I’ve read 40 pages of 273; The Botany of Desire

I’ma havin’ some issues with this first chapter about apples. I have issues theological, academical, and pedantical (a word I just made up), and if I don’t rant them out they’ll nag at me and I won’t be able to let them go.

Pollan is talking about his first plant, the apple. Which is an interesting plant in its own right, (each seed in an apple, if planted, will grow an entirely new variety of apple – very likely a crap, inedible one, but totally unique), but Pollan has instead glommed onto the man and the myth that is Johnny Appleseed. Going in, one can see the relevance: while John Chapman (a/k/a Appleseed) is ‘helping’ frontier settlers by seeding the apple trees, he’s also working for the apple, allowing it to increase its habitat across a whole new continent. So far, on topic.

But the author has lost himself in the whole mythology of Appleseed, arguing he wasn’t a saint, the way so many want to believe he was – a hero with no questionable habits. Fine, I guess, except in his argument against mythologising Appleseed as a heroic saint, he turns around and mythologises him into “very much an American Dionysus”. So … it’s ok to idealise the historical figure as a Greek god, but not as a Christian saint? Never mind that Chapman/Appleseed himself identified as a Christian (although not a mainstream one to be sure) and would discuss the “good word” with people as he traveled.

How about just letting John Chapman be John Chapman? How about we don’t argue what special snowflake box he belongs in (which is really the same box with different wrapping paper), and just let him rest in peace, with the record showing he was a complicated man who loved the outdoors and planting apple trees.

And what in the name of a Jonah Gold does any of it have to do with the evolution of plants as it pertains to domestication, and who domesticated whom?

Rant over.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Are We Having Fun Yet?
by Lucy Mangan
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781788161084
Publication Date: November 1, 2021
Pages: 303
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Souvenir Press

From the deep rage of knowing where to find every single thing your husband is looking for to the joy of a friend's longed-for pregnancy, here is the pleasurable stab of fellow feeling you get over drinks with friends. Liz records her ups and downs, including the love of a good cat (up), not being able to find a babysitter (secret up) and the question of what 'we' really means when it comes to fixing the dishwasher (definitely, definitely down).

Spiky, charming and most of all loving, it's a hilarious skewering of the sweetness and nightmare that is modern family life.

This book is the literary equivalent of those visual illusions that psychologists try to hang meaning on depending on what you see – like the one that’s either an old woman or a candlestick. Or is it an old woman / young woman? Anyway, whatever, you know what I mean.

As someone who is voluntarily childless, this book was a hilarious – and I mean laugh-out-loud hilarious – justification that my decision to stick with the furry and feathered walks of life, rather than replicating my own DNA, was the right decision for me (and MT, who came to the same decision long before we met). Her kids are hysterical, but they’re hard work and are constantly opening up avenues of conversation that I’d hurt myself to avoid having. Mangen’s descriptions of child birth should be required reading in human development classes as psychological birth control. I was made to be an Aunt.

There was another – unintended, I’m certain – consequence this book had for me, one that is again tied, I’m equally certain, to our choice to stick with non-human family members, and that’s the lack of suppressed rage that lies as an undercurrent in Liz and Richard’s marriage, that I recognise in the marriages of my friends with children. It’s not all chocolates and roses here at chez zoo by a long shot, but without the stress and pressure of making new humans that will hopefully treat the world better than we have, MT and I have experienced more fun than festering resentment. Of course, I also recognise the near-miracle that he’s one of the 1 in 100,000 men who seem to have been raised without the ingrained gender biases and learned helplessness most are saddled with when it comes to matters of home keeping. Still, the book really gave me a few moments of “do you really appreciate how lucky you are? really, truly?“, which I think constitutes healthy self-reflection.

Putting all that aside, I have to figure out how to get my sister-in-law to read this, because, as the mother of 2, she will appreciate this book for all the opposite reasons: because Lucy Mangen wrote her truth, and she will laugh as she nods her neck stiff in righteous agreement of the trials and tribulations of an all-human family of 4.

I read so much of this out loud to MT (honestly, it’s almost been a nightly story-time around here lately) that he actually insisted I rate this 4.5 stars. As he said, it made us both laugh out loud and the writing was excellent (which gives you an indication of how much I read out loud; he was able to judge the quality of the writing). I’d been thinking more 4 stars, but since he put up with all the reading out loud, I acquiesced.

If you need a laugh, you won’t go wrong with this one.

Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry

Venomous
by Christie Wilcox
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780374283377
Publication Date: September 13, 2016
Pages: 236
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Scientific American

In Venomous, the molecular biologist Christie Wilcox investigates venoms and the animals that use them, revealing how they work, what they do to the human body, and how they can revolutionise biochemistry and medicine today.

Wilcox takes us from the coast of Indonesia to the rainforests of Peru in search of the secrets of these mysterious animals. We encounter jellyfish that release microscopic venom-packed darts known to kill humans in just two minutes, a two-inch caterpillar with toxic bristles that trigger haemorrhaging throughout the body, and a stunning blue-ringed octopus with saliva capable of inducing total paralysis. How could an animal as simple as a jellyfish evolve such an intricate, deadly poison? And how can a snake possess enzymes that tear through tissue yet leave its own body unscathed? Wilcox meets the fearless scientists who often risk their lives studying these lethal beasts to find out, and puts her own life on the line to examine these species up close. Drawing on her own research on venom chemistry and evolution, she also shows how venom is helping us untangle the complex mechanisms of some of our most devastating diseases.

Venomous and I did not get off to a great start. You’d think it would be a sure bet, since Chapter 1 kicks things off with the platypus, possibly my most favourite non-domesticated animal, and one she visited with – as she notes on page 1 – at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary “in Melbourne Australia”. I’ve been to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and I have a picture of myself and the koala that peed on me to prove it (fun fact: koala pee smells sooooo bad). The thing is, Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is in Brisbane, not Melbourne. Not a small error, either; one is at the bottom of the continent and the other at the top. Plus, Wilcox was there, so you’d like to think she knew she was in Brisbane and not Melbourne. Unless the koala pee stench got to her.

Anyhoo … I was understandably feeling a bit cynical after that illustrious beginning, and the first few chapters were not enough to sway me either way, but I began to find myself invested – as measured by how much I started reading out to MT (I am a trial to this poor man, I know) – by chapter 6: “All the better to eat you with”. This is the chapter about necrotising venoms, proving that I’m really no better than a 12 year old boy sometimes. But chapter 8 was even better: Mind Control. OMG.

Chapter 9 is about the pharmacological miracles that have been wrought by venom research, and reading it made me want to rush out to the world and scream nobody touch anything! simply because at the rate humanity is going, we’ll exterminate the cure for cancer, et al long before we ever knew it existed.

Venomous is a popular science book and as such is filled with anecdotes that make it easier for the average arm chair science nerd to connect with the material being discussed; it also has a not insignificant amount of the harder science in the form of detailed descriptions of neural chemical pathways, etc. but I wouldn’t call it inaccessible. In comparison, my recent read, Venom, is a far more hard-core scientific discussion and breakdown of the study of venom. (And it had much better pictures).

In an interesting six-degrees-of-separation chain of my TBR reads, Venom cited this book, Venomous, in the text, and Wilcox has cited The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, so I guess I know what my next non-fiction book is going to be.

My Family and Other Disasters

My Family and Other Disasters
by Lucy Mangan
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780852651247
Publication Date: June 16, 2009
Pages: 260
Genre: Essays
Publisher: Guardian Publishing

'Hi Dad.'
'Who's calling, please?'
'It's Lucy ...Your daughter.'
'Ah, yes. Which one are you again? The one that reads or the one that shops?'

For Lucy Mangan family life has never exactly been a bed of roses. With parents so parsimonious that if they had soup for a meal they would decline an accompanying drink (soup is a drink), and a grandmother who refused to sit down for 82 years so that she wouldn't wear out the sofa, Lucy spent most of her childhood oscillating between extreme states of anxiety.

Fortunately, this hasn't affected her ability to write, and in this, her first collection of "Guardian" columns, she shares her hilarious take on everything from family relations to the credit crunch and why organized sport should be abolished.

I so thoroughly enjoyed Lucy Mangan’s writing in Bookworm that I wanted to try some of her other titles. I ordered two of them, and this one was the first to arrive.

A collection of essays/columns written for The Guardian that covers a multitude of topics, My Family and Other Disasters easily met and exceeded my expectations. I hoovered these down, laughing and often – very often – reading parts aloud to MT; her writing is so good he rarely even minded when I did.

This is a woman who does not hold back her inner misanthrope; she lets it rip and in the process tears a strip off anyone and anything she considers irrational or stupid. I might have a tiny book crush on her, but only because I agree with her about most all of it, and she makes me laugh.

Mangan writes for the UK Guardian so there’s a highly British slant to most of her essays, but many of her topics cross the international barriers – especially the essays pertaining to television; I don’t watch TV, but the essays are old enough to refer to the shows that aired when I did. Saying that, they were also the essays I enjoyed the least, although I whole-heartedly agree with her views on Seinfeld.

All up, a delightful collection.

The Sherlockian

The Sherlockian
by Graham Moore
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780446572583
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
Pages: 351
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Twelve Books (Hachette)

In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines, anticipating the detective's next adventure, only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning-crowds sported black armbands in grief-and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin.

Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained this sudden change of heart. After his death, one of his journals from the interim period was discovered to be missing, and in the decades since, has never been found.... Or has it?

When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold-using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories-who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer.

This book and I had problems. Well, half this book and I had problems. The other half was amusing if completely unrealistic.

The Sherlockian is a story told in two timelines: one that begins in 1893, when Conan Doyle makes the fateful decision to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and covers the events that happen though 1901; the other timeline takes place in the ‘present’, which is 2010, in this case.

The Holy Grail of Sherlockians has always been what happened to a cache of Conan Doyle’s papers that were missing after his death, including one of his journals, so the present day timeline is the search for that journal and the answers to who killed the Sherlockian who claimed to have found it, while the Conan Doyle timeline follows events that would have been recorded in the missing journal.

As I mentioned above, I found the present day timeline amusing in a mad-cap caper kind of way – the kind that requires a complete suspension of disbelief, as well as operating on the pretence that law enforcement, for all intents and purposes, no longer exist. This story line is entirely about the thrill of the puzzle, the hunt, the process.

But here’s my beef, and it’s about the other timeline; the historical one. This is a work of historical fiction, and the author is quick to point out at the end that all the events are fabricated. Fine. I read that type of historical fiction frequently – real people in fictional settings. But usually the author has a greater respect for the real-life people he uses in his fictional story lines. There’s an expectation that the author adhere to a character’s basic … character.

That categorically did not happen here. Moore obviously did not care a whit for maintaining Conan Doyle’s integrity, because most of the historical timeline had him doing things so completely out of character as to drive me to yelling at the book.

If I knew nothing about Conan Doyle, I’d have found him and Bram Stoker dressing up as women and crashing a suffragette meeting mildly amusing, but I do know something about Conan Doyle. Enough to know that it beggars belief to think of him doing anything of the sort. If an author is going to write a fictional story using real historical people doing fictional things, those historical persons should do those fictional things the same way they’d do the factual things – otherwise, it’s not the same person and the author (and reader) would have been better served using a fictional character instead of maligning the real one. (“Malign” does not refer to Conan Doyle dressing as a woman, but to a different event that to share would be a massive spoiler.)

So. Half the book was amusing. The other half … ok, the other half might have been amusing for someone who doesn’t know, or hold in such high regard, the real life people used for fictional purposes, against their basic characters. If you know nothing about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and are in the mood for a bit of madcap mystery, go for it. If you do know and admire ACD, you’ve been warned.

Darwin’s Most Wonderful Plants: Darwin’s Botany Today

Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants: Darwin's Botany Today
by Ken Thompson
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781788160285
Publication Date: July 4, 2018
Pages: 255
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Profile Books

A rediscovery of Darwin the botanist and his theories on insectivorous and climbing plants

Most of us think of Darwin at work on The Beagle, taking inspiration for his theory of evolution from his travels in the Galapagos. But Darwin published his Origin of Species nearly thirty years after his voyages and most of his labours in that time were focused on experimenting with and observing plants at his house in Kent. He was particularly interested in carnivorous and climbing plants, and in pollination and the evolution of flowers.

Ken Thompson sees Darwin as a brilliant and revolutionary botanist, whose observations and theories were far ahead of his time - and are often only now being confirmed and extended by high-tech modern research. Like Darwin, he is fascinated and amazed by the powers of plants - particularly their Triffid-like aspects of movement, hunting and 'plant intelligence'.

A well written homage to Darwin’s other ground-breaking works, each chapter covers one of Darwin’s papers or books concerning plants. As the author points out, if Origin of Species never came out of the drawer, Darwin would still be a genius game-changer just in the subject of botany.

The book is easy enough to read with a basic background in botany and/or a tolerance for the technical names for the parts of a plant. As usual after reading a book about plants, I have a new list of plants I want in my garden – all of them carnivorous.

Don’t Tell Alfred

Don't Tell Alfred
by Nancy Mitford
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1960
Pages: 248
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

Fanny Wincham—last seen as a young woman in The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate—has lived contentedly for years as housewife to an absent-minded Oxford don, Alfred. But her life changes overnight when her beloved Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris.

Soon she finds herself mixing with royalty and Rothschilds while battling her hysterical predecessor, Lady Leone, who refuses to leave the premises. When Fanny’s tender-hearted secretary begins filling the embassy with rescued animals and her teenage sons run away from Eton and show up with a rock star in tow, things get entirely out of hand. Gleefully sending up the antics of mid-century high society, Don’t Tell Alfred is classic Mitford.

Oh this was a lot of fun. Ostensibly the third book of the series that includes Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, it’s been so many years since I read the first two that I barely remember the important characters, but it made not a lick of difference. Don’t Tell Alfred takes place 30 years after the events of the first two books, and anybody who is still alive is almost too different to recognise anyway.

Fanny is now the main character, rather than just the narrator, but it seems she’s also a helpless bystander in the three ring circus her life has become when Alfred becomes the Ambassador to France. One hilarious calamity after the other – most involving her extended family, if not her own children – has her scurrying to keep one step ahead of the chaos, and if not one step ahead, arranging the fall out so that Alfred comes out looking his best.

Not quite under the surface of these calamities – it bubbles up regularly throughout the story – is every parents lament over their childrens’ avowal to reject every principle they were ever taught. This being the late 50’s, the rejection is, as the age of Aquarius looms, that much more outsized and outrageous.

Throughout the narrative, Mitford takes potshots in turns at the British, the French and, of course, the Americans (I’m pretty sure it’s a national sport in the UK); about the only country to come out unscathed from her pen are the Irish, which she feels a rather lot of sympathy for. It all reads as though it’s meant in good fun and it adds to the often manic laughs.

So far, Mitford is 3 for 3; I have a couple of her other titles on my TBR and I’m curious how well the humor will hold with a whole new cast of characters.

Histories of the Unexpected: How Everything has a History

Histories of the Unexpected
by James Daybell, Sam Willis
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781786494122
Publication Date: October 1, 2018
Pages: 467
Genre: History, Non-fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Books

In this fascinating and original new book, Sam Willis and James Daybell lead us on a journey of historical discovery that tackles some of the greatest historical themes - from the Tudors to the Second World War, from the Roman Empire to the Victorians - but via entirely unexpected subjects.

You will find out here how the history of the beard is connected to the Crimean War; how the history of paperclips is all about the Stasi; how the history of bubbles is all about the French Revolution. And who knew that Heinrich Himmler, Tutankhamun and the history of needlework are linked to napalm and Victorian orphans?

Taking the reader on an enthralling and extraordinary journey through thirty different topics that are ingeniously linked together, Histories of the Unexpected not only presents a new way of thinking about the past, but also reveals the everyday world around us as never before.

This was a weird one. The book focuses on the premise that everything has a history beyond the obvious, including things like bubbles, clouds and itching, and it’s written in a stream-of-consciousness style, so that the history of hands leads to gloves, leads to perfume, etc. The authors host a podcast by the same name, so I’m guessing this book is the result of the podcast’s success.

It sort of works. I genuinely enjoy reading history from any viewpoint that doesn’t include wars, battles, skirmishes, politics, genocides or religious persecutions, and for the most part this book delivered on that. At times the authors slipped into their true historian selves and some of the above made an appearance. I skimmed those sections, and skipped sections that included histories involving animal cruelty, but there was very little of both.

The writing was good enough to hold a reader’s attention, but the structure of the book lends itself to limited attention spans, or for dipping into a chapter at a time. Since it’s designed to bounce around, it’s difficult to get absorbed in the reading of it.

Possibly a good choice for a young adult reluctant to see the point of history.

Miss Benson’s Beetle

Miss Benson's Beetle
by Rachel Joyce
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 0857521993
Publication Date: June 11, 2020
Pages: 389
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday

Margery Benson's life ended the day her father walked out of his study and never came back. Forty years later, abandoning a dull job, she advertises for an assistant. The successful candidate is to accompany Margery on an expedition to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty is not who she had in mind. But together they will find themselves drawn into an adventure that exceeds all Margery's expectations, eventually finding new life at the top of a red mountain.

This is a story that is less about what can be found than the belief it might be found; it is an intoxicating adventure story and it is also a tender exploration of a friendship between two unforgettable women that defies all boundaries.

My rating is not an accurate portrayal of the quality of the book, my rating is an accurate portrayal of my enjoyment of the book.

I say this because it’s not the book I thought it was going to be. That’s entirely on me, because I’ve read another of her books and I should have known better. But I got sucked into the summary about the expedition in search of a golden beetle, and allowed myself to be seduced by images of New Caledonia, beetle hunting, and elusive orchids (which depend on the golden beetle, of course).

This was not that book. This is a wonderfully written book about deeply flawed and lonely people who come together under the guise of searching for the golden beetle. Also motherhood, mental breakdowns and devastating nutritional deficiencies. There’s a lot of baggage in this book and very little of it is related to the beetle expedition.

They do make it to New Caledonia and they do hunt for beetles; those moments were the best parts for me, but they were all too brief. For the rest of it, I just kept thinking this was Thelma and Louise Get on a Ship.

This book is a lesson in the power of titles, covers and summaries. I have a friend who wouldn’t look twice at this book, and it is perfect for her; if I can get her to read it, she’s going to love it. Whereas I, who thought everything about the ‘wrappings’ of the book screamed “this is the book for you!”, found it to be not at all what I expected and was a little disappointed.

That does not mean it’s not a good book; it’s an excellently written book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a book about emotionally broken people persevering and finding their happiness. It’s just not the book I was looking for.

My weekend reading plans

I’ve been communing a lot with my TBR shelves recently and as I whittle away the long-languishing books the communing is taking longer and longer, but this morning the shelves spoke quickly and loudly: Miss Benson’s Beetle and it felt right and good.

Miss Benson's Beetle
by Rachel Joyce
isbn: 0857521993
Publication Date: June 11, 2020
Pages: 389
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday

Margery Benson's life ended the day her father walked out of his study and never came back. Forty years later, abandoning a dull job, she advertises for an assistant. The successful candidate is to accompany Margery on an expedition to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty is not who she had in mind. But together they will find themselves drawn into an adventure that exceeds all Margery's expectations, eventually finding new life at the top of a red mountain.

This is a story that is less about what can be found than the belief it might be found; it is an intoxicating adventure story and it is also a tender exploration of a friendship between two unforgettable women that defies all boundaries.

I also continue to whittle away at Histories of the Unexpected and I’m about half-way through. Maybe, maybe, maybe I can get through the rest of it this weekend. If I push. It’s killing my average days to read curve.

Histories of the Unexpected
by James Daybell, Sam Willis
isbn: 9781786494122
Publication Date: October 1, 2018
Pages: 467
Genre: History, Non-fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Books

In this fascinating and original new book, Sam Willis and James Daybell lead us on a journey of historical discovery that tackles some of the greatest historical themes - from the Tudors to the Second World War, from the Roman Empire to the Victorians - but via entirely unexpected subjects.

You will find out here how the history of the beard is connected to the Crimean War; how the history of paperclips is all about the Stasi; how the history of bubbles is all about the French Revolution. And who knew that Heinrich Himmler, Tutankhamun and the history of needlework are linked to napalm and Victorian orphans?

Taking the reader on an enthralling and extraordinary journey through thirty different topics that are ingeniously linked together, Histories of the Unexpected not only presents a new way of thinking about the past, but also reveals the everyday world around us as never before.

I’ll leave you with a little Pikacu action, as she quietly reminds me of reading that needs to be done: