“Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food” by Paul Greenberg 333.956 GR (also eBook, downloadable audiobook)
In between self-deprecating, humorous personal anecdotes Greenberg portrays a very serious depletion of four types of fish from all the oceans and seas. They have dominated our modern seafood market and are salmon, tuna, bass, and cod, all of which used to be quite numerous indeed. So the reader alternates between groans of concern and chuckles of rueful recognition.
First sentence: “In 1978 all the fish I cared about died.” Greenberg proceeds to write about subsistence fishing, sport fishing, dams, water pollution, the fishing industry (both wild fish and farmed fish), what fish to order at a restaurant and fish-related lore. As for farmed fish, he uses 19th century intellectual Francis Galton’s rules for domestication: 1) hardy, 2) endowed with an inborn liking for man, 3) comfort-loving, 4) able to breed freely, 5) needful of only a minimal amount of tending. There are 4 primary meat-producing domesticated mammals (sheep, goats, pigs, cattle); similarly, there are 4 primary meat-producing birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese). Salmon adapt to a farmed environment, but the others not so easily. Greenberg suggests not trying to farm bass and going with a fish called “tra” of the genus Pangasius which may already be the most productive food fish on earth if records from Vietnamese growers and government officials are to be believed. But have you ever seen “tra” on a restaurant menu? One ominous factor overrides everything Greenberg writes about: Human Demand.
Greenberg’s descriptions of fish and their watery environment are magnificent. Fish are beautiful and scary in their power and mystery. I really got a much greater appreciation for fish from reading this book.
A book that Greenberg referenced several times was “Cod” by Mark Kurlansky 333.95 KU.
Yes, Hedy’s on a reading binge–three reviews in just one week! The Gladwellian trilogy includes “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. “The Outliers” main premise seems to be that there are many geniuses in the world and many people who work very hard, but even if you put both those things together, it takes more than that. We are born at different times, members of different families, living in different places, given different opportunities. The combinations are unquantifiable. Gladwell tells fascinating stories about the Beatles and Bill Gates and why he thinks they were successful, why Korean and Brazilian airlines have had such abysmal crash records, how rice paddies and language make the Chinese skilled at math, why the best hockey players are born in the first half of the year, etc. etc. I love how Gladwell thinks out of the box!
Spencer-Fleming’s debut mystery won an unprecedented number of awards: Anthony, Macavity, Barry, Dilys, Agatha, and Malice Domestic. It’s the first in the Clare Fergusson series which takes place in the small town of Miller’s Kill, upstate New York. Clare is a new Episcopal priest in a conservative parish. She herself is not so conservative, however. Before becoming a priest, she was an Army helicopter pilot in Desert Storm and her fondest dream now is to help unwed teenage mothers have a better life. When a newborn baby is abandoned on the church steps, she meets Russ Van Alstyne, the town’s police chief. He’s an agnostic when it comes to God and is cynical about social issues, but he’s also ex-Army having served during the Vietnam War. Their military experiences serve as a bond for them. Clare and Russ’s relationship and where it’s going to go is a bigger deal even than the mystery itself for many readers.
In this psychobiography of Henry James in the years 1895-1899 (with many flashbacks), the reader learns about what made a particular author tick. He had an unusual, richly intellectual, and often tragic family life. He had a lot of friends, some erstwhile, some longlived, all eccentric. He loved living all over Europe, especially Rye, England, but did not become an English citizen until the year before he died. His powers of observation allowed him to use actual people and real-life incidents in the creation of his fictional characters and plots in such books as “Daisy Miller”, “The Portrait of a Lady”, and “The Turn of the Screw”. He was an introvert who loved solitude, but at the same time experienced loneliness. And he was a genius of a writer.
The Contemporary Books Discussion Groups will be reading at least one book a year (till 2015) in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. “The March” refers to what happened in 1864 when Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta and marched 60,000 troops east through Georgia to the sea and then north into the Carolinas.
This is the first in a series that was published in 1966 with many Cold War references. From the publisher: “Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown, married children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. So, naturally, she became a CIA agent.” Yes, she just unexpectedly walked into the director’s office and said she’d always wanted to be a spy and was offering her services on the spot. Through a case of mistaken identity and an emergency need for a simple courier, Mrs. Pollifax was entrusted with the job of picking up an important item in Mexico City and bringing it back to CIA headquarters. The CIA’s communist opponents were underestimated, however, and Mrs. Pollifax gets into deep, deep trouble, ending up in a prison cell in Albania.
This was Augustana College’s “First Book” recently–the one all incoming freshmen are required to read. This year the River Action Environmental Book Group read and discussed it too. I’ve often read that water will be the 21st century oil–wars will be fought over it. Royte fills this book with all sorts of facts and anecdotes. She reminded me of National Public Radio reporting in that she states a solution that sounds feasible and then in the next paragraph handily refutes it. She does this with fluoride, ethanol, filtered water, plastic made out of corn, container deposit laws, recycling….etc. At least she does eventually reveal what her personal views and habits are. She too has had to learn to compromise idealism with practicality. We all have to find our own way. This book gives us a heads-up on all the ways there are to drink clean (or dirty) water.
This is the first title in the Sister Frevisse Medieval Mystery series. It takes place in 1431 at St. Fredeswide’s Priory in England. The frail and saintly novice Thomasine is close to making her final vows, but her aunt, the blaspheming, hard-drinking Lady Ermentrude has other plans for Thomasine. When Ermentrude dies suddenly, Sister Frevisse, the hosteler of the priory and an amateur sleuth, fears murder and the most likely suspect is Thomasine.
An interesting cover with a net shopping bag that is reminiscent of a little black dress. See also Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen 811.6 JA and Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh FIC HAIG for more good books with black dress cover images.
This was one of the books we read and discussed for Global Gathering Brazil as Amado is one of the most famous of Brazilian fiction authors. The action takes place in 1925 in a town called Ilheus (which happens to be a Sister City of Davenport, Iowa). The theme is Progress, how much and how fast. Tradition has it that if a wife is having an affair, a husband has the right (or, in fact, is obligated) to murder both wife and lover. The husband will be found innocent of wrong-doing. The story revolves around this tradition. The main character, Gabriela, is an unusual person–simple and poor, but also talented (in cooking and loving), empathetic, and free of societal constraints–that is, until she and an up-and-coming businessman fall in love and he convinces her to marry him.