Mild disappointment in a consistent series

Under Pressure
by Sara Driscoll

It's good to spend some time with Meg and Hawk again, plus the beefy but brainy firefighter-slash-paramedic husband, the perfect boss, and their neighbors next door--friends, really--including the brilliant but foolhardy investigative reporter. I just wish this book had been a better time to spend in. To explain: the action scenes are very well written. So well, you want to speed through them quickly and then they're over and...there's not much else in the book. Although she tried to fluff it out with diamond harvesting quotes and long, long flashbacks including a dream sequence that seemed to go on forever, the overall plot was very shallow. And weak.

At the ending, I wanted to have the feeling: that was great, I want another!  But instead, it was more like: that was good, but I wish it had been great.

So what to conclude?  I love her stuff and recommend them all, but if this one disappoints you a little, don't give up. Go back and read the previous books in the series.

Gardening End of March Addendum

 

 

 

 

 

Squash is up,

 

 

And cucumber is up.

So it better not frost any more. Neither of these, nor the beans, can take the slightest hint of a frost.

So, no. Just no.

A funny funny

 Did Not Finish
Misadventures in Running, Cycling and Swimming
by George Mahoodv

I liked this as much as I did Ironman. I wish it were longer. He's got a sequel, though.

In this book he writes more about his joint races with his wife, and she is a hoot. Plus their interactions are hilarious, but I don't want to tell about any of them and give away the fun.

Gardening in my Roots: Spring, Spring, Spring at last

And here I was all depressed because nothing was growing!  My sunflowers are beginning to pop up:

And beans:

And there's a surprising amount of spinach. I just hope the weather doesn't get too hot for it before I get to eat it.

Small:

 And large:

And look!  My forsythia lives!

Did not finish and never will

The Vegetable Butcher: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice, and Masterfully Cook Vegetables from Artichokes to Zucchini
by Cara Mangini

I'm giving up on this. It's really disappointing and the techniques are boring and repetitive. No little tips or colorful writing that make it fun to read, and none of the recipes look good enough to try.

Great narrative, maybe a little shallow but entertaining

Trooper
The Bobcat Who Came in from the Wild
by Forrest Bryant Johnson

Uncanny relationship between a cat and his man. It's so unbelievable at times--at most times--that it couldn't possible be true. But you know it is.

Since the span of the book is many years--all the years of a life--the author had hundreds of funny, touching, scary and curious little episodes to choose from. It almost makes me wish I'd kept a "Winston diary" to record the life of my black cat Winston. From his curious entry into the family (the shelter wouldn't let us adopt a black cat right before Halloween, so we had to wait two weeks), to his clothes dryer episode and all his years of hunting outside, it would have made a good story. But not near as good as this one.

Awesome autobiography

 Just As I Am
by Cicely Tyson

I was overwhelmed from page one. She's an amazing woman and a deeply introspective one, with insights well beyond what I would have expected from anyone, let alone a movie actress. Mind, she's a TV actress and a theater performer, as well, with a career spanning millenia. (Well...it seemed like that, anyway.)

Although the book did the usual nauseating amount of name-dropping that I always find in an actor's memoir, it had a whole lot more than that. And so many insightful observations on being black, being a woman, and most especially, being a black woman. I can't say enough good things about this.

Long awaited and wish I hadn't

 People We Meet On Vacation
by Emily Henry

I give up, about one-third to one-half way through the audiobook. I'm a little mad that I wasted an Audible credit on it. I don't want to be mean or to insult the judgement of all the people who loved and recommended this, but for me, it "failed to meet my specifications."

After I began to realize I just wasn't feeling the love, I began to be irritated. It's got nothing to do with vacations, other than as a boring backdrop to a plain and simple love story with no side-plots, no interesting destinations, and apparently no other characters than the "friends" who are probably going to be lovers at some point. Basically, I was bored. And when I began to realize that, I noticed that she uses the words "I" and "Alex" in pretty much every sentence except the ones that are dialog, and of course the dialog is always spoken by either "I" or "Alex".  The dialog was amusing at first but soon became very repetitive. Anything that wasn't dialog was thoughts in the woman's head, which reminded me of my own head when it gets stuck on endless repeat and I can't wait to get out of it.

All complaints aside, the writing is pretty good. I could see someone liking it. But I didn't.

Mammoth at Cagle, and return

 Friday 3/4/2022


Leaving day and not too soon. The campground had filled up a good bit on Thursday and it was sure to be a crowded mess by Friday. I wish there was some way to go interesting places without ever having to camp on a weekend.

Nothing especially exciting happened--other than the red-cockaded woodpeckers coming thorugh the campground as we packed up and prepared to leave. I'm not sure I want to camp at this place again anytime soon, but I have to say, there are a whole lot of birds here. I am almost completely sure I saw a Hairy Woodpecker on the second day, but I just didn't get a good enough look to put it down. So that is worth coming back for at the least.

One of these days.

The return trip took four hours and two minutes. Three minutes shorter than the trip out. I don't get it at all--I was expecting it to be much faster because we didn't lose the time at the gas station waiting for a trucker to "get his Wendy's." Only excuse was the traffic slowdown in Dallas

Bird list
Tern; American White Pelican; Double-Crested Cormorant; Kingfisher. Goldfinch. Pine warbler, lots. White-throated sparrow. White-eyed vireo. Chickadee, Titmouse, White-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsucker. Cardinal, bluejay, phoebe. Turkey vulture.  Wood duck!!! Bald Eagle. Pileated Woodpecker.
Red-cockaded Woodpecker!!!

Notes

1. Take the camera when you go on a bird-watching-slash-exercise-the-dog walk. It will save a lot of backtracking and unnecessary anxiety. At least when you're in a forest where endangered species are likely to be found.
2. Seriously debate pros and cons before taking day trips of more than one-hour's drive to see parks that you don't know exactly what you hope to see there. A 20-minutes drive is okay.
3. Don't do the dirty rice. You don't like it all that much.

Mammoth at Cagle, Day 4

 Thu 3/3/22

This was just a lazy-around day. Except we had to go get dog food. We pride ourselves on traveling fully prepared and never, ever, having to make a shopping run midway through a trip. We're good at it, too. Except this time we had a little mix-up in the matter of "just who was going to fill up the dog food containers."  They came out of the RV empty, went into the house empty, then went back out of the house empty and were reloaded into the RV. It still eludes me as to how an empty plastic container can be mistaken for a full one, but there you have it. It happened.

but first I had to bring in the game cam, which I'd left pointed down the trail. I found several shots of raccoons. I suspect that in these modern times when humans neither wear nor eat raccoons, they are overpopulating the world. I certainly see them everywhere. Hope they don't spread rabies.

The park really cuts back the palmetto here:

But they left signs of spring -- violets!

After a slow morning and a walk around the little loop trail, I did lunch and then we went to fetch dog food. Ed preferred to drive an extra five miles to Walmart, but I would have been fine with a Kroger. No matter. Funny, that--there's still an awful lot of people here wearing masks. The news I've heard is that masks were no longer recommended for vaccinated people without underlying health issues.

 

After that Molly and I took off for a walk. The plan was to go all the way to the end of the lakeside trail. We sneaked past some people who were exercising their dog by letting it swim out to retrieve stuff. Molly never saw the dog and I doubt if it saw her, so we were able to mosey on by without altercation. Then we crossed a couple of little wooden bridges on the footpath. And right then I heard a peculiar bird call. Like a squank or a squeep or a smikk or something that wasn't a Downy woodpecker or a red-bellied woodpecker, but sounded a little like them both.

I looked up and over, found the origin--and what to my wondering eyes should appear?!?!  No, not reindeer, stupid. Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers!  I only saw one at first, but later I saw more.

Funny thing was, even though I knew they'd been seen in this area, the day before I'd been looking a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker for a ridiculously long time, trying to get it to come around the tree so I could see it well enough to ID it, and that caused me to go check my bird book to make sure that I'd know a red-cockaded woodpecker if I saw one. But according to the bird book, they were rare and local, living in long-leaf pine forests, and an endangered species. So I wouldn't be seeing one...I wasn't in a long-leaf pine forest, for one, and I wasn't in a place that was preserved specifically for the species.

But sure and to be honest, that is what I saw. I jog-walked back to the Mammoth RV, got my camera, and came back as quickly as possible. And lucky to behold, they were still there!

The next day--leaving day--I saw them again from our own campsite. They weren't shy at all, just busy. When they hammer on pine trees from seventy feet up, a shower of bark comes drifting down. My theory is that they're endangered not because of habitat destruction but because they peck all their favorite trees to death!

No, just kidding. They seem to have a strong preference for pine forests with a lot of open space in and around the trees. Like the one we were camping in. All those years of humans suppressing fires had caused old-growth forests to be choked with underbrush, vines, and too many tiny trees too close together. Now that the forestry service is doing controlled burns, things are looking better.

That episode provided more excitement than the law allowed. After craning our (my) necks for a very long time, Molly and I continued to the end of the trail. It stopped at the road just this side of the bridge. Actually...it might not have stopped. I got to the end and then went down to poke around on the lake shore a little, and I never went back to finish the trail all the way to the pavement. It might have crossed over and kept going.  Then I got a little lost coming back--there was a "social trail" at the lake shore, and I mistook it for the real trail for a minute or two. Eventually without having seen a trail marker for an uneasy amount of time, I backtracked to the starting point. Easy peasy.

Here's a pine warbler. Horrid picture, I know.

 

 

Mammoth at Cagle Day 3

Wednesday, 2 March 2022

I think I might have seen a Hairy Woodpecker today.  but I can't be sure. It was at the top of a tall pine tree, of course.  Then I saw a trio of infuriating small birds that looked exactly like female white-throated sparrows, but they were feeding in the branches of a small deciduous tree. Do white-throated sparrows ever do that? I've only ever seen them on the ground.

After the normal breakfast and a short walk around the loop trail by the boat dock, we went driving. Our destination was Lake Sheldon State Park and Environmental Education Center, which turned out to be a pretty interesting little place around a lake (and probably a water treatment plant, too) in the eastern suburbs of Houston.  They'd built an array of little ponds, with fishing stations set up for the children. There were alligators there, too--or so the signs said. We saw alligator. (Not alligators, plural) One little twelve-to fourteen inch dude, sunning himself beside a shallow pond.

There was a great egret in that pond, or maybe it was the next one. He let us walk almost all the way around him, and only when we were coming up on his left side did he move away. Silly bird--he should be used to people by now. Or maybe he was, and he was just ready to move on.

There were tons of robins there, and cedar waxwings.  And I just remembered--on our morning walk, I heard a white-eyed vireo . Not unusual, for the area, but pleasing. They don't overwinter at our house but they should arriving back from their winter vacation in about a month.

Houston ship channel:

So that was a fun outing, but a little too much driving in big city traffic for my taste. We made things worse by going another twenty miles further south to see the San Jacincto Monument:

Pretty boring, however, that was my fault because I stayed in the grassy lawn with the dogs. In my younger days, I'd never have missed a chance to run up the stairs and look straight up at the top from right beside it. What do they call it, a spire? Edifice? What is that word from 2001: A Space Odyssey? That thing.

Looking straight up would have been dizzy-making. And cool. Instead I looked at the flag display and while I was there, got distracted by the sight of a couple of big birds battling. Very big birds.  One of them was definitely a Bald Eagle--the other most likely an Osprey. I didn't see the reason for the battle, but some guys standing nearby said that the eagle made the other bird drop its catch and then took off with it. What a fitting behavior for our national symbol--just like the behavior of the people it represents.

We could see the battleship Texas in the distance, but we didn't go over there. It was time to be getting back to our campsite. Soon. Why so hurry?

Pappadeaux. When I was looking at restaurants in the area, trying to find some good Mexican food near the campground, I first explored restaurants of Huntsville and then those of Conroe. And suddenly, I saw a word I knew so well--Pappadeaux. And that was the end of my search.  The address was in Conroe, but I would have called it more like The Woodlands. Still, only 20-ish miles from our campsite. And so very worth the drive.

I don't know if it was worth the price, because I don't know the price. We ordered off the lunch menu, not because we're cheap but because that was where the items we wanted were listed. But we asked for the "dinner portions" of each entree and didn't ask the price. Ed of course got the Crawfish Etauffee + Fried Crawfish. He said it wasn't as spicy as it used to be. And I got the Mixed Seafood Grill.  Very, very good, alhough it came with dirty rice which just didn't complement the meal. Plain rice would have been much better.

And that made the day. Stuffed to the gills, we rolled home.

Mammoth to Cagle, Day 2

 Tue Mar 1

Oh the joys of camping. Leaving my home in the country where I can only hear traffic noise as a diffused roar in the far, far distance, leaving my isolation where my nearest neighbor is across a wide field, leaving my semi-fast Internet...and going where? To a lake? But why?

I guess just because it is. At home I have birds and flowers (or will soon) and occasional butterflies, but I don't have a lake in my backyard. Most of the time, at least. I certainly don't have pelicans and cormorants, although a short drive down the road to nearby Lake Lavon would certainly reveal them. This is  just...someplace else to be. 

And I like being someplace else. If I could spend the rest of my life being someplace else I would do so happily. But I'd have to find a new home for the dratted cats. I don't imagine they're all that happy being left alone for four or six or even eleven days at a time, but they seem to forgive us for it. Cats are annoying little furrballs, but they seem to be attached to their humans.

My garden is a different story. I'm not sure how long a trip away from my garden would get to be too long.  But most likely, knowing I would get back to it someday would be enough to keep me happy.

We made the day a lazy one, driving over to Huntsville State Park in search of a non-existent bird blind and campsites to consider for future stopovers on the way to the gulf. It was not so good for the former but excellent for the later. There are a few full hookup sites, a few pull-throughs, and some of these are lakeside for a decent view. And there are a lot of back-in water & electricity sites. Possibly on a weekend we might have a problem, but making reservations in advance just might do the trick.

Then we returned and hiked past the water treatment area.  Yeah, I know...imagine if someone had asked, "Hey, where's some good hiking here?"  "The water treatment area! Can't miss it. Besure sure to take a picture of the blue pipes against the steel-gray fence...what a photo op!"

There was no sign or anything--other than hunting regulations, but there was definitely a "road" there and a bridge over a low-lying area that was probably a creek in rainy weather.  We followed the road a few hundred yards or so, and found a clearing in the woods that appeared to have been laid out for an archery tournament at some point. Very odd indeed.

After that I tried to take Molly jogging, but I just didn't have a jog in me. Instead we walked down to the front entrance, where we found no "wildlife viewing area". Then back to the boat ramp, where we found a loop trail along the edge of the water. That could possibly have been a "wildlife viewing area" but it wasn't marked at all. But it was a nice walk and could possibly have allowed a view of an alligator in warmer weather.

Then we went back, passed up the campsite and kept on going. And going. And going. It was clearly a well-used trail and made of concrete for the longest time, then turned to pine needle carpeted dirt. We were skirting the lake's edge--at one point the trail split and one fork went up the hill and probably ended up at the first camping loop (not the one Mammoth was parked on). The other fork kept on going along the lake shore forever. Or at least, as long as I cared to go. It would have been interesting to keep on going until it came out on the road--I could see where the road crossed the lake in front of me, so the trail had to hit the lake or the road--one or the other--sooner or later.

By the way, I'm going to christen this "sunset campground". We're directly on the east side of the lake and we've have two of the more glorious sunsets I've ever seen so far.

Mammoth Goes to Cagle. Where's that?

Monday, 28 February 2022

Home to Cagle Recreation Area, New Waverly Texas.
Distance: 228 miles
Planned time: 3:15
Actual time: 4:05
Stops: quick pee stop at rest area. Longish gas stop at Pilot in northern Huntsville.

Off we go, camping again, again; a camping we will go!
If that sounds a little sarcastic, it's because it's not that great a place we're going. When I planned it, I had the mental picture of it being close to all sorts of things. It's close to Houston, so doesn't that make it close to all the other places that are close to Houston?  Like Attwater NWR or Galveston Bay or the Johnson Space Center?

Nope. It's over an hour away from all those places.

No matter--it's still Camping with a capital C, yay, hurray! For the first time in a long time, instead of trying to detour around downtown Dallas we just stayed on 75 and barrelled right on through, 75 turns into 45 without any of the complicated maneuvering I remember going through back in the 90's. One time I was taking my Mother to Houston and I got off the highway and ended up stuck in downtown--able to see the big freeways towering on either side, but completely unable to get back on them!

If that doesn't sound sufficiently embarrassing to you, let me spell it out. You've lived in Dallas for years, driving to Houston many times, and you get lost in downtown Dallas. With your MOTHER in the car.

Something happened to the route and it is nothing like it used to be. I won't use the word "pleasant", but I will at least say "bearable".  And traffic was light at the time of the morning, 11:00 am.

We made a quick pee stop at the Navarro County Safety Rest Area, then a long-ish gas stop near Huntsville. First time using our new Pilot/Flying J pump start and credit card. The only reason for the long stop is that we pulled in behind a trucker who was washing his windows, adjusting his underwear, and cleaning bugs off his front grill. When we realized he wasn't going to move anytime soon,  Ed decided to go inside for a quick purchase. As he passed the truck driver, the man asked if we wanted him to pull forward while he got his Wendy's carry-out food.  For reasons unknown to modern man, Ed replied "no rush, we can wait."  
And so we waited. I was beginning to think he took a good crap, did a little shopping, got a massage and then ATE his Wendy's food inside, when finally the pump beside us opened up and we moved over there.

Notes from the time
Later. We have arrived, and it's really nice here. Really. The campground is maybe half full, and there's an empty spot right beside us and across the road from us. But even if those sites were occupied, we've got a great big old lake spreading through the trees and plenty of space all around. People who restrict their camping to private parks must not know what they're missing. For half the price, we have water, 50-amp electric, and sewer. And space, glorious space!

And a surprising number of birds. Nothing unusual, but in the short stretch of time I saw or heard pine warblers, chickadees, titmice, white-breasted nuthatch, Carolina wren, blue jay, cormorant, white pelican, tern of species unknown but one of the larger ones, wood duck, turkey vulture of course, and some other warbler I couldn't identify.  It would have had to be either yellow-rumped or orange-crowned at this time of the year.

Still death to me

Still Life
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1
by Louise Penny

This is a did-not-finish, but I'm writing about it so that I won't accidentally try another one of the series. It seemed to be everything I wanted in a cozy, but no. It's not all that cozy, for one thing--the victim is an elderly lady and the description of her best friend's feelings is awfully sad.

Since a murder mystery by definition involves murder, aka death of a human being, it's hard to write around the realism of human pain and come up with a believable, but non-bummer, story. Somehow writers do it--some make the victim really unlikable so they won't have any grief to write. Some simply gloss over the victim, as in "I wish I'd known her better!" But this is the only one I've ever seen that had a close friend who was grieving suddenly realize that, "but I'm a Christian and I believe in heaven, so why should I be sad? I'll be seeing her soon enough! I'll just shrug this off and be happy--right now, done."

Sheez. Anyone who could write that has probably never experienced loss. In any event, after reading that I put the book down and let it die a little death of its own.

There are two many characters and the author's POV switches from one character to another at a dizzying rate. And her writing style appears to be trying to imitate some Victorian-era novelist with the clunky and overly wordy descriptions. Here's a sample,
Carved pumpkins squatted on each step up the the sweeping veranda of the B & B. Inside, worn oriental rugs and overstuffed chairs, lights with tassels and a collection of oil lamps gave Gamache the impression of walking into his grandparents' home.

This level of colorful description can be tolerated--but only up to a very short point. Maybe one paragraph per chapter. No more, and preferably less.
Not for me.

Gardening... The March of Hail

Or is that the Hail of March?

Still no rain, but we're getting a hailstorm tonight. How is that fair?

 

 

 

I egged this on by transplanting all my little brocollis and bok choys:

 

 Bok choy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Brocolli 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also planted two rows of green beans and transplanted 45 little strawberry plants. Here they are:

It turns out, the strawberries should have been planted as soon as I got them--no need to wait.  But I'll keep them well mulched with the wood chips all summer. If they survive that long.

And then the power went out.

Explains why you should never say you don't want chemicals in your food

 Elemental
How the Periodic Table Can Now Explain (Nearly) Everything
Tim James

Fascinating and funny book about the periodic table, its history and development, and then some of the characteristics of the elements it displays. The only complaint I have is that I wish it had been twice as long--I was enjoying it so much. And the jokes he slips in are great.

Not much to say--it's chatty and easy to enjoy, but not at all trivialized or light in its content. That content is all science.  Delightful!

More funny bone ticklers

 Every Day is a Holiday
by George Mahood

The book that came before Life's A Beach. It was odd at the end...the end of this one seemed to overlap with the beginning of the other one. But it made me want to immediately start the other one over again and see how they flowed. Stupid me--it's what I get for reading them out of order!

I loved this almost as much as I did Life's A Beach, which is to say, a goodly bit. It explained the origin of the term "Biggishly Built", for one. And the joke about finding $75 pounds, or whatever. I still don't think that one's funny at all.

But the rest of his wild and crazy adventures are sure to tickle your fancy. They did mine, at least.  Enjoyed, much! But you have to be prepared to deal with a guy doing ridiculously stupid things to celebrate ridiculously stupid holidays only so that he could write about them. Upsy Daisy Day? Ball Point Pen Day? Slugs Return From San Juan Capistrano Day? Ridiculous.

But be minded, it's not all about the days, or even the weeks and the months. It's a lot about him and his family and his very sensible children and his very peculiar cats. And neighbors. And friends. And the whole of jolly old England, to boot.

More, please.

long and worth it

 The Boys of Summer

by Roger Kahn


Wow, oh, wow. And to think I almost crossed this one off my list unread! The only, absolutely only criticism I have is that he kept on going a little too long after the ending. But I'll give him that--he deserved it after his long labor.

If you're considering reading (or listening to) this, I'll give you some advice. The first half of the book was semi-autobiographical. It jumped around a little in time, so you weren't stuck reading, "I was born in City General Hospital in 1939...." and on though first grade, second.... None of that tedium. It jumped around a lot. from his growing up days of watching the Dodgers through a broken board in a fence and them from the roof of a neighboring store; to his first years as a sports writer--he covered a lot of high school football--to his meeting the team and getting stories from them.

That stuff was all interesting but not what made the book for me. The second half, interviews with the players in their later years, was awesome. Both sad and delightful. For some of the guys, when they were playing major league baseball they still felt, acted and reacted like boys. Grown up and facing life after baseball, they learned how to live.

I don't dare quote a single thing--any little tiny bit would be a spoiler. Just read it.

And this is a hoot

 Life's A Beach
by George Mahood


I might not say, Hilarious! but it was very, very amusing. It's kind of half memoir, half comedy, and I liked both halves equally well. I read this one before reading Every Day is a Holiday only because it had higher ratings, and I realize now that the reason for that is The Series Effect.  That's the thing that will make the first book in a series rank lower than the subsequent ones, but only because people who didn't LOVE the first one will go on to read the later ones.

And yeah, he's doing all these crazy stunts only because he wants to write books about them, but I still give him credit for the doing thereof. Besides, it's funny. And a little touching, too.

My only criticism is that, being American, I don't get all the Brit-Humor. For example, it took me a while to realize that when Brits say "pants" they mean "underwear." So he writes that he frequently sits around writing in his "pants" and I took that to mean "trousers." What's so funny about that?

Oops. Who am I criticizing, here? Me, I think!

Glad it was a library book

 When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Chödrön, Pema

My reaction is hard to explain. I was disappointed in this, but really it was full of good advice and explanations of how and why to meditate and get past bad feelings in your life. The author skipped around a little, it seemed--I'd take in one sentence and then find the next sentence in the same paragraph didn't flow at all. But this happened less and less as I grew accustomed to her style of writing.

She's an abbot of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, so her examples are mostly from the Buddhist tradition. But applicable to all.

I think my disappointment was due to incorrect expectations. If I'd known it was mainly going to be a brief, high-level overview into the Buddhist approach to life's journey, I'd have gotten what I expected and been happy. But it left me wanting a guidebook. The suggestions were great but the details of how to practice the various meditations and exercises were sketchy. Maybe she could write a workbook...?

Good syntheses. Not great.

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research...   
by Angela Saini

Nothing here I didn't know already, but still very important stuff. Obviously a scientific and medical establishment run by men is going to overlook and denigrate the attributes of the weaker sex, and this explains in a lot of detail some of the ways this has hurt us all. I'd say it's required reading on the subject, but I think it could have been both broader in scope--cover more topics--and narrower in detail--less detail for each. There was a lot to say that she didn't have time to say, but on some subject, there was too much said.

The only subject that really got me thinking was the question of propagation of genes. What is the best approach for a man to ensure his genes survive him? Is it to be a lord and sleep with all your vassals; is it foot-binding and genital cutting and strict restriction of women's behavior; or is it cooperation in a society that promotes the grandmother as a backup childcare resource?  Or some combination of these all. The chapters that talked about possible reasons why women may need to stay alive after menopause are pretty interesting.

All that said, she has an awfully bad habit of confusing guesses and speculations with actual testable and refutable scientific theories. I wanted to read more about "the New Research" and not just a bunch of likely sounding ideas that had not yet been backed up by any data.