Such a great, scholary work

American Canopy

Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation

by 

Eric Rutkow

It started off just as I'd expected--all about the white pines of the Eastern U.S. and their use as masts in British sailing ships. Fully one-quarter of the way through I was on target for a five-star review and many hours of happy enjoyment. The story of Dutch Elm Disease was heartbreaking as expected. But then it got more and more general--less about individual trees and forests and more about men and timber harvest operations and all kind of depressing stuff. 

I eventually gave up. I wanted more tree, less man. I'd definitely recommend this as a reference work, but maybe not as a reader's delight.

Birds and more and more and more

North on the Wing:
Travels with the Songbird Migration of Spring
by Bruce M. Beehler

This is a hard book to review. It's great, of course. In many ways. The author took us on his travels all the way up the Mississippi River and onto the Jack Pine barrens of Ontario. On the way he set out to visit every wood warbler in its nesting habitat, and I believe he succeeded.
But as he said,

      I have come for songbirds, but I'll encounter much more.

And he did--habitat, bird banders, old-growth forest fragments and all the second-and-third growth in between. He'll see animals, butterflies, flowers, and a whole heck of a lot of birds. It's a marvelous book.

Great setting, horrid mystery

This Old Homicide
by Kate Carlisle

It's very nicely characterized and the characters are all very nice. The heroine is happy. She's got a best friend who is happy because she's just opened her new guesthouse. Her workers are happy. Her romantic leads are happy. In fact, everyone is happy...other than the "mean girl" from Shannon's childhood who runs around rude and snooty.

They're all so happy that they're boring. But my main issue is that the mystery dragged on to long--which is odd for a short book--and was so very unbelievable. Clue after clue was revealed, coincidence after coincidence...until finally, after two murders, two or three ransackings, a suspiciously 'accidental' overdose, and enough physical evidence to fill a courtroom, the police still hadn't figured the thing out. So, of course, the heroine had to be taken captive by the culprit.

I'm sorry not to like it, but when smart characters act stupid, an obvious clues are dropped like dollar bills, and it still takes an abduction to force the big reveal, I give up. This was my second book in the series and it needs to be the last.

All kind of depth in his journey--I could read ten of these

American Places:
A Writer's Pilgrimage to 16 of This Country's Most Visited and Cherished Sites
by William Zinsser

This is a book beyond superlatives. He goes to places we've read about or heard about for all of our lives, and at each one he asks, why? Why do we go here?  What does it tell us about ourselves? About our country?

In a time when the news is all about lies and corruption and the evil men do in the quest for power--

There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.
--Voldemort

It was a refreshment to read about Mount Vernon, the estate of a reluctant leader who preferred to be back at home, digging in the earth and planting trees. It was a delight to visit Appatomax, where Grant send Lee's soldiers home with their horses so they could get their planting done; where the northern soldiers shared their rations with the conquered foes; and gave them a soldier's salute as
 they came to lay down their weapons.

Mr. Zinsser went to many places, from Montgomery Alabama to Niagara Falls to Kitty Hawk. And in all of them he found hope for the future. We could all use some of that now.

Words to jog along to

Eat, Drink, Run
by Bryony Gordon

Pretty much hilarious account of Bryony Gordon's struggles with depression and Jared, the monster who lurks in the back of her mind and taunts her into self-loathing and doubt. Her naming of the monster within leads to a funny (and sad) interview with attendees of her first "mental health get together". They all have their Jared, whether it be a snake, a sloth or an evil elephant. Something is out to get you and hiding under the covers may be the only sensible way to cope with it.

Until it isn't. Which is where she found herself when she began to slowly crawl out from under. When she had the courage to admit publicly that she struggled with depression, she began to hear from the many million of other people with mental health issues, and she began to recover. Not that "recover" is a final state...my impression is that it's a sort of process that goes on for a lifetime. And that's not so bad--it's so much better than the alternative.

But even if you don't have a personal connection to the issue, this book is just plain funny. I highly recommend it to just about anyone.

DNF and very conflicted about it

The Widows

I can't understand what's holding me back from this book. Am I scared of getting too involved with the characters, so I won't have to empathize with their inevitable pain? When a bad thing happened to a certain character I found myself skimming over the details, only making note that death wasn't in the picture. So, is it me?

I don't think so. There's just something lacking in the writing and I don't know what. I'm finding that when it's time to pick up a book for my bedtime reading, I look over at this one and sigh.

Later note: I gave up so I won't be giving a rating. I still don't know what my problem was. It was definitely not the subject matter--I'm way into historical fiction and Appalachia--and it wasn't the somewhat unbelievable plot--I can swallow all kinds of whoppers. It was simply that the people weren't alive. It felt like the author set out to write a best seller and chose some under-utilized period of history and created some people to act on the pages...but the resulting book didn't spring from a "beating heart you have to rip out of your chest" as Cheryl Strayed would put it. Sorry to be so negative--as you can see from the reviews, I'm totally in the minority on this. All of the people who five-starred it are welcome to contradict me.

Today I'm eating...

Mediterranean Chickpea Quinoa Bowl  [sorry no picutre]
...but not really. Considering how I monkeyed with the recipe, it's a lie to even pretend I made the dish. Could I call it, Mediterranean Chickpea Quinoa Riff on a Bowl?

At any rate, the idea was superb. Quinoa, chickpeas, roasted red pepper, garlic, olives....
Since I didn't have roasted red peppers, I simmered some chopped red pepper and garlic in a little olive oil.  I left out the feta cheese (yuck!), the almonds (accident), and the parsley (no way am I touching my lovely little sprig in the herb garden). Instead of assembling the salad in bowls,  then whisking the dressing together and serving part on the bowl and the other part on the side, I chunked it all together and added a sprinkle of Kosher salt. I left out the cucumber too but only because I'm planning to keep it for a few days while I eat a little for lunch each day. I'll try to remember to add cucumber to each serving as I make it.

All athlete should read this...or else just stick with what works, if it does

Good to Go:
What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery

by Christie Aschwanden

How about that "science of recovery"? Is it real, or is it just a collection of a lot of wishful thinking?

A lot--nay, a supermajority--of the recovery "cures" that we've sworn by for years are simple and plain bunk. I already knew that, but it was interesting to read his research on them.  Icing, for example--it helps with a pain of an sprain or an overuse, but it doesn't do squat to speed the body's white blood cells along to start repairing the injury. Do a quick search and you'll find study after study debunking the 'ice' part of RICE:

 a study published in 2014 by the European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy found that putting ice on injured tissue shuts off the blood supply that brings in healing cells. “Ice doesn’t increase healing—it delays it”...

She reviews performance enhancers, too, such as overhydration, electrolyte replacement drinks, and energy bars. She points out a lot of the poor experiment design that is common in sports nutrition research, and she reminds you of the plethora of conflict-of-interest found in product reviews.  After all that, she pretty much leaves you to make your own conclusions. (Although titling one chapter "selling snake oil" is pretty cheeky)

Regarding blood tests and other metrics, she hit a sore nerve with me. (I had a similar result)  She used Blueprints for Athletes to get a blood test on herself.  After they ran 43 different tests, the result said that her estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was low and her creatinine level too high.  These could signal a kidney problem, or could mean that she was eating more protein than her kidneys could easily process. She contacted her doctor in alarm, and heard this: don't panic; the numbers are only slightly off.

a human physiology expert noted that,
So-called incidental findings like these are common when you go looking for anomalies in healthy people.

Her creatinine is high because she's muscular. It's common in people who work out regularly. The eGFR rate is off because it's calculated based on creatinine level.
And she notes,

...if I'd brought the results to a doctor who was less aware of the problems that happen when you give medical tests to healthy people without symptoms, I might have been sent onto a spiral of escalating testing that woul dmake me anxious and suck up a bunch of my time and money without improving my health one iota.

It's all worth reading but especially the last chapter "Hurts so good," in which she analyzes the placebo effect and reminds us that however illogical it might seem, the effect is real.

All except the maggots

Teasing Secrets from the Dead
by Emily Craig

Dr. Craig writes as well as she detects. She's a bone detective--a forensic anthropologist who started out as a medical illustrator and just never lost her fascination with the bony things that people leave behind. Reading this book makes you want to run out and excavate your compost pile, just to make sure nobody snuck some dismembered body parts in there when you weren't looking.

My only issue with this book is that it should have been three times as long. Even though the last chapter deals with her stints at the World Trade Center, which is almost as depressing as you can imagine.