Where Our Food Comes From

This just came in the mail, and I'm looking forward to reading it:

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine.


There is a really interesting encyclopedia of food crops at our local library. My sister, who enjoys growing unusual fruits, pointed me to a nursery called Edible Landscapes that, among other things, sells Paw Paw trees. It's a shame most people don't know about the native edible plants of their own locality.

Books I'm reading, sorta

Little Dorritt; Graded Go Problems V. 1; Mycelium Running; How to Build Kids' Playhouses; a book on Paul by Crossnan and Borg (just skimmed it for highlights); just finished The Gears of the City (an OK imitation of Perdido Street Station, but I liked it a lot better than China Mieville's actual latest, Kraken); and some bits of Hegel.

Books on my reading shelf now: a Diana Wynne Jones juvenile, a couple of books on organizing, a Thomas Merton pocket book, a Zen anthology called Minding the Mind, and "City of darkness" about Kowloon Walled City.

Zizek on violence

I've just started Zizek's small book on violence. As tricky a thinker he's supposed to be, it's been easy going so far. The message seems to be about (violent) sins of omission, versus (violent) sins of commission, though I don't understand the reasons he uses "subjective" vs. "objective" for this.

Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman

Had to stop reading this one; the cover seemed promising (just think of the promise of the title!) but 2/3 of the way through, still pretty much just sex and violence. There is probably a big plot twist coming but I'm not going read through more of it to get there.

Cosma Shalizi's "Three Toed Sloth" weblog recommended "Bitter Angels" as a military scifi that didn't bother him, and I second that, though it's a little contrived with lots of nonlethal but still pretty bad weapons OK for the heroine.

David Byrne's bicyle diaries

While some of DB's observations are interesting, much of it is inferior travel writing; for example, he wastes some of his section on Turkey talking about the politics of a music festival there. He is also a surprisingly clumsy writer, for someone who can write such clever lyrics. I wanted to "mark up" or rewrite at least one line on every page.

Books I'm Reading

Well, nothing right now.