I've seen the damage an armadillo can do and this is nothing compared to that.

Some people recommend a motion-activated sprinkler system to scare off nocturnal varmints. Sounds like an idea..but what happens if you forget to turn it off before you head out to garden?

The Evil God of Texas Weather appears to have nixed most all of my chance of rain for the week. He might permit the temperature to fall below 80 for a couple of days, but by next week we're back up again, near 90.  Doom and gloom.

On this dismal realization, I skipped further work and cooked some freezer fillers instead:

















Trofie a la Pesto (okay, I had to use rotini) and Lentil Curry with Collards.

Another great YA from Matthew Quick

Every Exquisite Thing
by Matthew Quick

Quote:

But his writing that novel led to lives being changed...and Booker being happy in love now with Sandra Tagget which he never could  have foreseen when he dreamed up Wrigley's world. And so maybe it isn't the motivating factors that matter so much as simply participating...thrusting your best true authentic self into the universe with wild abandon.

You have to read it to see what led up to this insight.  And other insights, which I'm deliberately not quoting. I'll just say it's the kind of book for teenagers--or for anyone-- that I wish I could write.

And I wish I could force a few of my young friends to read.

Short and slightly stupid sorry

Everything Leads to You
by Nina LaCour
 
Surprisingly thoughtful. Unsurprisingly sweet. I enjoyed it, but kind of wish I hadn't wasted my time on it. Weird, right?

It's about the intersections of lives; about lust versus love; friendship of the best sort; and the bitter misunderstandings that occur when people stop talking to each other.

Highly recommended as an antidote to romance novels...but...I don't read romance novels much anymore and never really did.  This is more like...romance with brain engaged and (mostly) in control. 

I've got it!  As much as I liked all the characters, I didn't truly feel the thing--the mysterious fascination with the object of desire that I needed to feel to truly participate. I was a spectator and a spectator I remained.  Stupid me.

NO State of the Garden Report because September stinks

Sorry, but it's still in the 90s. I did finally discover a crop of radishes struggling out of the ground and mixed among them, a tiny sprig of carrot or two. And I finally saw one--exactly one--sprig of lettuce coming up. I should mark that one and save the seed from it.

With that in mind, I'll instead review a book about seed saving and much more.




The Third Plate

Field Notes on the Future of Food

by Dan Barber

Wow. Chef with a conscience. Does he overstate the importance of Master Chefs' ability to influence the direction of everyday eating?  Maybe, but he's onto something, too. When The Restaurant Scene turns its focus to a food, then everyone has to have it--from Ruths Chris to Golden Corral. And in the case of bluefin tuna, prosciutto, or even the kindly avocado, environmental destruction follows.

His journey in search of really sustainable agriculture and really tasty eats takes him all over. It's a delicious ride. You get to visit a fish farming operation off the coast of Spain; you meet the geese of Eduardo Sousa in Extremadura; you travel with wheat and corn over the ages and the continents. And best of all--you get to make up your own mind. No preaching. Well, yes, preaching, but no absolutes. There are many roads that lead to heaven...and on right through it. He's looking to the future--of food!

Points: where is this fixation on 'heirloom fruits and vegetables' leading us?  An heirloom variety is one that is uniquely suited to perform well and taste great in a particular time and place. Which isn't now and isn't here.  To have good tasting food, are we limited to living in the past?  My answer is easy--the Brandywine tomato plant I grew produced a great tasting fruit. I enjoyed it very much. Note my adjectives--'a' and 'it'. Wish there'd been a second one.

But we are not stuck in the past--we can go on producing great tasting, productive regional varieties of tomatoes in modern days, if we just choose to try our hands at selected the best seed and passing it around.  And the same goes for other crops--but we've got a difficult row to hoe.  Big Ag has the market cornered.

Here's a take on GMOs you probably never considered. One of the first successful uses of genetic modification was to put a gene in corn that let it withstand the herbicide roundup. Farmers could go on spraying roundup right on the corn, all summer long. That right there is enough to creep me out. But there's more--GMO seeds can be patented. What does that do to the traditions of farmers who want to save the 'best seeds' for replanting or developing new varieties?  Why do farmers have to give up their birthright--to save seeds, try experiments, and improve the crop? We've been doing it for 8000 years--let's not give it up without a fight!

Too much work but I envy his spinach

The Winter Harvest Handbook:

Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

by Eliot Coleman

Way too technical for me, but required reading for any small farmer even if he doesn't plan to build moveable greenhouses.  (I'd love one!)  It's a textbook of greenhouse farming.  But it had a bit of information for non-greenhouse, non-winter producers too.

A very small chapter at the end speaks less of the how-to of organic farming and more of the why-do. And it reminds us of this:

The reason for this still very active attempt to villainize organic farming is that our success scares the hell out of the other side. Just like the fear of Nature that the merchandisers and scientists have worked so hard to create in farmers in order to make purchased chemical products and reductionist science seem indispensable, so has our success with organic farming created in the scientists and merchandisers a terrible fear--a fear of their own redundancy; a fear that all farmers will realize other solutions are possible; a fear that agriculture will learn the truth. Organic farmers have succeeded in producing a bounty of food through the simple means of working in harmony with natural processes, without any help from the scientists and the merchandisers.

Sorry, that's a horrid quote. His writing style is much better in other parts of the book.  But it's a reminder of a couple of obvious facts we tend to forget:

Human beings have been farming and keeping themselves fed for about 10,000 years.

For 9950 years of that time, he didn't have chemical fertilizers. Or pesticides. Or herbicides.

Farmers have been saving their own seed and improving crop varieties themselves, very successfully, without scientists.

And finally, beware when the person selling you something tells you that you have to buy his product because "if you don't, you'll fail."  If you don't buy his product, exactly who is it who'll be failing?

Long time on the to-read list and worth it!

Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren


Weird and wild biography...with trees.  Plants of all sorts, really, and a couple of crazy goof-ball scientists who can't sit back and contemplate nature without digging, stirring, cutting and centrifuging every thing in sight. You got to love 'em.

Mixed in with their adventures in science is some real science, often chapter for chapter. She'll discourse on the structure and utility of wood for instance, then switch to the laying on of rings of her life in the lab.  A discourse on plant sex and the rarity at which a grain of pollen lands on a pistil and becomes a new life, leads beautifully into a chance encounter with a man at an outdoor barbeque.  But none of this is forced--it's effortless and beautiful. Even the really scary parts are told without apology or hyperbole and only after you step away do you realize how close disaster really loomed.

Let me just sum up--there's a reason this book was so in demand at the library.  It's good.

State of the Garden Report, sagging September

Depressing despite the fact I've got Brassicas coming out my rear end and there's a new swatch of shallots rising.  The four tomato plants are blooming, even though they're tiny.  But...the beets all vanished into the ground. Not a sign of a radish, carrot, lettuce or spinach. Why Would I be surprised?

It won't be the first time I've lost a crop. And yet...can't I even grow radishes?  Radishes, chapter one of Gardening for Dummies?



Nope, and it's not even my fault. It's the stupid weather. I forgot to take a soil temperature last weekend, but with highs over 90 and lows in the seventies, the temperature is probably jsut too darn warm for them to germinate. I can only hope they didn't start to germinate and then dry up and wither away...like the beets.

The pumpkins are doing okay...I hope.










Harvest time for horseradish!  Now...what to make of it...?

Germany's baby boomer generation

Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America
by Ursula Hegi

Let me start with a rather long quote from the introduction.

Born in 1946, I grew up surrounded by evidence of war--bombed out buildings, fatherless children, men who had legs or arms missing--yet when I tried to ask questions, my parents and teachers only gave me reluctant and evasive answers about the war. Never about the Holocaust, "We suffered, too," they would say. It is an incomplete lens, but it was held up to many of our generation as the only lens to see through. if our parents had spoken to us about their responsibility for their actions or lack of action during the war, if they had grieved for the Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and political prisoners who were murdered, and if then, in addition to all this, they had told us, "We suffered, too," their victimhood would have become part of the total lens.

Taken by itself, it is flawed. Incomplete. A lie.

What they tried to create for their children was eine heile Welt--an intact world. What was their motivation? guilt? Denial? Justification? The desire to protect the next generation? Perhaps all of these. But their silence added to the horrors of the Holocaust.

After a thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction, she goes on to interview fifteen other children of her generation who--like her--emigrated to America after the war.  Some had childhood memories of the war; some did not--but all were haunted by it, in visible and invisible ways. And all shared the loneliness that seeps out from silence.

It was brave of her to disturb the ghosts, but I'd expect nothing less from the author of Stones From the River. Not everyone she interviewed was admirable or  likeable or even slightly interesting, be we have something to learn from them all.

This dude is a great storyteller!

Boy 21
by Matthew Quick



 While I'm waiting for Rainbow Rowell to come out with another knock-me-down YA masterpiece, I'll content myself with reading everything ever written by Matthew Quick.  I loved Sorta Like A Rock Star and so I went looking for Every Exquisite Thing but it appeared to have been checked out and instead I found this.

I can't explain why I became so involved in this tale of a boy who plays basketball because, he imagines, after the death of his mother, his Dad told him to go outside and shoot baskets.  And he just never stopped.

Now he's the point guard on the high school basketball team and he keeps out of trouble, but there are things under the surface, scary things, not to be spoken about. The Irish gangs and the black ones stay always present in the background, but he stays safe and protected, mysteriously, by his girlfriend's brother, Rod--the most unpredictable and violent Irishman ever to live in Bemmont.

Then the coach asks him to befriend a transfer student, Boy 21, a former basketball star who has dropped out of life after the death of his parents.  And by then you're (if you're me) sucked in and can't put it down until the end.

State of the Garden Report, September is not fall

Oh, look. Clearly someone planted way too many turnip seeds.





And someone is going to be suffering--having to murder three-quarters of the younglings.  Why didn't I check the planting distance, halve it, and plant single seeds in a diamond pattern, like:

     o        o         o       o
          o         o        o       o
  
Then at least when thinning time came, I could sacrifice every other plant and have a nice mess of greens.  My official garden stick says 4-inch spacing. Seems a little close.

On the other hand, it's clearly too hot and dry for the beets I was cooing over last week. I've covered the bed with a board for the hot part of the day and will do so again tomorrow. After tomorrow it's supposed to drop a few degrees, from 92F to 82F (33C to 28C), so I'll stop. Can't leave 'em in the dark forever.

I ordered shallots this spring but they arrived way too late to plant. So I saved them in the pantry but that probably was a bad choice--too warm and dry.  Only two survived and they're very, very happy to finally be in the ground. Or so they told me.

Autobiography + imagination = fiction?

Allegra Maud Goldman
by Edith Konecky

It's kind of a cool thing to turn your life story into a novel. If I did it, I'd be a bookworm who magically transforms into a track star at age sixteen, then hires onto a rainforest expedition and discovers a new species of black jaguars, before moving to Taos, New Mexico where I make a living as a backpacking writer. Or maybe a Rockette!

Of course that would read like the nonsense it is--and this book isn't. It's probably more real than reality, because a writer who sticks with only the remembered facts will never tell the whole story. Ms. Konecky may have made up the funny story of her discovery of "sitting" and how it creates a new body part, "the lap."  But who cares? It's funny and it highlights the audacity of the girl who'd do such a thing.

I didn't get all that, at first. I approached this book thinking it was simply a humorous autobiography, and that was a shallow, simple thing to do! I got what I deserved. For me, it wasn't funny enough or earth-shattering enough, and I missed out on the richness of the interplay of imagination with reality. I raced through and didn't 'get' half of what it had to offer.  Only after reading the afterword, a very learned exposition of how it represented a near-perfect example of the Bildungsroman, did I get the point of it all--it's not comedy or tragedy, it's the transformation of a child into a human being. Incidentally, it had a lot to say about the middle-class lifestyle of the 1930s and women's search for personal worth in a time when girls prepared for marriage, period.

A lot to get out of a short book. or maybe I should say, a lot to put into. I will read her later work, A Place at the Table, and see where she went from there.

Gardening books again, 'pology

Doug Welsh's
Texas Garden Almanac

Very good! He knows his stuff, too. As a Texas transplant, I sometimes complain that people are always talking about this state like it's a separate country, magically isolated from the rest of the states and even the whole world. The world can go to heck, people say--because here in Texas we're safe from all those homos and hippies and en-vi-ron-mentals.

Obviously I think that attitude is crap, but in a gardening book, it's got its uses. Because the problem is that Texas is not "the southeast," although it can be awfully hot and humid at times, and it's not "the plains," but sometimes gets awfully icy in the winter, and definitely not "the desert southwest," but you wouldn't think so during an eight-week drought in late summer. Texas is some weird conglomeration of all of these areas with a few hills in the middle and a near-tropical rainforest in Houston.

You might think people in each area--northeast, west, hill country, and southwest--should simply pick up a gardening guide for their area. And maybe they can--but I, located a little north-east of center, would have to buy four books--and that's why I love this! Doug Welsh has done it for me.

He's organized all of the standard gardening topics into monthly-themed chapters along with a checklist for each month's activities. And frequently differentiates between the different climate zones. Here's an example--under August, he advises,

Grow pumpkins for Halloween. For the Panhandle and West Texas, seed should be planted in early July, but for the rest of the state early August will do. (Note: the panhandle is a major commercial producer of pumpkins for the nation.) Plant moderate-sized pumpkin varieties (e.g., 'Appalachin,' 'Connecticut Field', 'Small Sugar', 'Triple Treat');
See?  That's the kind of concrete advice I need. Plus a bonus:

If you fail to produce pumpkins but produce lots of foliage, then go to the grocery store and purchase pumpkins. Place them in your pumpkin patch, and the children will never know. It's magic!
I'm not sure the Great Pumpkin would deem that sufficiently sincere, but...what the heck. I'd do it.