Non-baby non-fiction notes

An assortment read over the course of several months:

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn is a personal discovery autobiography about an American woman who attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris just because she wanted to have done it. My mother sent the book to me during finals and it was just the kind of inspiring foodie easy reading escapism I needed during my crazy week and flood, although it may have made the situation worse because my few pages to calm down before going to bed somehow extended well into my sleeping and grading time. I finished it in a day or two when lots else should have been going on. It's not the best book of the type by any means, and I'm not sure how common Cordon Bleu dreams are among my friends, but it The Sharper the Knife is highly recommended for any of you who may have also had them.

I've owned The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean for years and in my recollection I twice tried to read and twice gave up. However, when I started to read it this time, I could have sworn the whole first section, which is the most fascinating of the book, was new to me. However far I may have read (or not read) previously, I was proud to read the whole thing this time because this is a book that I always felt guilty for not liking: it's a book that takes plant fanatics seriously; it includes great background research into swamps, the Orchidaceae, Native American plant uses, and Victorian flower hunters; and is generally well written. How could I not love, much less not finish, such a book? I didn't love it, but I did like and I am glad I read it. I imagine that many other readers take away the same reassuring message that I did, "I may be crazy and passionate about my plants, but there are people out there that make me look outright normal."

My mother also sent me The House Always Wins by Marni Jameson.. Since this is a book about home decorating starting from scratch (whole chapters devoted to determining your personal style before moving in, choosing flooring and the right scale of furniture) and I have had no intentions of decorating beyond fresh paint in the baby's room, I was somewhat baffled. I was glad to find out that Jameson is a columnist for the Denver paper and my mother likes her writing, which makes it slightly possible that Mom was not making any big hints about my style (or lack thereof) in sending me the book. Strangely, I read the whole thing. I think I would like Jameson better as a columnist than a book author, but the book is definitely readable, although I would confine my recommendations for it to those of you who might actually have major decorating projects on the scene.

I asked for Gary Paul Nabhan's Where Our Food Comes From for Christmas and the Mister happily obliged. The information is great, the story of Nikolay Vavilov's seed collecting travels fascinating and the point (that saving crops in situ is critical for the food security of the world) is one of my favorites. Despite my overwhelming interest in the subject, I reached the point I felt like I was slogging through the book far more than I'd like to, as I have with other Nabhan works. Sunflower Spinner and anyone else who teaches food ecology needs to read Where Our Food Comes From. I strongly believe that everyone needs to consider wild and domesticated biodiversity, but I am not sure that this book is the way to catch people's interest. I'd be curious what a literary non-scientist such as MBiL would think.

I was having a hard time agreeing with the book jacket that Nabhan was a "master storyteller" or with Amateur Reader that E.O. Wilson was a particularly good writer, until I started reading Headless Males Make Great Lovers by Marty Crump. Crump's snippets about (seemingly) weird behaviors in the invertebrate world are full of extraordinary tidbits that biology professors and David Attenborough watchers such as myself delight in. So my complete lack of interest in picking the book back up after I accidentally stopped halfway through has nothing to do with my interest in the subject. Somehow the writing (specifically the organization and transitions) makes it not really worth the effort and makes Nabhan and Wilson look great in comparison. Still, Beth should read Headless Males if she hasn't already.