More selective reading reviews

An Ocean of Air by Gabrielle Walker - One of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in a while! This fascinating history of science as it relates to air is well-written, intriguing, and very educational. Gabrielle Walker is a good storyteller and makes the scientific discoveries related to air, wind, etc., accessible and interesting. I [...]

Selected book reviews

I’ve lost track of the various books I’ve been reading over the past few months, but here are some that I can recall…
Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold - This book continues The Sharing Knife series (coming after Beguilement and Legacy), where Dag and Fawn set out on a belated honeymoon journey to the sea. Along [...]

Reading: Lots of baby books

Finished reading:
Lots of baby books. I’ve summarized the basic points below, but have yet to put anything into practice so I’ve stayed away from expressing any opinions! (Will have to put up a followup post at some point once we have some actual experience… Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon - I didn’t read every word of [...]

Reading: Catching up

I’ve been such an inconsistent blogger recently that I’ve really fallen behind in my book summaries!
Finished reading: 
If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat by John Ortberg - I like John Ortberg. This “Christian living” book looks at the story of Jesus and Peter walking on the water [...]

Reading: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Finished reading:
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan - Another must-read on my list! One of the main food issue books out there by journalist Michael Pollan, who follows the “natural history of four meals” in great detail. Each main section of the book (there are three sections, but four meals, which confused me until I [...]

Reading: Real Food, The Life You’ve Always Wanted

Finished reading:
Real Food by Nina Planck - What if some of the nutritional and health ideas you’ve believed for most of your life were suddenly swept away — ideas that have been woven into the fabric of our culture, including:

Fat is bad. Low-fat is good.
Saturated fat and cholesterol will give you heart disease.
Pasteurization makes food [...]

Reading: Revolution, Thursday Next, M.C. Beaton, Childbirth, Harriet Bean, Managing Web Projects

Finished reading:
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Katz - One of the food-issue books that Steve got me for Christmas. I’m not sure if my description will do this book justice as it was very information-dense! Each chapter focuses on a different food topic, where you essentially find out how big corporations and [...]

Reading: Alexander McCall Smith, How to Pick a Peach, Tea, and Fablehaven

Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith - The third book in 44 Scotland Street series. The books originated as a periodical series, so the chapters are short and move forward quickly through the lives of the eclectic group of people featured in these books, including my favorite, the prodigious six-year-old Bertie and his controlling [...]

Reading: To Buy or Not to Buy Organic

To Buy or Not to Buy Organic by Cindy Burke was a delight to read. She is very concise and tells you what you need to know; while providing some similar information as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, this book reads more like a friendly textbook and less like a memoir. I would read [...]

Reading: Vanilla, Hamish Macbeth, Organic, Alexander McCall Smith

Finished reading:
Vanilla by Patricia Rain - All you ever wanted to know about the history and production of vanilla. While I typically like “food” books, this one was a little boring to me, honestly. I found it hard to follow the strange-sounding names and locations (a map of Mexico for context would have been nice [...]