Sex and Science Made Hilarious

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Is there any subject that Mary Roach can't make fascinating and humorous? I don't want to write any spoilers about the book, but I will say that she deftly examines the work of Kinsey, Masters and Johnsons, and numerous other current day sex researchers and physicians. If you ever wondered about pheromones, libido, attraction, physiological aspects of sex, sexual dysfunctions or sexual norms throughout the ages, then this book is for you. Roach’s footnotes alone are worth the cover price. Well researched, insightful, and very very funny. I highly recommend it.

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The Problems with Processed Foods

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Salt Sugar Fat” has ruined grocery shopping for me. I’ve never been a fan of highly processed foods. I am not one to throw Kraft Cheesy Skillets, or Lunchables into my grocery cart. I know that processed foods are bad for you and full of empty calories. But this book took that point of view and radically expanded it.

So much of what we think of as “food” contains little to no actual food! And it is a worse problem than just obesity. These “foods” contribute to high blood pressure, organ failure, heart failure, altered taste buds, and even cancer! Manufacturers of these products know their dangers and don’t eat them. I wouldn’t eat a meal at a fancy restaurant that the chef wouldn’t touch, so why would I eat a meal in a box that the CEO of Kraft wouldn’t touch?

“Salt Sugar Fat” is broken up into three sections that address each ingredient’s role in processed foods. First is Sugar, and this section is a real eye opener. We all know about the sugars involved in sodas, but what was really frightening to me was the secret sugars that are added into all manner of foods in order to mask other chemical “off” flavors. This is the section that first introduces the concept of the “Bliss Point”. According to Moss’ research, people’s bliss points for sugar are higher and higher due to early exposure to high sugar foods in infancy. If you grew up drinking soda and other sweet drinks, you are doomed to crave higher and higher sugar contents in your foods for the rest of your life.

The Salt section has similar information to the sugar section. People are developing higher and higher tolerances to salts in their foods. Even children, who normally don’t like a lot of salt, are being trained by processed foods to crave it. Again, salt is added to EVERYTHING. It provides better mouth feel for a lot of products, preserves products, and masks metallic and other off flavors.

I was ready to be hit hard by the fat section, and I was not let down. Fats are not going away from processed foods. Fat is essential to their success. Moss’ research shows that when salt and sugar are combined with fats, our brains/bodies do not identify how much fat we are ingesting. Basically, the key components of processed foods work together to turn off our natural satiety. That’s terrible news for the consumer, but great news for processed food manufacturers.

Don’t read this book if you aren’t prepared to go to the grocery store armed with your new found information on processed food. You will be checking the labels on everything and evaluating and translating the information therein. Nothing is as it first appears. “Low Fat” or “Diet” varieties often harbor secret stashes of extra salt or sugar that keep the calories ridiculously high. But if you are ready for some hard truths that might just save your life, get this book today.


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Organic Gardening in Florida Requires Specialized Knowledge

Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida by Ginny Stibolt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Florida offers gardeners unique challenges and benefits that are not generally addressed in most gardening publications. I find myself always doing a little mental math when I read about when and how to start seeds. I live in North Florida (zone 9B), and I pretty much have to plant spring crops (like English Peas) in the winter. It’s April right now, and our high temp today is 91 degrees Fahrenheit. All of my greens began bolting in February, and my window for growing cool/cold weather crops is almost too small to get anything grown to maturity. And this is in North Florida! My friends in South Florida can forget about growing a lot of common crops entirely!

I’ve been gardening for about 4 years now, and I really wish that I had discovered this book when I first started. It would have given me a great start; instead I had to learn things the hard way. Four years into it, I’ve figured a lot of the info in this book out already. It has some great information on different organic gardening methods, composting, and bed building. However, I’ve read more detailed information on these topics in other books dedicated to them.

What “Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida” gets right is its focus on Florida specific gardening challenges. The book recognizes that Florida is unique in that there are many different growing zones in the state, and what works in North Florida will not necessarily work in Central or South Florida. It also addresses Florida’s poor soils and what can be done to amend them.

There is a large section of the book that describes Florida tolerant crops and where they grow best in the state. This section is worth the total price of the book. It is a fantastic reference for anyone gardening in the state. I can look up parsnips or peas and find out how well they grow in each section of the state, when to plant them, and how to care for them.

Though I had already read or experienced a lot of the information provided in this book, the vegetable references have earned it a place in my personal library. If you garden in Florida, this book will have valuable information for you, even if you are a skilled and experienced gardener.


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Get Ready to Garden

Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! by Patricia Lanza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found Patricia Lanza’s “Lasagna Gardening” to be highly inspirational. This is a gardening method that anyone can try. It is basically sheet composting inside of a garden bed, but instead of waiting for the compost to be fully processed, you can plant inside a lasagna garden as soon as it is built.

One of the keys to lasagna gardening is using the organic materials that you have on hand. I have a lot of oak leaves, grass clippings and garden waste on hand, so that is what I will be using to build my lasagna beds. Though the oak leaves can make the soil highly acidic, I’ll temper that with a dusting of wood ash that I saved from my winter fires.

There are only two things that I found as drawbacks to this book. The first is Lanza’s dependence on using large quantities of Sphagnum moss. This is a product that takes hundreds of years to grow back, so it is practically unsustainable. I do not want to use Sphagnum in my gardens at all. I am going to find an alternative to the moss that is a renewable resource. I am considering using a combination of Spanish moss (which I have tons of in my yard) and coconut coir. I’ve used the coir in the past as part of a potting mix. It holds water similarly to the Sphagnum moss and it is highly renewable, so I think that’s a good alternative.

The second is her recommendation of hybrid plants. I don’t have a moral argument against using hybrids, but you can’t save seed from hybrid plants, so you can’t build a series of garden plants that are adapted perfectly to your garden if you are using hybrids. It’s a small complaint, but I would have appreciated more recommendations of heirloom varieties.

Other than that, this book is very thorough. Whether you want to grow vegetables, herbs, flowers, or even start a container garden, Lanza has you covered in this book. She lays out the simple steps to building a lasagna garden bed, and then goes into how to care for different kinds of plants in the new bed(s). The method is so simple and low-cost, you will want to start a new bed right away. Regardless of which zone you live in, or what you want to grow, get Patricia Lanza’s “Lasagna Gardening” book. It will educate and inspire you.


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Composting: Not Just for Kitchen Scraps Anymore

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the only book on composting you will ever need. It discusses many different composting methods, style, and tools, and it ends on uses, cover crops, and green mulching. It uses the real, personal experiences of the authors, fantastic step-by-step photos and diagrams, and some great recipes and info graphics.

I got a lot of new ideas and plans from this book, and I can't wait to get started on my new composting projects. I checked this book out of the library, but it is such a fantastic resource, that I will soon be purchasing my own copy.

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Kingsolver Gives Us Wings

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I charged through this book. It was strange, because I wouldn't say it was action packed, but the characters were so engaging and the plight of the butterflies so tenuous that I couldn't put it down. Kingsolver rarely fails me, and this is another triumph. Wonderful read, you should get it here:



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The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this book because the life of Elizabeth Marsh sounded profoundly liberated and interesting, regardless of the time period in which she lived. She was a woman who had many adventures, traveled the world, flaunted conventions, and wrote about it. What's not to find interesting? How about this book, for a start?

I was under the impression that this book was Elizabeth's story, based largely on her own words. I read over 100 pages before I came upon anything substantial about Elizabeth herself. For a book about someone who should be a feminist icon, it concentrates heavily on the men around her. If you would like to know a lot about the life and business dealings of James Crisp, then this is the book for you. One of the reasons we know anything at all about Elizabeth Marsh is that she wrote books and diaries about her life and travels. Yet the meager sprinklings of quotation from these works were so light as to not be worth much at all. I wanted to hear what Elizabeth thought about things, not what author, Lind Colley thought about Marsh.

But editorializing seems to be Colley's objective in this book. She plucks this idea that Elizabeth Marsh's mother may not have been purely Caucasian from seeming thin air. No where does she provide proof of such an assertion, but because the woman grew up in the islands, she must be part African. Over and over again in this book, Colley bizarrely repeats the myth of Marsh's mother's lineage, as if it has any bearing on Elizabeth's world view. It happened so many times it became glaring and made me wonder what Colley's true agenda was.

I did not enjoy this book at all. In fact, it frustrated me to no end. But that isn’t Elizabeth Marsh’s fault. I don’t know how Colley managed to take such a fascinating, exciting life story, and turn it into such a mundane, boring, exposition on British business and politics. This book was a severe disappointment. I am just glad that Marsh isn’t around to read it.


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