A bunch of books...

Do books come in bunches?  Or are they in piles?  Groups?  Heaps?  Anyway, here is a couple of short reviews of books I have read in the last couple of months, from the great to the not so great.  So, the best first.

Tracy Chevalier: Remarkable Creatures.  What a great novel!  It is in the early half of the 1800s and a poor girl gets her living from discovering and selling fossils from the beach by her home village along England's southern coast.  An unmarried woman and her sisters move to town, mostly because it is a cheaper place to live than London, and she befriends the girl and learns about and collects fossil.

They discovered the most amazing fossils of the time, fossils that were bought and transported to natural history museums in London, Paris, Oxford, and so on.  These fossils were fodder for a lot of discussion in this pre-Darwin era, and fueled scientific thinking.  Plesiosaurs, ichtyosaurs...  However, the women didn't get proper credit, since they were women and fossil collecting and science were unwomanly activities. A few of the contemporary paleontologists gave them proper respect and credit, but the divide was enourmous, especially for Mary who started out illiterate and extremely poor.  For example, women were not allowed even into the meetings of the British Geological Society.

The young woman's name was Mary Anning, and her older friend was Elizabeth Philpot, who specialized in fish fossils.  This book tells the story from their viewpoint.  The general story is true, but it is a novel so gaps have been filled in with possible scenarios.  It is a great book that not only describes natural history and its discoveries in historical context, but also highlights and make the inequality come to life. And that inequality is not just between genders but also between classes and religious groups. I highly recommend this book. So, 5 stars.

Sandra Newman: The Western Lit Survival Kit.  This book is fantastic! Well, near fantastic, because sometimes she goes overboard. I read the whole thing straight through, laughed, smiled and took note on which classics that I wanted to read and which ones I never need to open. Actually, I don't feel the need to read any of the classics after reading this book, I have too many books already here at home waiting to be opened.  Probably around a 100 unread books... and only a few of them are classics.  Like Marco Polo... I want to read that one, but I digress. 

Her style is out of this world funny and knowledgeable. Ah, we need to let high school students have a look in this book! The book is exactly what the subtitle says "An irreverent guide to the classics, from Homer to Faulkner". Each classic book is graded on Importance, Difficulty, and Fun, and she of course admits that that is a very subjective scale she has graded these on. She is not always trying to be dead serious, which is what I like, but some other bibliophiles that have reviewed this book have a problem with that. 4 stars.

Jill Ker Conway has written three memoirs about her life as a child in Australia, student, emigrant to the US to study history at Harvard, her scholarly work on women in history, her years as a Dean at a Canadian university, and then as the President of the small all-female Smith College in Massachusetts.  I reviewed the two first books here on this blog, and they are fantastic and refreshing. 

The writing is exquisite, intellectually so rewarding, and she makes you think.  There was much more anti-woman stuff going on in academia going on back then, but some things are still the same.  And many things that we struggle with today have not changed at all, and they are not based on gender.  People unwilling to change, people that want too much change, the will to look beyond what you have learned in the class, the willingness to discuss without arguing, and so on.

I read her third book recently, A Woman's Education, which is smaller and less strictly a memoir in a way.  It describes her years at Smith College, and goes in depth into how it was to administer a small independent school.  It wasn't all easy, not at all.  What infuses the book is her caring about students and their education, on a very deep, serious level. 

I admire her, she has been a big inspiration in my recent work.  She tries to change the view of some older professors, make reformations in educational thinking, and is seen as a rebellion, but it is how things have to be done.  The world changes and so do we and so do how we do things.  This book I am keeping! 5 stars.

Last book in the pile.... Daniel Beard's The Field and Forest Handy Book. This is a reprint of a 1912 book about camping, scouting, outdoor recreation, hiking, etc., and includes great illustrations, which I think were made by the author as well. Daniel Beard was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America, and boy, is this a boyish book.  Girls do not exist.  At least not outside any house.  The book is really a time capsule of how things were back then.

There are many useful skills described in here, how to make a raised platform for a place to sleep in a swamp, how to make a logomaran so you can drift down a river (never ever use fresh wood, or you might sink), how to make fire without matches, how to make a play house, what to eat in camp, and that you should bring a flour sack to make into a pillow case.  He even have instructions on how to build a fire engine. Oh, and even how to make a herbarium is in here.

This book is not really about true survival based on old traditional knowledge like the book Wildwood Wisdom (reviewed on this blog), but about fun wild stuff boys can do outside.  Some certainly has survival tones to it, but some is more silly, like How to Play Pirate and How to Make an Aquarium.  Under Novel Food Used in Camp, he writes: "...Wolf meat is said to be sticky and disagreeable.".  Times were different back then.

Grade?  I am not sure.  Maybe 2-3 stars, but it has certainly historic interest and I would have loved this book when I was 12-14 years old. I learned a lot of useful information that I probably won't have much use for in my life, but that is OK. One day it might come in very handy.

OK, that is it for this batch.  If you read all the way to down here, good for you!  Now you know more than before :)

Bacon bits and pieces on the internet

Oh, hi again everybody!

Life is going on as usual, and some new and old things on the internet...

knit bacon (yes!) and hamburgers [Core 77]

others make fantastic art out of subway maps [Core 77]

or octopi out of sausages,

make food out of the throw-away parts (which reminds me of the one time my grandfather tried to make porridge out of potato peels, not a success, and I was retold the story as a little kid by my mom) [NY Times]

some whiskey needs special fungi... great science story [WIRED]

and as usual, Shorpy manages to find the best end photos.

PS.  This is post 2050 on this blog.  That is a good number too, as is 44 and 33. Right LA?

Soon to an IMAX theatre near you: Rocky Mountain Express

I have a feeling that there are plenty of people in this family who want to see this movie.

Stamp of the Day: Blue whale (Blåval)

Balaenoptera musculus - muscular indeed are these giants of the Earth.  I have never seen one, but I would love to.  This stamp is a joint issue between Sweden and Canada from 2010.  Very few whales reach Swedish waters, only some lost ones come in between Sweden and Denmark.  The Baltic See is too sweetwaterish (brackish) for most sea creatures to survive well there, so it is only along the West Coast of Sweden you can really see any small dolphins or smaller whales.  So Sweden weren't really in the whaling business. We stuck to herring, timber, and mechanical innovations like the ball bearings, dynamite, and gauge blocks. I wonder what whales are thinking when they swim in the ocean these days.... wouldn't it be interesting to know?

Book review: American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen

This is one great book: American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen.  One not too thick, not too dense, not too preachy, not too boring, not too silly, not too detailed, not too American book.  American terroir (not terror, not terrier, but terroir – as in the land and microclimate that give wines special flavors, "the taste of place") is a book that takes us on a tour around North America to ten great food products, and their greatness are because of where they are grown and the history and climate of the place.

Rowan Jacobsen writes in a funny but detailed way, giving you an abundance of history, science, and culture in short but dense sentences that never become a chore to read.  In fact, when I fell asleep reading this at night I was unhappy because I wanted to continue reading it, not go to sleep. This is in stark opposition to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (TOD), which I am struggling to finish after a year of trying to get into it.  I ought to like TOD, because I ought to like Michael Pollan and his work for better food and agriculture in America, but I just don’t like it that much.  This book, this little gem of red rowanberries, this I LOVE! 

The chapters deal with the following ingredients and food products: maple syrup from Vermont, coffee from Panama, apple cider from New England and apples from Washington State, honeys from everywhere, potatoes from Prince Edward Island, wild mushrooms and native plants in southeastern Canada, oysters from Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, avocados from Mexico, Yukon River King Salmon, unusual wines from California, cheese from Vermont, and chocolate from Chiapas in Mexico. 

While reading this book my brain kept constant notes on which people I would recommend each chapter to (coffee to my brother, salmon to my husband, etc.) but in the end, I will have to recommend the whole book to everybody.  There is no best chapter, they are all great.  It is easy reading, but chock-full of great facts and stories. Each chapter ends with a few recipes and a list of suppliers and websites for more information.

Rowan Jacobsen manages to teach the reader a lot of plant genetics, breeding history, soil science, and microbiology without the reader even noticing – we are too busy just enjoying the story.  By highlighting not just the local food and sustainability, but the connection of these foods to the natural places, history of its people, and personal stories, Jacobsen made me want to know more and more about our little corner on this Earth and its connections to the past.

This book was a great surprise and a great find, and I recommend it to anybody – chocolate fanatics, oyster nerds, historians, and food people, grandmothers, teenagers, and husbands, Swedes, and Americans, and any mycologists and farmers out there.  It is just a GREAT book, probably one of the best non-fiction books I have read in 5 years.  (Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham was also great, but this is more mainstream). It seems like many people like this book - I just found some of the reviews here. A new classic, indeed. 

The only thing I missed was a detailed index, please, publishers, don't skip on this.  We need indices! Books on paper don't have Google attached to them.

 Here are some excerpts to give you a feel for the writing style:

(on maple syrup):

"Caramelization is one of those unlikely tricks that reminds you that the world is magical and mysterious. It's the flavor equivalent of using a prism to transform white light into a rainbow. In this case, the prism is heat, which breaks and odorless sugar molecule (sucrose) into a rainbow of delightful aroma compounds."

(on cheese):

"Cheese used to be something that nature did spontaneously, We didn't design the cheese so much as guide it, like an equestrian riding a horse. The cheese powered itself and the cheesemaker gave it some direction."

(on oysters):

"A geoduck looks like something that might owe a lot of money to Jabba the Hutt. A giant clam that burrows so deep that armor becomes superfluous, it maintains a vestigial shell that sticks to its backside like a G-string on a sumo wrestler."

(on apples):

It turns out that, given a choice, people overwhelmingly go for the reddest apple. So growers kept selecting for the reddest. They were not, however, selecting for the tastiest. Eventually, Red Delicious apples eclipsed fire-engine red and reached a color imaginatively described as 'midnight-red'. And most are virtually inedible, with dry flesh and thick skin.  Good-tasting apples have small, tightly packed cells that break apart at first bite, spilling their juice in all directions.  Red Delicious have cottony, dry cells with too much air in between."

Book review: True North - memoir by Jill Ker Conway

Jill Ker Conway has written two memoirs, both of which are excellent but maybe not of interest to everyone.  The first one is called The Road from Coorain, and describes her upbringing in the 1930s on a drought-stricken sheep farm in rural Australia and her subsequent move into to the city to be able to attend higher education. It also describes her difficult relationship with a mother with mental and control issues.  When that book ends, Jill has just accepted a graduate school position in Boston, USA, so she is about to move to the other side of the world.

The second book, True North, describes her experience as an immigrant and academic, first in the US, and later in Canada.  It is a wonderful book, and it describes in detail how it was (and sometimes still is) to be a female in a male-dominated university environment.

As a historian Jill focused on women's roles and attitudes in the 1800s and 1900s, and she eventually became one of the most cited authors in this field.  She also describes how it was to live with her husband's mental illness (bipolar), how to stand the Canadian winters, struggles with the old guard when it comes to improve and renew university courses, and how she eventually first became a vice-president at University of Toronto (at 37) and then the president of Smith College in the US when she was only 40 years old. It is a gorgeously written book, and many times I recognize my own experiences in what she writes. It is a wonderful book about love, immigration and emigration, feminism, sexism, and teaching.

Here is a little excerpt - Jill has just arrived in the US and been introduced to three female graduate students that will become some of her best friends at Harvard:

"The conversations all evening were so easy I took to them like an addict to a drug. I'd never lived in a place where I didn't have to censor my words and edit my emotions. In Australia, one mustn't offend by being too abstract. Puns based on too much learning would certainly fall flat. Double entendres based on several languages would miss the mark. Admitting that one wanted to be a great scholar, perhaps the best in one's field, just wasn't done. It was a shameful secret to hide behind a well-polished exterior carefully contrived from the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Suddenly I could say whatever came into my mind, not just to a lover, but to a group of people like myself. I wasn't quite sure when would happen if I began to express my innermost thoughts, but I could feel the surge of adrenaline that the very idea of actually being myself set going."

This reminds me of when I came to the US.  For the first time I felt free of society's 'how you are supposed to be'-rules, frequently imposed by friends, teachers, media, and so on.  In Sweden the Jante law was in full blossom, and when I arrived in America nobody knew who I really was, what my background was, what I was supposed to be, so I could shed any image and start afresh.  It was wonderful!  And people here are so tolerant and curious about you in a very good way.

The image of the US in Sweden are often shallow and based on commercial and entertainment interests (Hollywood, music, TV series, New York cabs, crime statistics, crazy presidents), but the truth is that this is a diverse country with enormous possibilities for people to do what they want.  Of course there are horrible and unfair things here too, all I am saying is that the image of US is simplified in many countries abroad (and vice versa).  The same thing goes for the image of Sweden when you are in other countries.  The reality is always more gritty and complex than many of us want to admit. It is so much more convenient to simplify and not deal with the complexity of it all.

I recommend this book to anybody that teaches at a university or college, anybody interested in history and the role of women in society, anybody that has ever moved from one country to another for a longer time, and for anybody that want to read something good and intellectual. This is not an easy-read crime story for entertainment; this book is about life and it is complex, just as life is. Thanks Jill for sharing!

Nitobe, a place to be

I love Japanese and Chinese gardens. Maybe it is that they follow so strict rules, or maybe it is the combination of strict and whimsical. In Vancouver I visited the Nitobe Memorial Garden, which is designed by a famous Japanese landscape architect. It is not big, and it is located on the University of British Columbia campus. But, as we say in Swedish: 'liten, men naggande god" ("small, but superb"), that is exactly how it is. Here are some photos for your enjoyment.

UBC Botanical Garden, Vancouver

Some photos from the UBC Botanical garden in Vancouver, a great place on the university campus. These photos are from the plantings, but there is also a forest with enormous conifer trees, ferns, and mosses, but I didn't really get any good photos of those. In one of the tall dead tree tops, really high up, a bald eagle was sitting (sorry, I was using my little camera and didn't have a tele lens, but you can kind of see its' white head). The Asian white poppies were amazing with their shadows through the petals. The purple flower with spikes is around it is a flowering artichoke, and the leaf with a purple vein is a cabbage leaf that got a little help in Photoshop. I love 'stockrosor' (hollyhocks), with their tall spikes of large flowers. We can't grow any in our garden because they get attacked by a rust fungus and die, which is a shame.

Food quote of the day

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded... dead" - Woody Allen

Oh, if he knew what he was missing. Ask SK, my former student, who had her first living oyster in Vancouver and loved it. Here is the photo:

pepper and...

The best looking graffiti I have ever seen. In Vancouver's Gastown, of course. It did point towards the ocean so it was accurate too.

for modern techno babies

Seen in Vancouver. My Dad always wondered where the OFF button was on our heads, and look, here it is, in the Ipood baby shirt. If you have a small car (like a Mini Cooper) and a baby, then you of course need to have the Mini Pooper shirt too. No, KV, I didn't buy one for your newest one :)

Vancouver, the city - like it or not?

On our last day in Vancouver we spent a few hours downtown, and went to four different areas: Chinatown, Gastown, along the harbor, and Granville Island. I took lots of photos, and will only show a selected few here, the rest can be seen on my Flickr account, in the Vancouver folder.

Some thoughts about Vancouver: All buildings are made of glass, especially modern apartment and office buildings. There is a lot of construction going on, but also areas right downtown that are in horrible shape, real dumps with homeless people or abandoned lots. Reminded me of parts of Baltimore or St. Louis, so a real American city-problem. The harbor is right in the center of the city, which is surrounded by mountains. You have giant cargo ships, railroad, and roads straight into the city center. The railroad that ends in Vancouver is Canadian Pacific and you can take the train all across North America nearly to Greenland from here.



















The worst we saw was in Gastown, or near it, is an area that in the guidebook has been described as 'old town' feel with cute stores and cobble stone streets. There were some cobble stones, but most stores were tourist souvenir shops with things Made in China. We did see a sweater made in USA, a thing you can barely find in USA these days. Run down areas here too, and a steam powered clock that whistled four times an hour. That was cool, it is the only one in the world, but I bet they just put it there to lure tourists to the area. But some alleys you stayed away from, you just didn't feel like walking on a street where someone had just peed (we saw him do it).




Chinatown was wonderful, and had a different feel to it compared to New York's Chinatown. The buildings were smaller and it seemed more authentic and much less 'krims-krams' sold to tourists. Here were many markets with fruits, seafood, and medicinal plants and animals. Dried gecko, dried scallops and mussles, dried squid, anyone? We had lunch at a fantastic place called Hon's Wun-Tun (Noodle) House, highly recommended. We stuffed ourselves with dumplings, roast duck, noodles and chicken dishes. Nothing tasted like the usual Chinese-American fast food restaurant, and it was so different and so much better. The Chinese beer I had was the best I had during the whole trip, and Canada is known for its great beer so I must have missed out on the good ones.

Finally we ended up on Granville Island, which is paradise. It is a small island nestled under a big bridge going into downtown, and filled with old wharf and shipyard buildings that mostly have been converted to stores and restaurants. The best is a large public food market, just like a Swedish 'saluhall', but good and filled with local and organic things. I could live there forever! I bought spices of course, Asian ones that are hard to find, and sambal oelek, an Indonesian chili sauce that I love. You can get it in Sweden but not in New Jersey. SK and I ended up at the restaurant The Sandbar (with its own boiler signage) for a fast dinner before we had to go to the airport. SK had her first raw oysters, and she loved it, and the rest of the food was great too. But the best was the view over the sound and the rest of Vancouver. Absolutely magnificent. Each chair came with its own blanket to wrap around you if the evening got cold. What a place. At that moment Vancouver city redeemed itself in my eyes. I really could live there I think. I have more from Vancouver, pictures from the Botanical Garden and Anthropology museum are up next.

Two Canadian walls

I don't yet have many photos of Canadian houses, but I have these two from the University of British Columbia campus. First the Chemistry building, with colored glass in the slits in the wall.And another building with narrow windows. Seems like they don't like sunshine in their buildings, strange.

Early morning on Wreck Beach

Sunrise in the east, over Vancouver city.

Wreck beach, the only nude beach in Vancouver, but it was empty when I was there early this morning.

Wrecked logs, some really large.

When I was standing here looking at a great blue heron (I think), a bald eagle suddenly flew over me, all quiet. Those are really majestic birds!

The tide was out so kelp and seagrass on the rocks were above water.

Update: The day after the walk down to the beach I woke up with horrible pain in my legs. To get to the beach you have to walk down a steep, steep path that probably has at least 150 wooden stair steps in a nice conifer forest with lots of lush ferns. To get back up the cliff you have to walk up the same way. It is not easy, but certainly worth it.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - first impressions

This is how summer is supposed to be - 20 degrees Celsius, low humidity, and a little rain now and then and sun in between. I now remember how much I really, really dislike New Jersey summers, especially after the horrible downpour in the dark on the highway this morning on the road to the airport. Six hours on a flight and I am in a different country, both literally (feels like Europe!) and climatically.n Everything is green, deers are not eating all the plantings, I hear seagulls, and I have only been here 6 hours. So far I haven't seen the city, only the airport and the university campus, but I love it. The houses are cool, with cedar roofs and steep angles, lots of wood, not one McMansion seen so far. Even the money is more beautiful - oh, well, most everything is more beautiful than the US dollar bills. With the cooler summer days flowers last longer so everything is in flower everywhere, lavender, spiraea, hydrangeas, and much more. Now I know why my Dad wanted to emigrate to British Columbia as a teenager, but I am also glad he didn't, because then I wouldn't have been born in Sweden. But Canada doesn't seem to be far from Sweden. Oh, the airport, I have to talk about that too - it is CLEAN, nicely designed with stainless steel and glass, SPACIOUS, with over 30 luggage carousels (Newark has maybe 9 in each terminal, always overcrowded), the customs and immigration area is superefficient, etc, etc. Leaving the newest terminal at Newark Airport and arriving her was like going from a tired 1980s-decorated restaurant serving lukewarm canned soup with stains on the tile floor, to a cool and funky-fashionable sushi place with Swiss-designed lamps and perfect floor cleaning habits. Small details can really give big impressions. Like the chair in my room, in one of the student apartments - it is made to lean on if you like! And free internet, and birchwood furniture in clean design, and all for half the price in a regular hotel.

On Thursday I plan to go to the old parts of Vancouver and see the world's only steam powered clock. I also hope to go down the cliff to the ocean close to here and maybe see a sea otter, only issue is that the cliff is very high and the beach below is a nude beach :) But I want to see sea shells, drift wood, and the Pacific waves before I leave. More later...