I’ve been keeping a list for a while now of books I’ve read so far this year—we’re all bibliophiles in this house! Here’s my thoughts on what I read in January (hover over image for title and author):

A very interesting read, even for a near vegan. He looks at where our food comes from over the course of four meals: a typical fast food burger-and-fries meal, an organic meal, a locally raised meal, and a hunted/foraged meal. I learned a lot from this book: the first meal and how much of it is ultimately traced to corn and corn products is worth the read alone! The similarities between organic farming and large-scale agribusiness was also eye-opening: we eat a lot of organic food here, and the ways in which this sort of food is raised and distributed was unsettling. The locally raised meal was also fascinating, as by farming on a smaller scale and working with nature rather than trying to dominate it (leaving north-facing slopes fallow/treed, thus improving water retention, recycling animal wastes as compost for crops, only farming at a level that piece of land can sustain) the farmer Pollan visited was actually more productive (in calories per acre) than large-scale agribusiness. The point was also made that animal-based food raised this way had a different nutritional profile than that raised on factory farms—the milk and meat folks consume today is not the same as the milk and meat your great-grandparents ate. And while Pollan’s personal favourite meal was the one he hunted and foraged, he also acknowledged that given the amount of time and effort it took him to do so (weeks!), this was not a feasible alternative for a planet with more than 6 billion mouths to feed. And to his credit, Pollan investigated and reported accurately the living conditions of animals in factory farms, voicing his desire for change, despite being and remaining an omnivore. Highly recommended.

I read this one for my book club, and don’t have much to say. It’s about a girl with some sort of learning disorder—she screams if anyone has their mouth covered, she’s obsessively fascinated by rats, and is picked on by the kids at school. I liked seeing such an original child character in a novel, especially when I know so many parents who are raising ‘quirky’ kids—kids who are wired differently. But that was about all I liked. I found the other characters to be stereotypes, and the plot obvious and a little too tidy (it turns out that Olivia’s very disorder causes her to scream when a neighbour girl is in the middle of being abducted with a man’s hand over her mouth, so Olivia saves the day and now everyone likes her and comes to her party.) Let’s move on…

A book I liked for the most part, though it got a bit long-winded at times. The photographs were wonderful, and I enjoyed learning more details about the space program (largely, but not exclusively, of the U.S.). I also learned about the importance of the space program to environmental studies—it’s because of space studies of Venus that a lot of awareness and research money went into looking at the atmosphere of Earth. I also recall being struck by a section about what is and is not science, in which Sagan talks (in part) about the claim that the Earth and universe are billions of years old. He talks about how the evidence for this view comes from many fields, not just from palaeontologists or ‘evolutionary theory’—among them, space studies.  The nearest star system to Earth is about 4 light-years away, and this means it takes light from this system 4 years to reach Earth. Other systems are millions of light years away—thus implying that the universe is millions of years old, and a recent burst of gamma rays was detected that was 12.8 billion light years away. It just made me wonder—and I mean no offence by this—why there is so much emphasis from some religious circles about questioning dinosaurs, palaeontology, and evolution, but very little about astronomy. Of course, it is logically possible to hold that the Earth was created at a different time than other parts of the universe (in fact, as Sagan points out, some religions—Hindu? Buddhist? I can’t quite recall—do hold this), but I can’t see this sitting well with those who claim the earth is 6,000 years old. If anyone has a link to writings questioning the science of astronomy and the dating of time and light years, I’d love to read it first-hand.

I had high hopes for this book, but in the end I found it disappointing. All the essays come from one of the two authors, and expound their particular views about wilderness and children. Interesting, but nowhere near as thought-provoking, well-researched and well-argued as Last Child in the Woods, which I read a few years back. If your time is limited, read Last Child in the Woods instead.

I was looking for some easy chick-lit on the paperback racks a few months back, and stumbled across a Jane Green novel. It was just what I was looking for—a light read, with great characters and humour, and a plot that moved along nicely. The Beach House doesn’t disappoint, and like her other recent books (and paralleling her real life) this book is set in the US rather than the UK. It’s also nice to have some diversity among her characters—the main character is a 65 year old widow, rather than in her earlier novels where it was mainly a young UK career gal kind of thing. A fun light read with characters you come to care about by the end.

Happy reading!