The Secret Language of Life

How Animals and Plants Feel and Communicate

by Brian J. Ford

This book is all about well, what the subtitle says- how animals and plants use their senses to perceive the world and respond to it. Ford's main argument seems to be that we, as humans, have no right to feel superior to the rest of life on earth because most of them have been around far longer than us, and are just as capable of seeing and feeling things, of making decisions about how to act. First he describes in detail our own sense of sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing- and then points out how many animals have much superior senses, or possess ones we lack completely- like bats' and dolphins' ability to echolocate, or birds' ability to navigate using magnetism. Even tiny creatures like insects can see far better than us- have you ever tried to swat a fly? it sees you coming far faster than you can act. All of this was intriguing, but the part of the book that really floored me was where Ford talked about how plants perceive the world. Most of them can sense light, can tell direction (gravity), can respond to temperature changes and wind, and touch. At one point he says that plants sense each other's presence and space themselves out to even out the resources; that's why trees are well-spaced in a forest. I didn't quite get this point, though; he never really explained how that worked out. I always thought trees were well-spaced because when too close together the weaker one would simply fail to thrive.... The final chapters are about microscopic creatures and how they sense the world around them. Not only do they react to their environment and seek out food, but some apparently communicate with each other as well- insofar as they need to, in order to find mates and such. Did you know there's even a microbe that has a functional eye? Crazy stuff, that makes you really wonder at the world around you. The Secret Language of Life is really a fascinating book.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 320 pages, 1999

futile list

About a week ago I got all excited at discovering a list of the John Burroughs Medal- awarded to the best natural history book of the year. This list spans the years 1926-2002, but some years no award was given, so in total there are 68 books on it. Can you believe I looked all the titles up (except for the six I've actually read already) and not a single one is in my local library's system?

Not a single one. I guess they're just too old and obscure, plus I know natural history isn't the top subject of the day. (The section in my nearby library is woefully small). Well, the titles still catch my interest, so I've been sleuthing through reviews online to see which I might actually want to hunt down and read someday, and then searching for them on swap sites. Found a few available. Discovered several new titles along the way (of course- and none of those are at my library either!)

Thus, here are all the books I've found I have an interest in, but little chance of ever reading. Someday, maybe... [edit: the books I have found copies of and read, are now crossed out and linked to]

from the Burroughs list:
From Laurel Hill to Siler's Bog by John Terres
Iceland Summer by George Sutton
Driftwood Valley by Theodora Fletcher
The Great Beach by John Hay
A Canyon Road by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
The Windward Road  by Archie Carr
Wilderness and Razor Wire by Ken Lamberton
Swampwalker's Journal by David Carroll
In a Desert Garden by John Alcock
The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
Into Africa by Craig Packer
Dolphin Days by Kenneth Norris
The Island Within by Richard Nelson
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez
Roadless Area by Paul Brooks
Canoe Country and Snowshoe Country by Florence Jaques et al

discovered in tandem:
Peace at Heart by Barbara Drake
The Goshawk by T.H. White

I'm particularly interested in this last title. I love T.H. White's writing, The Once and Future King is one of my all-time favorite books. And several years ago I went through a spate of reading about falconry; it's quite a fascinating subject.

The New York Times Book of Mammals

edited by Nicholas Wade

Pretty interesting book, The New York Times Book of Mammals is a compilation of the best articles on mammals from the newspaper's Science Times section, spanning the years 1991 through 2002. They're organized in sections regarding which type of mammal is featured: rodents, wild cats, wolves and their cousins, primates, etc. The articles range in subject- some are about new studies into animal physiology that hope to impact modern medicine, others look at animal behavior, or the reintroduction of species to lands they've been extinct from for decades (namely the wolf; there were four or five articles on wolves alone!) I think the most interesting ones for me were to read about the social structure of naked mole rats (similar to insects'), the genetic deterioration of cheetahs, how hormone exposure in the womb influences the gender of infant gerbils, and how reindeer herds are being lost to migrating caribou who tempt them to leave their accustomed lands. Also of course the ones regarding pregnancy, birth, infants bonding to the mother, the amazingly complex components of human milk (subjects close to me right now). I'm intrigued to see if there's a newer edition printed with reports more current to what's being discovered in science today.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 302 pages, 1998

The Year of the Whale

by Victor B. Scheffer

Like Moby Dick, this book alternates narrative with sections describing facts about whales. The storyline is a young sperm whale's life, beginning with its birth in autumn and following it through an entire year as it navigates the waters, shadowing its mother and learning through exploring its environment. The factual parts describe man's encounters with whales and his exploitation of them, including some rather graphic descriptions of the butchering done on whaling ships. Interestingly enough, sometimes a biologist or scientist was present on the whaling ship, hoping to get a chance to study a whale's body as it was being processed. There's also an account of the first sperm whale to be kept alive in captivity, and several stories of stranded whales. An interesting read, but a bit dry for my taste and of course the facts are outdated. The Year of the Whale won an award for being the best natural history book in 1970 (and now I have a new list to pore over- what better reading than all the years' best natural history books going back to 1926?)

Rating: 3/5 ....... 244 pages, 1969

more opinions at:
Lexivore's Lunch

Socks

by Beverly Cleary

One of my childhood favorites, I just finished reading Socks  with my six-year-old last week. It's a friendly little story about the daily life of an ordinary housecat. At first the kitty luxuriates in the attention of his young owners, but soon a baby arrives and everything changes. Socks has to deal with people getting up at odd hours, mealtimes being delayed, the anxiety of listening to the baby cry, and visits from well-meaning relatives, some of whom tease or criticize him. Another trial in Socks' life is battling with a neighborhood tomcat... But then the baby starts to grow up, and Socks finds that the little person in the family is no longer so annoying but can be a great playmate. It's a cute book, one we could really relate to, having two cats and a new baby. My daughter enjoyed pointing out all the ways in which our cats and baby behave similar to or differently from those in the story.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 158 pages, 1973

more opinions at:
MD Sheets
SMS Book Reviews

The Leper

by Sigmund Brouwer

Set in the late 1800's, this brief heart-tugging story is about a man who contracts leprosy while serving with the military in India. He returns home and can't bear to expose his wife and young children either to the risk of contracting the disease nor to the awful sight of his ravaged face. So instead he makes arrangements to have most of his monthly stipend sent to his wife, while removing himself from her life and hoping she finds a man to provide for her and raise his children, so that he can end his own misery with a suicidal jump off a bridge. Before he can carry out all his plans, though, he unexpectedly makes contact with humanity again- discovering an abandoned child who needs his help. Despite the risk of leprosy, if he doesn't take her in she will surely die.... The baby not only touches this man's life, but also the lives of several other individuals, one being a stern unattractive woman (unfortunately named Ima Hogg) who finds her life opening up to love once she begins caring for the baby. And in a neat, tidy circle the leprous man not only finds compassion and acceptance where he only expected repulsion and rejection, but finds love again, and a reason to live.

I can't really say more without giving it all away, as the book is really quite short! It's one my grandmother had borrowed from her public library, and while visiting her this week I picked it up to read as well. It's a tender story, one that will bring you close to tears. With, granted, a strongly religious message but it's not overdone like in some books. My only quibble was the author's penchant for jumping around in time. I prefer my stories to follow a straight linear narrative; but it's not much to complain about here.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 182 pages, 2002

more opinions at:
Original Books
Flowers in my Pot
Book 'em Benj-O

the big list

I may have been quiet about the blogs lately, but I'm still reading them! (I just usually have a babe in arms so it's hard to type comments.) The proof is here: a big old list of all the books I've found in your posts. Follow the links, and you can read what tempted me to add each book to my toppling TBR. I have a sneaking suspicion some of these books are already on my list, but don't have the time to double-check right now...

Through the Garden Gate by Susan Hill- The Octogon
The Righteous by Michael Wallace- Books and Pals
Urban Pantry by Amy Pennington- Book Maven's Blog
The Wisdom of the Radish by Lynda Hopkins- Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
The Hopes of Snakes by Lisa Couturier- Page 247
The Wild Life of Our Bodies by Rob Dunn- Life is Short, Read Fast
Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart- The Black Sheep Dances
The Bad Tempered Gardener by Anne Wareham- Garden Rant
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy- The Octogon
In the Kingdom of Gorillas by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder- Ardent Reader
The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart - A Striped Armchair
This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman- Bermuadonion's Weblog
Season to Taste by Molly Birnbaum- Life is Short, Read Fast
Two Kisses for Maddy by Matthew Longelin- At Home with Books
Slow Love: how I lost my job... by Dominique Browning- books i done read
The Summer of the Bear by Bella Pollen- Bookfoolery and Babble
West of the Moon by Katherine Langrish- Things Mean a Lot
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs- The Lost Entwife
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova - Jules' Book Reviews
Fire Season by Philip Connors- Bookfoolery and Babble
Through the Kitchen Window by Susan Hill- The Octogon
Your Backyard Wildlife Year by Marcus Schneck- Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser- Reading Through Life
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall from Reading Through Life
Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta- books i done read
Sheepish by Catherine Friend- Superfast Reader
Feathers by Thor Hanson- Sophisticated Dorkiness
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker - Love, Laughter and a touch of Insanity

African Cats

Disneynature

by Amanda Barrett and Keith Scholey

Admittedly I brought this book home to read just because it's cover kept catching my eye from the library shelf, with its large beautiful lion's face. I noticed it a few times and declined (it's rather heavy) before finally giving in to the visual temptation and checking it out. It's about the making of the film African Cats, which I'd never heard of before, much less seen. Now I want to, even though the book has given away probably most of the major events in the film. One of the filmmakers was also involved in creating the tv program Big Cat Diary, which is one of my favorite nature shows. So I'm pretty sure I'd like the African Cats production as well.

The film portrays the lives of one cheetah trying to raise her cubs to adulthood, and the doings of a pride of lions including a bunch of half-grown youngsters, some females with small cubs, and one older male who's recently lost his partners. A lot of it focuses on how different the lives of the solitary cheetahs and social lions are. The book tells about how the film was made, the struggles of the producers to find the animals, keep track of them, keep equipment in working order, and hope the animals didn't leave the boundaries of the reserve, because they couldn't follow them without making huge detours. Most of the narrative, though, is about the lives of the cats, all their twists and turns. The text is accompanied by fantastic photographs, and also an array of lovely ink and wash illustrations by Jean-Paul Orpinas. I was enthralled to the last page.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 205 pages, 2011

What's Michael?

Show Time

by Makoto Kobayashi

This is a japanese comic about a cat. I read volume 8, because that's the one I found. It's a mixture of humor involved in the daily life of the kitty and the ineptitude of his owners, plus some odd fantasy. I have to admit I didn't quite "get it" all the time. The parts that were most amusing to me were about things like the cat stealing fish off the counter, or the baby crawling around imitating the cat. I didn't get the segment about a huge fat cat in a pet store that terrified everyone who no more than looked at it. There's a part where the baby turns into adult and goes to work in an office entirely staffed by cats, who scramble to deal with her still-babyish behavior like examining the stapler by putting it in her mouth, or bursting into tears just because she's tired. I found the baby parts pretty funny, just because I have a baby in the house now, so it's all close to home. Quick, enjoyable, sometimes puzzling, and overall a very different reading experience for me.

You can see a good sample of the artwork here. One thing that really caught my attention in the artwork was the people's faces. The cats are all cute, the owners look relatively normal, some of the other people depicted have quite strange facial proportions. And the face the baby makes when it's about to cry is downright disturbing!

I chose What's Michael? off the library shelf pretty much at random. My daughter is in the summer reading program and one of the challenges was to read a comic book or graphic novel. She selected a Garfield collection, I got to this one thinking it looked cute!

Rating: 3/5 ........ 86 pages, 1995

A Country Year

Living the Questions

by Sue Hubbell

Sue Hubbell lives on a farm in the Ozark hills with several thousand honeybees. She is a small-scale commercial beekeeper, stationing her hives in beeyards around her community, collecting their honey and then trucking it to nearby states for sales. Her existence is full of challenges, often scraping below the poverty line. But it is also full of beauty and a closeness to the wild things that inhabit the land with her. Unlike most of her neighbors, who consider creatures like snakes, possums and coyotes vermin and try to get rid of them on sight, she is delighted to observe them and write down the things she learns and the new questions that spring to mind upon seeing unexplained things happen in nature. Like an oriole perching on a hummingbird feeder to guzzle sugar water. Or a column of saw-fly larvae marching across the ground single-mindedly (to what goal she could not figure out). Even the snakes and roaches that invade her beehives and the termites that eat her cabin floor are treated with leniency, given space to do their thing unmolested (more or less; she used to evict roaches from her hives until she realized the bees did a better job of it themselves and their failure to do so indicated a colony weakness she had better be aware of).

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Country Year, with its mixture of nature writing, observations on humanity (she has a lot of interesting descriptions of neighbors and acquaintances) and stuff about beekeeping. Her voice reminds me a lot of my favorite gardening writer, Thalassa Cruso, and the book also recalls another one I read about minutiae in nature, Wildlings. Whatever else I can find that Sue Hubbell has written, I know I want to read it.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 221 pages, 1983

more opinions at:
the Stay at Home Bookworm
Notes from the Officer's Club
rick librarian

Honeybee

Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper 

by C. Marina Marchese

Marchese visited a neighbor one day for a personal tour of his apiary. She was fascinated by the bees and floored by the taste of fresh, raw honey (straight from the hive; she stuck her finger in a comb cell and licked it off). Curious to learn more about bees, she started attending meetings of a local beekeeper's club, then acquired her own hive and eventually left her established job to start a new venture: keeping honeybees, harvesting their honey and marketing products she made from it (candles, skin products and the like as well as honey).

Her charming book introduces the reader to honeybees in both the broad sense- giving a little of their history with mankind, their role in other cultures around the world, and their biology for example- as well as the personal minutiae, describing incidents when she personally worked with bees and honey, and how she learned about them. She even includes recipes for foods and lip balm made with honey. I feel like I learned so much from her. I was particularly intrigued by the descriptions of monofloral or varietal honeys, made from collecting the honey after the bees have been harvesting nectar from one main plant, so that it has the distinct flavor of that flower source. I'm pretty much only familiar with the clover honey you get in the grocery store. Once or twice I've tasted honey with comb in it, or a wildflower honey, but again from the same source, so they're probably mixed to create a standard flavor. I had no idea that honeys could have such a wide range of taste. Marchese describes dandelion honey as having a hint of white pepper. Honey from mangroves, she says, have a "swampy" aroma and are used in pickle brine! Colors and consistencies also vary greatly- purple loostrife honey, for instance, is dark and looks like motor oil; ling-heather honey has the consistency of jelly and cannot be extracted from the comb but must be gently pressed out. With each honey description she also describes the plant and climate/soil it comes from, so it's like reading a little gardening treatise; pairing the land and the food that comes from it. She suggests foods to accompany each honey varietal, which might range from mixing it into a specific kind of dressing or marinade to using in certain types of baked goods, or on exotic cheeses with fine wines.

I am very curious now to try some local (and varietal, if I can find it) honey: I know there's some available at the local farmer's market we frequent on the weekends. So far, this is my favorite of all the bee/honey books I've been reading. I borrowed this one from the public library.

You can visit the author's website here: Red Bee Honey

Rating: 4/5 ........ 256 pages, 2009

more opinions at:
a Life Sustained

The Honey Trail

by Grace Pundyk

Not sure why, but this book is just not holding my attention. It has quite a different focus than the other books about bees I've been reading lately, although it does touch some on the history and husbandry of honeybees. Mostly though, The Honey Trail is a kind of travelogue and cultural examination of the production of honey. In it, the author visits different countries to see their beekeeping practices up close, taste a myriad varieties of local honey, and learn what part honey plays in each distinct culture. For example, in Yemen supposedly the profits of honey are tied into terrorism, although after reading the chapter on it I was still confused and didn't really understand why. I made it halfway through the second chapter, about honey in Australia, before realizing that my mind was wandering wildly. It's an interesting enough book, but just not friendly or descriptive enough to keep me reading at the moment.

The other countries she visits in pursuit of honey are New Zealand, Borneo, Russia, Italy, the UK , Turkey, China and the United States.

Abandoned ......... 337 pages, 2008

The Beekeeper's Lament

by Hannah Nordhaus

Journalist follows a large-scale beekeeping operation around the US to study the plight of the honeybee.This book answered all the questions I had left over after reading The Hive Detectives, and then some. The Beekeeper's Lament gives a lot of detail into the world of beekeeping. Readily apparent that this is a very complex and fragile system. So very many of our crops depend upon the bees, who are in turn dependent upon humans now, to keep them alive. Apparently all the feral hives have disappeared (honeybees were never native to the US but introduced from Europe) and those under the care of beekeepers are constantly assailed by a myriad of diseases, pests and maladies. Lots of theories on what is causing the colonies to collapse, but no real answers yet. I am full of new admiration for the beekeepers who work like John Miller (the man most featured in this book) who drive their thousands of hives all around the country chasing the flowers. He, like many others who keep bees, make most of their money off renting the hives out to almond farmers. It was fascinating to learn about how the industry has grown and changed- for example oranges used to need pollination too, but now that consumers prefer seedless oranges, citrus farmers are trying to keep bees out of their orchards. There's a little bit about the history of bees and their keepers here, but it's mostly about the workings of the industry, the failure of the bees' health, and how it is becoming harder and harder for beekeepers to make a profit at all. I was most intrigued by reading about how it all worked, like the different methods the "bee guys" use to get their bees through the winter- feed them artificial stuff like syrup, put them into hibernation, or truck them to warmer climes.

Very intriguing, and alarming, stuff to read about. Sorry this post is so jumbled, I'm typing it out in a hurry while the baby sleeps. Read a few of the reviews linked to below, for something more comprehensive! Or better yet, just read the book. I borrowed my copy from the public library, when curiosity on the subject just made me search the catalog.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 269 pages, 2011

more opinions at:
the page 99 test

winner

A few days late, but here we go. Random.org says the winner of my latest giveaway is commentator #6, Sarsafrass! Happy reader, send me your snailmail and I'll post these bookmarks off to you within the next few days. Congrats!

The Dirty Life

on farming, food and love
by Kristin Kimball

Another book about farm life. Here the author describes how she made the decision to leave her busy, affluent New York City existence for the backbreaking labor and intense involvement of starting a farm with her new fiance. Not just any farm, but one that would provide a full diet to a small (at first) community of members who bought into "shares" of the farm's produce at the beginning of each year. Other farms that provide for people this way usually only grow vegetables, but the Kimballs' farm aimed to give everything a person would need for a well-rounded diet: milk, eggs, dairy products, meats, grains, etc. Even (eventually) other things such as wood for fuel. But the book isn't really about how this kind of farm works (it was the only one of its type when they started).

It's about the tough work of putting a functional farm together out of a neglected piece of land. It's about planning, planting, sweating, fixing things, learning animal husbandry, dealing with setbacks, getting to know the neighbors, battling weeds (on an organic farm they must all be hoed or pulled by hand!), desperately trying to prioritize chores, falling to bed exhausted, and rejoicing in the growth of plants, the birth of new animals, the taste of wonderful food two steps from its bed in the soil. A wonderful read, one that really takes you into the heart of what it's like to grow and raise the food to feed an entire community. It's about the soul of a farm, and how it won one woman's heart, through all the difficulties and small joys.

I discovered this book in a Friday Finds post on At Home with Books. Borrowed it from the public library.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 276 pages, 2010

more opinions at:
Esmerelda's Book Thing
A Life Sustained
Edge of the Page 
Stuff as Dreams are Made On

See You in a Hundred Years

by Logan Ward

Young married couple decide to leave their jobs and live on a farm for twelve months, as if it were the year 1900. They didn't use electricity, plumbing or even accept a ride in a car from neighbors. They burned oil lamps, dug an outhouse, pulled water from a well by a hand pump, and heated their house with a wood stove. Milked their own goats, used a horse for transportation and occasional hauling, grew their own vegetables to eat. Thought they were going to get away from the hustle and headache of the rat race, but at first it was just as much headache and worry trying to supply food for their own table and wondering if they'd make it through the winter. Eventually their muscles toughened, they learned to manage the animals, the neighbors reached out to them (even entering into the spirit of their experiment and only giving them foods that would have existed in 1900, for example). Being a woman and a mother I was curious how the wife learned to cook on a wood stove and transitioned from disposable convenience to laundering cloth diapers (with a washboard!) but as the husband wrote the story there are more details on splitting wood, teaching himself to handle the horse and drive a wagon, etc. It's a very interesting tale, funny at times. At the end of the year they were relieved to go back to some modern conveniences, but still wanted to live close to the land the way they'd come to appreciate. I don't know if I could ever do without the ease of a washing machine or other things for so long, but admire their determination and integrity to the trial.

Borrowed from the public library. See You in a Hundred Years came to my notice because I read about it on Worducopia. There's an article about the Ward's year-long experiment here.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 252 pages, 2007

more opinions at:
Bermudaonion's Weblog

bookmarks giveaway!

How long has it been since I did a giveaway here? Seems ages. Well, I have this pair of flower-themed bookmarks that just fit the summery season. There's an image on both sides; the first picture here is of the front

and second of the back:

If you'd like to own this pair of bright bookmarks, it's simple. Leave a comment and I'll check back in a week, run the names through a random-online selection process and declare one of you a winner!

Hill Song

A Country Journal

by Lee Huntington

Journal entries about life on a Vermont farm. Describing the work in the gardens, the sweat and joy of harvest. The passing of seasons. Wildlife both big and small observed in the surrounding woods. The moods of changing weather, how the people adjust to it using only wood as fuel for heat, etc. But other things too, like musings on why elderly people are so little respected these days, or how people use cliches to describe things without even actually looking to see what they resemble. A nice, contemplative read. Hill Song is one I took my time with.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 163 pages, 1985

reading time

Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass

by Gary Paulsen

This book paints a vivid picture of life on a farm, back around the turn of the century. Aunts, uncles and grandparents lived with the family. Most of the crops and animals raised on the farm were for their own sustenance; old clothes were sewn into warm quilts, many things were mended and made by hand. The little money needed for school supplies, flour and salt was hard-earned cutting cordwood or picking potatoes on other farms. People worked very long, hard hours and all the families came together once a year to help harvest grain, the team moving around from farm to farm until everyone's crop was in. Close association with the animals, upon whose lives they depended. The great workhorses. The pigs and cattle- living breathing animals for so long fed and cherished, then transformed into meat for the table. The horror of accidents from men caught in farming machinery, small children wandering into danger (one toddler gets eaten by a hog), people lost in the snow simply trying to walk from one building to another. But they don't strike home too much because none of them are known personally- only stories told of other's misfortune. Through the whole book there aren't any real characters that you follow or come to know, overall it's just a portrait of a way of life. A simple book that you can read in one day (I managed it, and you know how little reading time I have nowadays!) yet its images stay with you. I keep thinking now of how dependent the farmers were upon the weather, how precise their timing had to be in order to get things planted, harvested, etc at the right moment so things wouldn't fail to grow or spoil or be lost in some way. It was a difficult, back-breaking way of life, and yet it had its own sweet rewards. The cold swimming hole. The warmth of a cow's flank during milking. The fabulous meals cooked up for harvest teams by wives and daughters. The beautiful warm heaps of quilts stitched with memories that children piled under in shivering attics....

I picked this book up at a used sale once; attracted to it because the title was so curious and it looked unlike any other book I've read by this author. My assessment was right. It reads unlike his other books too, although I recognized his style something about this one feels different. In a good way. It is lyrical, memorable, evocative. Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass is definitely a book you should read.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 120 pages, 1992

Robbing the Bees

a Biography of Honey

the sweet liquid gold that seduced the world

by Holley Bishop

I am becoming enthralled by bees. The one thing that still discourages me from getting my own backyard beehive (besides the fact that my husband is terrified of bees- although this book asserts that you are more likely to get hit by lightening than die of bee stings!) is the cost it takes to set up such an operation. But that doesn't daunt me from learning more and more about bees.

Robbing the Bees looks at much more than just beekeeping methods, although there are two threads that do delve into what that entails. In one, the author follows a beekeper whose operation includes some seven-hundred hives which he shifts around the countryside, renting his bees out to pollinate different crops. Mostly he focuses on the few weeks in which his bees can gather the nectar of tupelo trees in Florida; the honey from them being so rare and delicious it sells for a high price. In another recurring thread, the author describes acquiring his own backyard hive, the early mistakes he made and his experiences keeping bees. But the real flesh of the book is in its historical aspect. It explores all things about bees and how humans have interacted with them throughout history. From medieval use of hives as weapons (catapulting them at the enemy) to the Egyptians' use of honey as food preservatives and beauty products. Honey has also been used historically in medicines, and the wax has a myriad of uses. The book describes how honey was first gathered from wild hives (and still is in many parts of the world today), then how people first began to keep hives in their yards. Even then early beekeepers had to kill the bees in order to obtain honey; it wasn't until someone invented removable frames that it became easy for us to rob the hives and leave the colony intact. Of course, since the book is about bees there is a lot of information on their biology and social structure, and their important role as plant pollinators. Robbing the Bees is just packed with information, which is probably one reason it took me so long to get through it, I was taking my time to absorb it all. A fascinating book. I'm glad to thank the Stay at Home Bookworm for making me aware of it!

Borrowed this one from the public library.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 324 pages, 2005

more opinions at:
Peter Bradberry
Beth's Book Reviews

My First Green Book

by Angela Wilkes
A life-size guide to caring for our environment

Just finished reading this book last night with my six-year old. It's all about environmental issues and things kids can do to help. It goes beyond just recycling and conserving electricity (although those things are mentioned). There are sections about air pollution, acid rain, how nature recycles waste, composting, choosing products wisely, healthy soils, plants that encourage wildlife, how trees improve our air, what's happening to the rainforests (and how much we depend on them), etc. At the end one page explains how to keep a simple diary where kids can record things they observe about the environment, and how to campaign to improve things up in your own neighborhood. There are lots of simple experiments to try illustrating different things about the environment. For example, one you take a piece of fresh celery, and several cut white flowers and put them in a glass of water with red food coloring or dye in it. The plants absorb the dye along with the water and turn pink. This shows kids how pollutants in water get absorbed by and can adversely affect the plant.

The formatting of My First Green Book is large, easy to read and understand. The book is a full 13 inches tall, so the large photographs have plenty of detail. All the experiments and information are explained simply enough for children to understand. We've already done a few of the experiments, one to see how plants respond to polluted water, another to see evidence of contaminants in our air. Right after reading the section on air pollution and seeing pictures of what types of lichens grow on trees, my kid inspected bark on trees in the local park and then ran to me shouting: "we have clean air! we have clean air!" because the lichens were a healthy leafy type. All in all a most excellent book. I recommend it to anyone who wants to encourage their children to care for the environment and learn simple things that actually make a difference.

Rating: 5/5 ........ 48 pages, 1991

The Hive Detectives

Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe 
by Loree Griffin Burns

I've been reading quite a bit about bees lately.This book has been on my list since I saw it on A Patchwork of Books, so I looked for it at the library.

The Hive Detectives is about honeybees, their importance to our food industry, and concerns about their rapid decline. It is illustrated with beautiful photographs, which I spent a long time poring over. After reading so much on bees and beekeeping in past novels and books, it was nice to finally see photos of what a honey extractor looks like, for example. The book tells a bit about the work of beekeeping focusing on a hobbyist or backyard beekeeping Mary Duane. It also shows how a large-scale beekeeping operation works, with several chapters about Hackenburg Apiaries who keep three thousand beehives. I always knew that crops need bees but assumed that the farmers simply kept some bees on site to help pollinate. What I didn't know was that large-scale bee operations will truck their beehives around the country and rent them out to farmers during the weeks that they urgently need pollination for their crops. At the end of the various growing seasons, the beehives are brought home and honey collected.

The crux of this book though, is about an alarming phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder which was first noted by the men at Hackenburg. They found hundreds of hives suddenly nearly empty of bees, in spite of having plenty of food stores and offspring. They promptly started an investigation to find out what was happening. All across the country bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Scientists have looked into diseases, pesticides and other factors trying to figure out what the cause is and stop the decline. There is a lot more information about CCD on the Wikipedia site; so far research is still trying to figure out what causes it.

Mostly I loved reading this book because of how much it taught me about bees and beekeeping. I was actually disappointed when it ended. The Hive Detectives is a juvenile non-fiction book but well-written and not overly simplified; I found it quite intriguing and educational.

Rating: 4/5 ........ 66 pages, 2010

Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

Memoir of a boy growing up in Ireland. Frank McCourt was born in America but his family moved back to Ireland when he was very small. They were extremely poor and most of the time lived on public assistance. Situation not made any better by the fact that their father was an alcoholic; he could rarely keep a job, spent any money he earned in the pubs and when his mother got money from charities or the dole, he first chastised her for begging and then promptly spent that money on drink, too. Altogether a miserable character. So the family was usually hungry, living in awful conditions, the kids frequently sick. The author himself scraped through some frightening illnesses, and he lost several siblings to illness, some as infants. The entire time I was reading I kept thinking of his mother, how her heart must have ached to loose her children. She would have sought out a job herself but the neighbors saw that as shameful, that a woman would have to work when she had an able-bodied husband.

Throughout the story Frank talks about how the Catholic church infused his life; at first it was all mysterious as most priests or his parents refused to explain things to him. Later he figured a few things out, but by then had grow calloused as well. He tells of schools where kids are made fun or of beaten by their teachers, of desperately trying to find a job, of a growing fascination with girls and their mysteries when he hit puberty, and of finally saving up enough money to emigrate to America himself, in search of a better life. The ending kind of fizzled for me, though. I watched him through the pages struggle and struggle and finally get to the place of his dreams simply to carouse at a party right off the boat and declare America a great place. I was kind of expecting more, at that point...

It wasn't until I finished Angela's Ashes that I realized I've actually read it before. I don't know if that speaks well or poor of it, that I had completely forgotten most of the details. I knew I had opened it once a year or so ago, but thought I'd quit a little ways in, as I recalled quite a bit of the beginning, but all the middle felt new to me. Unless I skipped to the end? but I usually don't do that. Either way, I'm glad to say that I enjoyed it much more this time around.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 426 pages, 1996

more opinions at:
Ardent Reader

The Speckled People

a memoir of a half-Irish childhood

by Hugo Hamilton

One I picked up at a book sale, just because the title intrigued me. The Speckled People is the memoir of a boy growing up in Ireland with mixed heritage. His mother escaped Germany which was falling under Hitler's power, but in spite of the fact that she is adamantly against "the fist people" her neighbors are suspicious of her and her children get called names and executed in games by the other kids for being Nazis. His father is an extremist, full of nationalistic pride for the Irish people and trying to resurrect their native language by teaching it to his children and forbidding them to speak English in the house. This again alienates the children from others around them. For instance, at one point the father insists they only play with children who also speak Irish (Gaelic) so they have to bus to and fro with kids found miles away and none of the imposed friendships last. The story is full of sorrow and resentment; the boy ends up hating his father for all the rules forced upon him, and feeling pain for his mother when he finally learns the full extent of her story and why she fled Germany. In fact, more of the book feels like telling the story of his parents than of his own experience. His mother writes a journal to tell her children what happened to her, and several significant family stories are told again and again, woven into the narrative each time in a slightly different way. All is told from the unclear perspective of the child, with his impressions of moments that float in and out of focus: sitting on the bottom of the pool blowing bubbles at each other, watching a dog at the beach that barks at the ocean, trying to avoid bullies, welcoming new babies into the family, struggling through recurrent illness, riding on the bus... The tone of it all reminded me quite a bit of Call It Sleep, and also the feel of Chaim Potok's novels (though I couldn't really tell you why). At the same time, it all felt a bit too distant to me. I felt like I was getting more a relating of family history, patched together by childhood memories, and never got close to the narrator himself. O well. It was a nice enough read.

Funny, how some books that are otherwise entirely unrelated yet have a connecting theme. Another book I recently read, The Tapestry of Love, had a bit about beekeeping in it, which I found interesting because not too long ago I'd read a few books where beekeeping was the focus. It was intriguing that even in the few pages that discussed bees in Tapestry I learned something new about bees. Here too, in The Speckled People the father takes up beekeeping and again, I learned a few new details. The bees caused tragedy here, though...

Rating: 3/5 ........ 298 pages, 2003

More opinions at:
It's All About Me
16 Book for 16 Days
Still Point

Ordinary Love and Goodwill

by Jane Smiley

I almost didn't read the part of this book that turned out to be my favorite. I didn't know what I was getting into, with this one. I thought the title was all one piece, and it wasn't until I started reading that I found it's actually two novellas, the first called Ordinary Love and the second, Good Will. I still can't help thinking of the title as one line, though....

Ordinary Love just failed to catch my interest. It's written from the viewpoint of a mother of five grown children; two of her sons are twins. One is returning home from a recent trip to Korea. The others gather and lots of talk happens. Apparently there's quite a bit of discussion between them all about the parents' divorce. I really didn't get far enough to feel that out. I quit after about thirty pages. I just wasn't following what was going on or even which character was talking at one point. Not working for me.

That was going to be the end. But then I glanced at someone's review of the book on Library Thing and noticed it mentioned that Good Will was about a small family trying to run a self-sufficient homestead outside an ordinary suburban town. That sounded interesting to me. So I picked up the book again and read the second half, totally captivated. It's about a couple and their young son, who live on a farm. They grow or gather almost everything they eat, and barter for most belongings, make their own clothing and such. Hardly have twenty bucks between them all at any one time. The husband is good at carpentry and figuring things out, he makes all the furniture, builds the house, creates a fantastic compost system, etc. It's so impressive a writer comes out to interview them to be included in a book she's writing. This writer's presence eclipses the story; she's there at the beginning first learning about them, and at the end they receive the manuscript and shortly after the book to read what she's said about them- at the point when things are no longer the same. And it's not because their efforts failed, the couple were perfectly happy and content with their way of life, even though others viewed it as poverty. But the son, who went to public school and compared his life to other kids', was not as happy. Father and mother both viewed their son's actions from a divergent angle, and they each failed to realized what was going on until it was too late and they had to abandon their farm, because of the son's actions... I can't say more without saying too much. Read the story! It's good! There's a part that reminded me strongly of Steinbeck's The Red Pony, so if you have angst with animals dying in a book, you might not want to...

And if anyone's read Ordinary Love and liked it, tell me why. I might just go back to it if I'm properly convinced...

Rating: 3/5 ........ 218 pages, 1989

Up From the Blue

by Susan Henderson

Tillie's house holds secrets. From the outside, it appears orderly- just as her precise, meticulous military father wants it- unless you count the door her mother sealed shut with blue paint. Inside things are troubled; her mother struggles with a mental illness which her father refuses to acknowledge. I'm not sure if he was just stubborn about admitting anything was wrong with his family, or just ignorant (story is set in the seventies) about depression in general. But he treats her like crap, berating and yelling and demanding more, when she crumples up and can't function. Of course the kids don't understand what's happening to their mother either; the older boy distances himself and tries to act properly according to his father's rules; Tillie tries to help and protect her mom and lashes out occasionally at school. I felt for the little girl. It was hard to tell how much of her erratic behavior was due to her living situation, how much to her free-thinking independence, and how much to what she suffered unknowingly from her own mother's hands... Up from the Blue is quite a story. Eager page-turning. I nearly cried at the end, but then any scene with a new infant and mother tugs my heart these days.

I really love the title, although I never really figured out what it referred to!

Rating: 3/5 ........ 317 pages, 2010

other (and more thorough) opinions at:
The Zen Leaf
Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Bermudaonion's Weblog

The Tapestry of Love

by Rosy Thornton

Some time ago I put this book on a TBR list; after seeing it on several blogs (quite a few of which are mentioned below) it looked interesting. And someone let the author know I was interested in reading her book, because she emailed me and offered a copy! That doesn't happen to me too often (more frequently I'm solicited for review copies of books that fit in genres I rarely ever approach- why is that?) so I happily accepted. The Tapestry of Love has been my constant nursing companion this past week as I tend to the baby, and it was quite a delightful read.

It's the story of an older woman whose children are grown and is now on her own, having gone through a rather amicable divorce years past. Catherine is ready to live her dreams so she moves to southern France where she purchases a small farmhouse in a mountainside village. The story is all about how she learns to love her new home. (Although there is a romance later in the story, it's more about her falling in love with a place and a community, I felt). There are quite a few things to get used to- the house doesn't have all modern conveniences, and her phone and electricity lines regularly fail. The neighbors are rather reserved and formal, but turn out to be staunch friends and quite interesting characters themselves. Village life is quiet, the mountain trails offer nature-viewing galore (including glimpses of wild boar) and it is all rather peaceful. Except, of course, life is never that peaceful. Catherine struggles to set up a business doing upholstery and needlework- she finds plenty of customers but has difficulty with the French bureaucracy getting permits and stuff to make her business legit. One of her neighbors is an attractive man who it seems might become a good friend, but when her sister comes to visit things get complicated.... Not only is Catherine navigating the ups and downs of her new life, but her ties to England and the past are constantly there too- her children on the phone discussing their own struggles with careers and relationships, her mother in a home going through the final stages of Alzheimer's. As she becomes closer to her neighbors she gets involved in their small griefs and joys as well, so when in the end she has to make a choice about returning to live in England or staying in France she finds it harder than she first imagined, having started to set down roots in her new place... oh dear am I saying too much now? I'd better just let you read the book!

What I really liked about this novel was that it felt very much like real life- no huge drama but a lot of little choices, tough decisions, growing relationships... It was such a charming, touching book. I haven't read one like it in quite some time. I think I'd like to read more by this author. Any suggestions what I should try next?

Rating: 3/5 ........ 406 pages, 2010

more opinions at:
Read Warbler
Jenny's Books
Shelf Love
Ardent Reader
So Many Books
The Zen Leaf

Bound

by Sally Gunning

Bound is a quiet novel, or at least it seemed so to me because there's not a lot of action. Most of the conflict takes place in a young girl's head, as Alice Cole worries herself over who to trust, how to keep her secrets, where to turn.... The story is set in Colonial times. Alice travels across the ocean with her family to the New World, but her mother and brothers take sick on the journey and when she arrives in New England her father is forced to sell his daughter into servitude to pay off his debts. She has to work for eleven years as an indentured servant. At first things go well; Alice is treated almost as one of the family, raised and taught alongside the family's daughter Nabby. But when the girls are grown, the remaining years of her service are transferred to Nabby, and the new household is not as kind to Alice. She is for the first time treated as a lowly slave, is abused by Nabby's new husband. Eventually things get so miserable that Alice runs away to Satucket, where she takes up with a widow who earns her keep by taking in boarders. Alice tries hard to prove her usefulness to this new household, while struggling to keep her secret: as a runaway servant she could be in serious trouble with the law if found out. But soon she has another secret to hide that's even harder to conceal than an obscured past.

For a book with such a quiet start; told most often in Alice's simple observations and wandering thoughts, Bound turns out to have quite a few heavy topics. I wasn't expecting it to deal with rape, or murder accusations. I wasn't expecting to end up reading about a trial- which was quite interesting, unlike most trial scenes that bore me. Although the story is about a quiet girl's life, trying to just evade trouble and live in peace, it's set against the bustling events of a small New England town. There's quite a bit of politics and local strife as the colonists struggle against English taxes; Alice becomes involved in spinning when they decide to boycott English goods and make their own cloth. Another thing I really liked about the story was seeing how Alice's character grew and her perceptions changed throughout the course of the year. She had a hard time at first learning to trust and understand other people's motives; I was quite surprised at how many times the man living with the widow forgave her indiscretions and mistaken judgements. I was glad she came to like a boy her own age and realize not all men were the beasts she had grown to fear. And I liked that the ending was kind of unexpected. All in all it was a good read.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 307 pages, 2008

more opinions at:
A Work in Progress

The Bucolic Plague

How Two Manhattanites Became Gentleman Farmers

by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Again, a good read but not what I expected. Actually, I had fair warning from all the other bloggers: this book has too much Martha Stewart in it. I guess I was somehow hoping everyone else was wrong! It's about two well-to-do New Yorkers who buy a mansion on a piece of farmland just because it strikes them as so beautiful. Then throw their sweat into making it a working farm again, putting in most of their hours on the weekend, with the help of a caretaker during the week. And the caretaker happens to raise goats. So in addition to having a huge vegetable garden from which they eat fresh, can and preserve, they also hit on the idea of making specialty soap out of goat milk, and selling it for enough profit to quit their city jobs and live full-time on the farm. It all sounds rather wonderful. Except that's not what the book is mostly about. One of the guys happens to work for Stewart, so it goes on and on about how they try and fail (or sometimes succeed) to live up to "Martha" standards, and how much being seen on TV would boost their soap-making venture. And all that got rather tiresome. I would have liked to read more about the garden, or the goats. There's not even a good description of how they make the goat-milk soap, for example! I don't even know why milk goes into soap... There's also quite a bit about how their relationship struggled due to the strain of keeping up with city life and the demands of the farm, and of new people they meet in the farm community. It was all entertaining and kept me turning pages, sometimes laughing aloud, but I did wish for more stuff on goats...

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 304 pages, 2010

more opinons at:
Sophisticated Dorkiness
Caroline Bookbinder
Ready When You Are, CB
BermudaOnion's Weblog

Coop

A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting
by Michael Perry

It's been two weeks since I actually read this book (and the next one), so I don't recall exactly my first impressions, nor do I feel there's much I can say about it that hasn't already been said by other bloggers. See reviews linked to below. This one will be short.

Coop isn't really quite what the subtitle suggests. Yes, it's about a family man on a small farm, struggling to patch things together so he can raise chickens and pigs, alongside welcoming a new baby into his life. But the chickens really don't get much notice, and even the pigs feel like a sidestory. Mostly, the book is about family life. What it was like for him to grow up in a large family full of foster siblings, and in a small, obscure fundamentalist Christian church. To learn farmwork from an early age. The first half of the book feels almost entirely a memoir, the second part focuses more on his current life, putting together his own family and organizing things -in a haphazard way that reminds me of how I put together my own sorry cold frame- to make his farm somewhat functional. Even though it wasn't quite what I expected, I enjoyed reading it very much. Perry is a good writer, thoughtful and entertaining. A good book.

Borrowed from the public library. Got on my TBR list thanks to Raging Bibliomania and the Capricious Reader.

Rating: 3/5            352 pages, 2009

more opinions at:
Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
It's All About Books
the Quiet Man

welcome Sonja!

I suppose most of you have guessed, from my absence here, that our new baby girl has arrived!

Sonja Mae Nevarez was born on May 9th, at 3:11 pm. She weighed 8 lbs, 10 oz. Quite a big girl! She's a content and healthy baby. The only minor complication was that she fractured her right clavicle at birth, so had to wear a sling on her arm for a week, to hold the collarbone still. It's already healed over enough that we took the sling off a few days ago. She's much happier now, able to stretch her arm around.

Our older daughter is thrilled to be a big sister.

She's already planning to turn Sonja into a reader: big sister has brought her rocking chair into my room so she can read to the baby while she's nursing.

She pulled all the old baby books we saved off her shelf, says she's going to give them to the baby, and is reading aloud through the pile.

Myself, I've hardly read anything since Sonja was born. In two weeks I've barely made it through several chapters of Bound. I have a few reviews to write of books I read just before the delivery; they'll probably be kept short and sweet. And posting here will be spotty for quite some time, at least until the baby starts sleeping through the night and I can get some decent sleep again! Until then, it's catnaps all day and hardly any pages turned. But I don't mind. Here's a few more pictures.

Sonja and Daddy:

with Mommy:

Sisters:

See you later!

Farm City

The Education of an Urban Farmer

by Novella Carpenter

Living in a run-down neighborhood in the city of Oakland, Carpenter eyed the vacant lot next door to her apartment with dreams of growing tomatoes and raising chickens. And then she went ahead and did it. Started building raised beds and growing vegetables. The operation expanded into chickens, turkeys, ducks, a beehive. Then rabbits, and eventually even a pair of pigs. Some of her neighbors enjoyed in sharing the bounty of the garden, others complained about the noise and smell of the animals. She scavenged the city streets for weeds and discarded produce to feed her birds and rabbits, and ended up dumpster-diving behind high-end restaurants to acquire enough food for the pigs. I admired her thriftiness and determination- at one point she tries to go for an entire month living just on what grows in her garden, the meat from her animals, and what she can forage elsewhere in the neighborhood (fruit trees overhanging sidewalks, for example). I've often dreamed of keeping chickens for eggs and bees for the honey, but don't think I could go quite so far as Carpenter and slaughter bunnies for the table. I'm just too squeamish! Anyhow, Farm City was a quick, enjoyable read. The author also keeps a blog about her food-raising exploits.

I found out about this book on Amy Reads. Borrowed it from the public library.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 276 pages, 2009