In Defense of Food

Well, there's nothing quite like stuffing your face during the holiday season while reading a book about how horrible our food system is here in the United States.  I read Food Rules by this same author and really enjoyed it's brevity and bluntness. I still apply those rules when I shop (for the most part).  I try to be very cognizant about what I'm buying and eating.

This book breaks it down a little further and discusses how the various branches of Food Science have detracted from common sense eating.  The author discusses how, by focusing only on one ingredient, the scientists essentially have made dozens of diet recommendations that could actually be pretty faulty.  For instance, by focusing on fat allegedly being bad for you, they have missed the nutritional value of the whole food that may contain the fat. He also discusses, briefly, how lobbyists in the industrial food markets (i.e. dairy farmers, meat processing plants) do their best to make sure certain research doesn't reach you.

His research seems sound and there are enough references and resources in this book to make your head spin. You could easily end up reading about food for years if you dig into all the different books and articles out there.  If you have an interest in healthy eating (not dieting) I think this is a good book to read. It's not preachy and you can come to your own conclusions.  If you never read Food Rules, you're in luck because the third and final section of the book is basically Food Rules.  So, in a way, you're reading two books.   I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to make a decision to just eat good food for better health and not follow fad diets and crazes.

The Best of Times

If you have diabetes, skip this book because the syrupy sweetness will surely put you into a diabetic coma.  This book is the Game of Thrones of chick-lit.  I say that because there are easily twenty characters. Their stories are all intertwined because of a fateful car crash on a highway in England.  At times I felt like I was reading an extended version of the movie Love Actually.  I can't even get into the multitude of characters and their back stories.  Just know there are a lot relationships started, broken, patched up, broken again, and then finally ending in either marriage or some other suitable resolution, like engagement or co-habitation.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it for what it was, but it was just entirely too long.  I think it was fine for the crash to be the catalyst for the story.  It was a good way to introduce the characters. Once they were established, and the cause of the crash was resolved, we are still subjected to the entire inquest as well as the planning for a charity fundraiser for the hospital where victims were treated. Those bits were not too interesting to me. This would have been a perfect book for summer reading on vacation.  It's also a good choice for a snowstorm weekend. Please just know what you're getting into when you pick it up.

The Sweet Life in Paris

Of course I had to read one more book about Paris before the end of the year. This one was another true story about someone in the culinary field moving to Paris to live out some dreams. The author is a pastry chef who moves from San Francisco. In each chapter he talks about the differences between living in the United States and Paris and discusses his experiences with food in the City of Lights. He also includes a recipe or two at the end of each chapter.  If you are a budding chef or a foodie, you can definitely get some good ideas from here. A lot of the recipes sound pretty mouth-watering.

I think I'm getting used to the American-in-Paris books because I'm starting to notice the pattern in them. The book is a quick read and although it wasn't my favorite book about living in Paris, it was fairly enjoyable.

Bel Canto

This is one of the most beautifully written books I've read this year.

Even though the author was inspired by real events, I completely read it as a work of fiction and enjoyed everything about the book, except the epilogue.  I wish I didn't read the epilogue, because it seemed so incongruous to everything that preceded it.  Until the epilogue, I was all in.  The story is about a group of international individuals who are attending the birthday party of a Japanese CEO at the home of a South American vice-president.  Just as a world famous opera singer (who was invited specifically by the birthday boy) is completing her final aria, a group of terrorists invade the home and take the guests hostage.  You would think because terrorists and hostages are involved that this is going to be a story about violence, anger, torture and murder.  It is the exact opposite.  It is a story about finding yourself, friendship, love and forgiveness. Violence against women is so prevalent in today's world that it was a breath of fresh air to read a story where no women were raped or beaten!

The story covers the duration of the hostage crisis from the perspective of both the hostages and the terrorists keeping them. Some unlikely friendships and romances develop even in the midst of everyone not speaking the same language.  There is conveniently a polyglot translator among the hostages and he is a key character.

The writing is lovely and this is a story that cannot be devoured quickly. Opera is a main character in the book and the book is reminiscent of a tragic opera. Sometimes you can see a book becoming a movie as you read it, but this one you could see becoming an opera. A very beautiful, tragic opera.

Lexicon

I don't post about every book I read.  Occasionally I read one that is so bad, it's not even worth taking the time to make a post about it.  So I was on the fence about posting this book.  It commits the cardinal sin of staring out interesting and then falling flat in a terrible way.  It wasn't horrible, but because it started out so promising and became so disappointing I was unreasonably angry towards the end. It is a good airport book, which is where I started reading it. I was in three airports within a 24-hour period and this book allows for easy reading and frequent interruptions. So as an airport book, it's fine because you are paying light attention and the story works for light attention.  However, once I got to my destination and finished the book, I was keenly aware of all the plot holes and it made me mad.  I also realized that none of the characters were fully developed and I didn't care about any of them.

The book follows Emily Ruff who is a teenage runaway. She gets vetted by a 'special school' that teaches mind control with the use of words.  She becomes impatient and rebellious and instead of learning things as they are taught to her, she seeks out advanced knowledge.  Of course she gets all this advanced knowledge but has no clue what to do with it because she didn't take the time to learn the basics. She ends up killing another student through misuse of 'the words' and gets kicked out of the academy and banished to some dust town in Australia called Broken Hill for several years.  Throughout these years, she somehow becomes this promiscuous young woman.  A group of other women jump her one night and beat her senseless. She then falls in love with the paramedic who takes her to the hospital.  Literally this all happens in the span of about 5-10 pages.  This is around the time when I started really rolling my eyes and cursing every male author who ever tried to write a three-dimensional female character and failed.  Anyway, to make a long story short, it turns out this paramedic guy is immune to the mind control, and when the whole town is destroyed by words he is the only one who doesn't die.  He somehow gets to the United States and lives free of any memory of Australia because Emily wipes his memory.  Because of this special ability to be resistant to mind control, the academy wants him for research, but Emily wants him for love. So the academy is trying to find both Emily and her little paramedic guy. Blah blah blah....yawn.

The book is not told in a chronological order and there are several stories going on at one time. In between the chapters there are also fictionalized examples of how the media uses words to control the minds of the masses.  I found the fictionalized examples of media mind control a more fascinating story than Emily Ruff trying to seek out and save the guy she somehow developed a lifelong passion for in the span of a few pages.  The story just wasn't cohesive enough. You will find weak, poorly developed characters. The only thing the book does develop is apathy in the reader.  I will just say read at your own discretion.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

This book was interesting because it's told from the point of view of a 15-year-old autistic boy.  Having worked with autistic children in my "day job" I think the author presents an accurate portrayal of how the autistic mind sometimes works. The story was decent and you could probably finish the book in one day.

Christopher, our protagonist, initially starts off trying to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog.  That mystery is solved fairly early in the book and a larger problem is revealed.  The latter half of the book deals with this larger problem and left me feeling bland.  While it was interesting to see how this young man attempts to function in the "real world", it becomes wearisome after a while and you just feel kind of sad for him because he just does not function well socially and you fear he never will.  He's brilliant with math and science and tends to describe a lot of math and science in the book, but my eyes glazed over during those parts.

The silver lining is that he does test his limits and challenge himself when push comes to shove. Best of all, he rises to his challenges in the "real world", albeit quite messily.  So I guess if the point of the book was to open people's eyes to the world of autism, it does a very solid job.  I think this is a good introductory way of being exposed to autism in an accessible way. However, don't let the title fool you into thinking the entire book will be about solving a dog's murder. It has very little to do with dogs at all. The dog's murder is a red herring (if you read the book, you'll get my reference).

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I really love the fact that it's a novel for adults but it reaches back to childhood and the reason why so many of us love to read stories.  We like to escape and imagine worlds that are full of adventure, excitement, and danger.  At approximately 180pages, this book is a quick read that will take you on a fantastic ride.  The boy in the story, who remains unnamed, is a shy bookworm with no friends.  One day a boarder at his family's home steals the father's car and kills himself at the end of the lane. When the boy and his father go to the end of the lane, they meet the Hempstock women.  They boy is seven years old and he meets Lettie Hempstock who is eleven years old. The two become quick friends and end up having an adventure that could mean life or death for one or both of them. I'm just going to leave it at that because this is a book that has to be enjoyed, not explained.

When we sometimes think of magical books or fantasy books, we think of Harry Potter or something similar.  This is a different kind of magic.  It's the kind that doesn't have answers and is closely intertwined with the real world in plain sight. That was one of the reasons I enjoyed it. You may never look at a full moon or the night sky in the same way after reading this book.  Is what we see on a daily basis real? Is your reality a mirage? Memory is a tricky thing.  When you remember something from your childhood, how sure are you of its veracity?

You can easily read this book in one day.  I suggest a nice quiet spot with your preferred warm beverage (coffee, tea, cider, cocoa) and a baked good.  If you can, get the physical book. Stay off social media, turn your phone/laptop/tablet off and enjoy!