Recent Reading

[bunrab]

Monica Ferris' Sins and Needles, latest in her needlework shop series. OK, not great but decent; if you aren't interested in sock knitting, however, you'll have to skip about 1/3 of the book!
Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food which I saw mentioned in a column that was reviewing four books about food/eating, supposedly all on the conservative side, supposedly all on the theme that big commercial industrial food is good for us, Americans aren't really obese, and in general the food equivalent of "there's no global warming." However, I suspected that the reviewer hadn't actually paid much attention to Glassner, since last I looked, he wasn't that kind of conservative, or much of any kind of conservative at all. As it happens, I was right - when I read the book, although there is a line of "not every bit of big-agricultural grown food is bad" in it, in general, he's pretty much on a line with Michael Pollan, pointing out that choosing between organic and local isn't easy, and that organic and "natural" have been badly bent out of shape. He does address the issue of fast food - and point out that for some people, fast food is an improvement over what they would be eating did it not exist, and that a green salad from a salad bar is a green salad, whether it's from a restaurant or from Wendy's. He digresses for a couple of chapters to discussing restaurants and chefs and food critics, which I felt was besides the point - way too much time discussing the ingredients in tasting menus at restaurants that will NEVER be in my price range or cultural milieu.
Emma Bull's Falcon - an older book of hers, that I found in a used book store, straightforward science fiction rather than the fantasy for which she is better known. Very little in the way of folk music; chapter subtitles are all excerpts from Yeats' poems; plot is pretty good although there's an improbably happy ending. To me, Bull's best fiction work is still Freedom and Necessity (co-written with Steven Brust), but that book isn't for everyone either; the odd aura of "there might be fantasy in here but there isn't, actually" could turn off those actually looking for historical fantasy, or some of those looking for plain historical fiction, who might fear that there IS fantasy in it. Also, the alternate history part of it is pretty subtle. And last, but not least, it's written in epistolary style, which is not to everyone's taste - not always to mine, even, but in this case, I thought it worked excellently.

I finally got around to getting my hair cut this afternoon; it's needed cutting badly for a month. I was starting to look as scruffy as those darn shedding bunnies.

Comments

[momily.livejournal.com]

Love Emma Bull - never heard of Monica Ferris!

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

She was also 1/2 of "Margaret Frazer" for the first 6 Sister Frevisse mysteries (then she quit and Gail Frazer kept doing them alone) and she's Mary Monica Pulver, of another series whose series name I forget but it's about a cop named Peter something who is also an SCA member.

[momily.livejournal.com]

aahhhhh, I know you've mentioned her before then!

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

I was just talking about Freedom and Necessity this evening! We were talking about the 19th Century, and how we don't like it as much as earlier centuries (how geeky is *that*?) and I gave it as an example of a book about the 19th century that makes it seem really interesting.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

In one of those odd conversations that one has with one's spouse, we decided that you and Dr. O probably are the people on my flist most likely to have equally odd conversations. :D