Bugged

Finished July 5

Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them by David MacNeal, with illustrations by Michael Kennedy

This informational books looks at bugs through many lenses, with each chapter looking more closely at one particular type of bug. After an interesting encounter with an entomologist studying dung beetles mentioned in his introduction, the author continues to tell engaging stories about his journalistic research into this subject and his willingness to explore unusual activities to do so. 

His first chapter is about collectors of bugs, looking at entomologist taxidermy. Here, as in all the following chapters, he talks about the history of this subfield of entomology, the pioneers in the field, what we know from anthropological history, and what we are learning now. This chapter has a closer look at beetles, and public education.

The second chapter looks at burrowing insects, with a concentrated look at ants. 

The third chapter looks at reproduction both in the wild and in laboratories. Here there is a closer look at spiders.

The fourth chapter looks at insects that fly, and here he looks at fleas, mosquitoes, and other carriers of disease, as well as disease in the forest industry.  He travels to Brazil as part of his research. 

The fifth chapter looks at entomological pests and he accompanies a pest control operator on the job. Here there is a closer look at bedbugs and cockroaches. He also looks at insecticide use in agriculture. 

The sixth chapter looks at beneficial aspects of insects and the role they play in the economy. He covers the use of beneficial insects in pest control, how insects process both natural and manmade waste and even visits a body farm research facility in Texas. Another interesting aspect here is the use of entomology in criminal cases. 

The seventh chapter looks at medicinal uses of bugs from folk medicine to more recent clinical applications. He even tries to outfit his own pet cockroach with a robotic implant. One interesting potential use of the combination of technology and insects is in search and rescue situations. He also talks about how studying insect anatomy can help in medical applications. 

The eighth chapter looks at businesses that make money from bugs from silkworms to natural dyes to ecotourism. He looks at the pet insect business in Japan and issues around smuggling insects across borders.

His ninth chapter looks at insects as food and we see Chirps, chips made from crickets, ground bugs becoming protein powder, and . He looks at the difficulty of overcoming mindset around eating bugs, and goes on a Food Bug Crawl in Tokyo which includes fried caterpillars, ant-ohol drinks, black wasp larvae boiled with couscous, kebabed combos, and even spiders and centipedes. Back home, he even hosts a dinner including bugs as food for a group of friends. 

His final chapter looks at honeybees and the problems of colony collapse and other disease outbreaks. He goes to a Scottish monastery to see their bee operation and to Greece to try their unique honeys. 

I found this book both educational and entertaining. As this book is from 2017, I'm sure that there are more recent discoveries and advances in knowledge that have happened since. 

Good Taste

Finished June 16

Good Taste: A Novel In Search of Great Food by Caroline Scott

This historical novel takes place beginning in 1932 and follows writer Stella Douglas. Stella recently finished a biography called The Marvellous Mrs. Raffald about a female cookbook writer. It's doing okay, but isn't a best-seller. She has plans for another biography, but when her publisher Mr. Williamson asks her to take on a more broad-ranging project, a history of British food, she feels both honoured and overwhelmed. She isn't sure how to decide what to include and how to treat the inevitable foreign influences that exist in the nation's food traditions. 

She has a budget that allows some travel, but decides to place advertisements in some regional newspapers asking for recipes. Stella's best friend of many years is Michael, a chef in a French restaurant in London. She lived in London until her mother became ill and she moved back to her home village in Yorkshire. She rents a furnished row cottage called Celandine Cottage and visits her father regularly. When she goes up to London, she often stays with Michael and spends time with him and their mutual friend Lucien, a Frenchman who has unrequited feelings for Michael. 

When Stella's car breaks down on one of her information gathering trips, she is rescued by antique dealer Freddie, and he soon insinuates himself into her life. As she finds his influence affecting her choices, she starts to question herself and decide what she is comfortable with as a writer. 

This is a book that raises a number of things to think about. These include what real friendships look like, the fear of other cultures, anti-immigrant mindsets, and how to move forward from grief. It gave me a lot to think about and was relatable to things happening in the world today. 

I loved the discussions around food and folklore. The inclusion of diary entries and letters responding to Stella's ads gave another layer to the writing. 

Scott was inspired by the real life Florence White, author of Good Things in England, which was published in 1932. White is considered the first female freelance food journalist in England. 

Tapestries of Life

Finished August 20

Tapestries of Life: Uncovering the Lifesaving Secrets of the Natural World by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, translated by Lucy Moffat

This book, one I received as part of a book subscription from Mr. B's, is a fascinating look at all nature offers. I learned so many interesting things in the natural world, as well as how humans have taken from it. The author is a Norwegian conservation biologist who knows her subject very well. 

The book is organized with an introduction, ten chapters, and an afterword, and begins with a very personal preface that talks about her life and how she came to this work. She says "Curiosity and a capacity for wonderment are important to me as a scientist." Her aim for the book is to get people to appreciate the natural world enough to work to take care of it. 

In the introduction she talks about her encounter in a museum with a stuffed rhinoceros whose horns had been removed to avoid theft. This led her to think about the numerous smaller creatures that are disappearing. She also talks about the idea of nature as an ecosystem service that offers many benefits. Her third idea here is of the thin layer of earth where life exists, a mere 20 kilometres from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest and the reality that we are only one species among ten million that exist. 

The chapters each discuss one area of 'service' that nature provides, giving examples and making connections to these ideas by relating them to different aspects of human use. 

The first is Water of Life, where she talks about the necessity of water, how much of the earth's water is freshwater and available for use, and species that clean the water such as moss and mussels. 

The second is Grocery Store, which refers to what we take from the earth for food. She talks about microbes and insects, how we use arable land, the role of megafauna in the environment, and the health of the oceans. She also introduces the idea of shifting baseline syndrome, a kind of collective amnesia where we don't see the changes that have happened over time. 

The third chapter is Biggest Buzz, where she begins with coffee, connecting that to pollination, and the interdependence of species in growth, survival of species, and renewal.

The fourth chapter iss Pharmacy, where she looks at the many plants that have been used in healthcare, from traditional medicine to synthetic versions of naturally existing remedies. She talks about the importance of safeguarding traditional knowledge, the long history of medicinal use of natural plants and fungi, and what we are still learning from other creatures and plants. 

The fifth is Fibre Factory, nature that provides us with cloth, building materials, and books. She also includes a discussion of energy from fires to biofuel here. The idea of cold light is one intriguing example. 

The sixth is Caretaking, how plants help to retain water and soil, prevent erosion, provide buffers against flooding, regulate temperature, and clean the air. Her description of the 'flying river' over the Amazon, bringing moisture back inland was one I hadn't known of before. She touches on the importance of old growth forests and how they are different from more managed forest area. One especially intriguing study to me was the reindeer on the Hardanger Plateau, where 323 reindeer died from a strike of lightning and scientist as studying what is happening to them as they decompose. 

Chapter seven is the Warp in the Tapestry of Life, which takes us deep into the world of micro organisms, as well as showing how creatures like whales transport nutrients and minerals, including carbon, from the surface to the ocean depths, and keep life going down there. She discusses the almost doubling change in CO² concentrations from the pre-Industrial world to today. This chapter also includes referent to the increased proximity of wild creatures to both us and domesticated animals as a key input to the rise of infectious diseases we are seeing move into humans, giving several examples. 

Chapter eight is Nature's Archives, a record over time of what has happened. She gives examples such as the samples that have been taken from Greenland in ice cores, comparing tree rings in standing dead trees and timber in old structures, and pollen levels in bogs. One study was able to use guano buildup in a disused chimney to see how the bird species' diet changed over time. 

The ninth chapter is An Ideas Bank for Every Occasion, which looks at how nature has given us inspiration for technological solutions to problems, She gives several fascinating examples here, showing us the inspirations for self-cleaning windows, bullet train design, colour in banknotes, and nanostructure films. She also talks about natures algorithms in efficiency, given movement of slime mould as an example. 

Chapter ten gives us Nature's Cathedral, a place where great thoughts take shape, and the feeling that we get when we spend time in nature, whether forest bathing or listening to birds in our own backyards. She shows research on the role of nature in mental health, robust immune systems, and the intrinsic value of nature itself. 

The afterword gives an element of hope to readers, and ideas of what we can do to keep what exists now from disappearing. 

A fantastic read. 

Protecting Pollinators

Finished July 28
Protecting Pollinators: How to Save the Creatures That Feed Our World by Jodi Helmer

This book is full of information on the importance of pollinators and how we can act to help them survive. Pollinators are responsible for one-third of the crops that feed us, but half of their 200,000 species are threatened, some quite significantly. The percentage of pollinator-dependent food crops has increased 300 percent in the last 50 years, but despite this reliance, the pollinators themselves are more endangered than ever. This book is mostly focused on the United States, but as pollinators don't recognize borders, discussion sometimes goes beyond.
This book is organized into seven chapters. Within each chapter there are side columns that go deeper into certain aspects of the subject. Chapter One, Bees and Beyond tells us about the wide range of pollinators that exist, beyond just the ones that easily come to mind like bees and butterflys. Helmer gives information on the state of research into different pollinators and the public awareness of them. Side columns here are Plant Sex, The Rusty-Patched Bumblebee Made History, Raise Your Glass to Pollinating Bats (main pollinators of agave, from whence tequila), Are High-Tech Drones the Next-Generation Pollinators?, A Presidential Plea to Protect Pollinators (Obama administration), and Pollinators in Peril.
Chapter Two, No Place Like Home, talks about pollinator habitat and feeding needs. Here Helmer discusses the ways that habitat, even in small plots, can be added back to both urban and rural areas. Side columns here are Habitat Affects Honey Flavor (I love my buckwheat honey!), Pollinator Strips Might Not Work, A Cotton-Pickin' Boost for Pollinators, Could the Farm Bill Help Pollinators?, and Fireflies Are Burning Out.
Chapter Three, Taming Toxins brings into discussion the various chemicals, like pesticides and non-native flora and fauna, that have affected pollinators. Some are outright lethal, others are sublethal in that they affect the pollinator physiology and behaviour and make them less able to do their work. Side columns here are The Pests Decimating Honeybee Colonies, Harmful Herbicides, Neonics Not Welcome, White-Nose Syndrome and Pesticides, and Could Crop Insurance Promote Pesticide Use?
Chapter Four, The Need for Native Plants, looks at how the introduction of plants from other parts of the world have driven out some native plants the pollinators rely upon, or due to their different flowering cycle, changed their migratory habits. Side columns here are Venus Flytraps Control Their Appetites for Survival, Identifying Invasive Species, Ten Pollinator-Friendly Native Plants, Doggy Detective Keeps Bees Safe, Replacing Honeybees with Native Pollinators, Adopt a Trail, Eat the Invaders (some tasty invasive species can be eaten into extinction), and Caprine Cleaning Crew.
Chapter Five, Lessons from a Warming Planet discusses how climate change is affecting pollinators. In some cases the plants that pollinators rely on and the pollinators are in sync as the climate grows warmer, but in other cases they are not, which can mean the pollinator appears in the spring before or after their food source has, leading to population decline or possible extinction. Side columns here are Bats Help Save the Rainforest, Developing Mite-Resistant Bees, Climate Change Could Be Poisoning Monarchs, and Climate Change Helps Invasive Species Thrive.
Chapter Six, Helping Without Hurting, discusses how some things people are doing that they think are helping are not, and what they could do that is similar but different that would be a real help to the pollinators. Side columns here are Retailers Help Keep Gardens Neonic-Free, The Unexpected Consequence of Your Favorite Drink (more than you knew about almond milk), A Desire to Help the Bees Drives Honey Demand, Beekeepers Feel the Sting of Stolen Hives, Are Bee Hotels Bad for Bees?, and Don't Forget About Trees.
Chapter Seven, Stand Up and Be Counted discusses the huge impact that citizen scientists can have on data collection, observation, and positive change. Side columns are Putting Milkweed on the Map, Ten Principles of Citizen Science, Pollinators Seek Out Urban Addresses, Three Ways the Public Participates in Citizen Science, Citizen Scientists Honor the Stars, and the important Twenty-Nine Ways You Can Help Protect Pollinators.
There is also an extensive bibliography for those who want to learn more.
This is a great resource to learn about this important and critical subject.

Life in the Studio

Finished July 23
Life in the Studio: Inspirations and Lessons on Creativity by Frances Palmer

This inspirational book features glimpses inside the studio, house, and gardens of successful potter Frances Palmer. The book is arranged into 3 parts and is full of photographs. There are also recipes in each section.
Part one is "Begin as You Mean to Go On" and talks about the importance of awareness. She covers centering, self-reliance, and inspiration. Palmer talks about the types of clay that she works with: white earthenware, terracotta, and porcelain. She goes on to discuss processes including glazes, throwing, handbuilding, and finishing (handles, pedestals, beading, holes, ruffles, fluting, sculptural gestures, drawing, and painting. She also discusses value here.
Part two is "Routine is Everything" and here she talks about where and how she works, showing her workspace setup, both now and earlier in her career. She shows the tools she uses and talks about how she uses them, and she talks about her agenda and how she plans her time. Also in this section is an extensive discussion about her garden. She is particularly interested in Dahlias, and shows a wide variety of types that she has growing. One thing in this section that I found enlightening was the idea of embracing the random. She shows how she creates and uses flower molds in her work. Along with her garden, she also talks about beekeeping as she has ventured into that area at her home. The final thing in this section is deadlines and how to use them.
Part three is "Looking Forward" and her she covers a number of things about her career. First is how she does open studios and why she's made the decisions she has around this. She discusses the various collaborations that she's engaged in, and how she approaches these. There is a great visual how-to on arranging a bouquet, along with how she documents her work. She moves on to how she expanded to encompass other things in her work and how she photographs her work, preferring to do it herself as others don't see her creations as she does. This leads naturally into listening to your inner voice. She ventures back into the garden again with a visual on forcing bulbs. She reminds us to be kind to ourselves and to keep learning and growing.
This was a great overview of her work, but also provided insight into how one might approach one's own creative ventures.

The Kitchen Daughter

Finished February 2
The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry

This novel follows Ginny Selvaggio, a young woman who had been sheltered from the difficulties of life by her parents, as she adjust following their sudden deaths. Ginny has Asperger's syndrome, and has spent a lot of time cooking, learning about food, and following food blogs. When she feels uncertain, making food, or thinking about making food, is her comfort.
Ginny's sister Amanda seems to think that she will now make the decisions about what is best for Ginny, without even asking her, but Ginny doesn't necessarily want these things.
As Ginny goes through old recipes looking for comfort she finds that cooking her grandmother's recipe also brings the ghost of Grandmother, with a cryptic message. Ginny is startled and unsure of what to make of this. She wants to decipher the message and she wonders whether cooking other recipes will also bring the ghosts of those people. And she begins to try things.
Along the way, taking comfort from the long-time family house cleaner, Ginny also begins to venture out, to make friends, and to explore the home she lives in more thoroughly, finding family secrets along the way.
This is a coming of age story, a story of loss, of love, and of food.
The author is a food blogger herself, and with food at the core of Ginny's life, this book evokes the tastes and smells of the recipes that Ginny makes.
I read this book quickly, enjoying it thoroughly, even the parts that made me cry.

That Part Was True

Finished January 22
That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay

This novel has two main characters. One is British Eve Petworth, reader, single mother, and middle aged woman finally starting to live her own life. The other is American Jackson Cooper, novelist, divorced man with no children, who is questioning his career.
The connection between them begins when Eve writes to Jackson saying how much she enjoyed one of his books. The two soon discover a shared passion for good food and the creating of it. Their correspondence continues over a period of months, mostly one that others in their lives are not aware of. They share recipes, talk about their lives, and find comfort in the ongoing conversation.
Outside of the letters and emails, both have lots going on. Eve's daughter Izzy is planning her wedding, and expressing regret about the recent loss of her grandmother, Eve's overbearing mother. Jackson has a bit of a writer's block, and is starting to date after the end of his marriage. Both have great confidants: Jackson's actor friend Dex, and Eve's housekeeper and friend Gwen.
This is a story of a friendship as it evolves, and we see each character deal with life's challenges and learn to trust themselves.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Finished July 1
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

I loved this novel. It is split into 4 parts. The first part occurs when Rose is turning 9. Her mother makes a lemon-chocolate cake for her birthday, and it tastes odd to Rose, empty, hollow, sad. She seems to understand quickly why, that she is able to taste the emotions of the person making food. From now on, this is constant, and she reverts to eating mass-produced food as a means of protecting herself. Some foods she finds herself unable to eat at all. She is unable to tell her parents, as she finds herself privy to her mother's emotions. She is only a young girl, and often the emotions she tastes are too much for her. She tells her brother's friend George, and he is intrigued, having her test food somewhere else. Her brother, Joseph, is aware, but has his own issues.
The next part is when she is twelve and has learned to deal better with her ability. She still has issues with some food, but has tasted a difference in her mother's emotions lately that make it easier for her to eat food prepared by her. She has grown to learn tastes of food grown in different areas, made in different factories. It is now that she becomes aware of her brother's issues more, and is concerned and curious about what is going on with him.
The third part is when she is seventeen, and even more able to deal with her ability. Her brother has moved out and become more insular, rarely venturing from his apartment. When something dramatic happens with him, she is the only one truly aware of what is happening.
These first three parts are all times that change her life in significant ways.
The fourth part takes place in the years following the third part. Rose finishes high school and begins working. She experiments with food in the restaurants surrounding her home, working her way further and further out, finding ones she can manage and some she even enjoys. As she does so, she becomes more aware of the secrets of her family, She begins to make connections to others and find a life for herself that she can look forward to.
This book begins with a very interesting premise, one that becomes more nuanced through the course of the novel. This book is about Rose, but also about family secrets, the feeling of being different from others, and how that affects relationships with others.

Year of No Sugar

Finished November 3
Year of No Sugar: a Memoir by Eve O. Schaub

This book came out of a blog that Eve wrote over the course of the year that she and her family tried to nearly eliminate sugar from their diet. She starts with information about how she was introduced to information about the dark side of sugar, and how it affects our bodies. She talks about how she and her husband planned ahead for the year, and how they introduced the concept to their two daughters.
The main body of the book deals with the experiences of the family over the year. Her older daughter Greta also kept a journal and some of her entries are included in the book as are a couple of thoughtful pieces by her husband. Eve talks about the difficulties of the task of eliminating sugar, discussing the pervasiveness of sugar in prepared foods, even those as basic as bread. She exposes the existence of sugar in foods one wouldn't have associated with the ingredient.
She talks about the interesting effects of nearly eliminating sugar on her and her family's bodies, their digestive systems, their sense of taste, and their reaction to sugar on those rare occasions when it is allowed. She particularly deals with the reactions of her children, eleven and six to this change in their diets, showing how they came up with a set of rules to follow, giving the children some slack, and the ability to make their own decisions in certain situations.
She also provides some recipes, learned through the trials and errors of finding new foods to fill the gaps left by sugar.
I found myself cleaning out my cupboards of those foods harbouring hidden sugar, of looking harder at labels when shopping for food, and finding that things in a large city a few years after her experience were somewhat easier. I easily found appetizing bread that didn't have sugar, pasta sauces, cereals, and canned soups. But sadly, even the organic, no preservatives bacon have sugar, and I do like the occasional glass of wine. So I don't think I will go to the extremes of her year, and even she didn't stay at that level after those first twelve months. But I will make more food from scratch, using healthy and local ingredients, and I will look more closely at labels, choosing those without sugar whenever I can.
This was an eye-opening book and provides a lot of useful information for those wishing to make a change for healthier eating.

Fat Girl

Finished January 15
Fat Girl by Judith Moore

This memoir is not a happy one. As this author says, it is her story and her family's story. It is about the food they ate. It is about their unhappiness. As she says, "This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy." She found her story difficult to tell, and at times it made her ill to write about it, but it also gave her relief to get the experiences out. She doesn't want people to feel sorry for her, as she doesn't feel sorry for herself. But I have to say that at times I felt sorry for the child she was. Children have less control over their experiences than adults, and her child self tried certain strategies, but always seemed an observer of her own life, wishing and dreaming of different lives but never able to understand what she could do to get there.
She says that while her childhood lacked love for the most part (her uncle seems to have provided the only consistent positive adult presence in her life, with his many friends, pet names for her, and general kindness. She did have the occasional other adult or child in her life who was kind, a neighbour who took an interest or the girl Glenda in her hometown who made sure she had people to sit with at lunch and got introduced to others. But she seems to be unable to know what to do with this kindness and it doesn't seem to have made a difference in her situation.
She calls herself a solitary and I think she is right. She seems the type of person who doesn't make connections either through her own actions or taking advantage of others' actions toward her. I think it is that that makes me feel sorry, sorry for a life without true connection to others.

Canadian Produce

Finished August 9
Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover's Tour of Canadian Farms by Margaret Webb
This informative, entertaining and often humorous look at Canadian food farming is a gem. Webb, inspired by a carrot, travelled across the country looking at farmers who are being inspired to put taste and nutrition into their crops, rather than submitting to the quantity is king mindset. Webb chooses a food from each of the ten provinces and one of the territories as her focus and finds a farmer to represent that food.
Her book includes not only interesting information about the food and how it is grown and harvested, but also information about the farmers and their struggles and their relationship with consumers, other farmers and the food industry. Each chapter includes recipes for the food focussed on. I found myself inspired to find more foods that were sourced from sustainable farms like these that recognize that taste and nutrition are so important to the foods we eat. (More so, since the last batch of carrots I bought, at the farmers' market no less, were tasteless lumps!)