A History of the World in 6 Glasses

A History of the World in 6 Glasses is a great book by Tom Standage. Who realized that beverages were so important? Beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola are what Standage focuses on and he brings us the history of the drink’s prime era.

Some fun facts:

Beer was drunk by everyone because it was not as poisonous as the water was. And it used to be drunk with straws so that the drinkers would not drink the floating grains.

Greeks and Romans drank wine that was mixed with water.

Coffee houses were promoted as the new intellectual hangout of their era - in the 1700s!

The East India Company practically started a war in China so that they could get more tea imports.

Coca-Cola started as a medicine and was created by a patent medicine chemist.

With this book, beverages join the group of goods that the historical and modern world has bartered for and fought for. The irony is, he says, the next struggle will be for access for the most basic drink of all - water. Something to look forward to. Hmmm.

An entertaining and informative read. You don't have to be a history junkie to enjoy this.

Book of True Desires

The Book of True Desires by Betina Krahn is a fun adventure from the first page. Cordelia O' Keefe is an adventuress/traveler/author who has come to her wayward tycoon grandfather for a loan for her next expedition. The crafty coot - has conditions for his funding. She must embark first on a trek to find the Gift of the Jaguar from a rubbing of Mayan stones, and she must take his butler who will hold on the purse strings. The butler in question is Hartford Goodnight who has a mysterious past of his own. Together with her aunt and a Mayan expert, they embark on a trip to Cuba (just before the Spanish American war) and Mexico. Once in Mexico, they end up hunting through the jungle for what the natives call the "hills with doors".

This trip is loaded with adventure, and Krahn takes you on a great journey, with flora and fauna abounding, evil bad guys chasing them for the "gift" and an occasional jaguar or two. Along the way Cordelia learns that Goodnight is more than he seems, and he learns that she does really know a thing or two about adventuring. A roll coaster ride done very well. Come for the adventure, stay for the romance! Lots of fun.

Trixie and Evangeline: Aging Film Stars Who Sleuth

Want a mysteries series that is fast - under 200 pages per book - humorous, and starring some fun aging film stars? Check out the Marian Babson series featuring Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair - two grand dames of the American cinema.

Reel Murder
Encore Murder
Shadows in their Blood
Even Yuppies Die
Break a Leg, Darlings
The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog

They start out by traveling to London for a special retrospective of Evangeline's films. Trixie has come along for the ride. They end up running into old rivals and flames from film days, and are shown ' the respect they deserve' , by eager young fans. Their housing leaves a bit much to be desired - a house that has been split into flats - and it becomes less desirable when they discover a body in the building. Thus they take it upon themselves to solve the crime - they did it in the movies didn't they?

The mysteries are not great puzzlers, but with these characters you really don't care. Trixie is the slightly maternal one, who was the hoofer with the heart of gold in all of her films. Evangeline is the diva who will battle her perceived rivals and tell it like it is, but only the way she thinks it is. Their dialogue is fun and it is a stitch when other people take them for just naive old ladies - when they could tell folks a thing or two about surviving in the cutthroat world of Hollywood. And they make sure there's always a brandy or two waiting.

Babson moves the stories along and is very good about the continuity in the stories considering that they are written several years apart - I'm finding that this is becoming a bit rare now days! ( The book where they make a cheesy vampire movie - they are the vampire aunts - is a hoot!)

Lots of fun - I hope she writes some more.

Italian Art Mysteries

Jonathan Argyll, an English art dealer, and Flavia di Stefano, of the Art Theft Squad, in Rome, Italy, are featured in: The Raphael Affair (1991) and The Titian Committee (1992) by Iain Pears. This is a fun series that can only go places.

The author brings us in depth into the world of art and Italy. Jonathan becomes enamored of Flavia who is a modern woman stuck in the non-modern Italian Police. The realities and/or cliches of Italian life are featured as they travel from place to place (in these - Rome and Venice) to solve their crime and bring the art or situation back to where it belongs. Pears creates characters that you want to revisit again. I particularly like Flavia's superior officer who has the love of good Italian foot ware. I am looking forward to reading more in the series. This would be great reading before a trip to Italy!

Nerds Like It Hot

Nerds Like it Hot by Vicki Lewis Thompson is another fun book in her nerd series. (My favorite about this is you really do not need to read them in any order really.) This time a makeup artist Gillian hears and sees a murder on the set of her latest movie job. She knows the murderer is rumored to have shady mob ties and goes for help from her friend Cleo, an aging actress who once was buddies with Marilyn Monroe. Cleo decided that Gillian needs to have a makeover for a disguise and gets her to go on a singles nerd cruise so that she can escape to Mexico. Cleo enlists the help of P.I. friends Lex and his partner Dante to be bodyguards.

Lex is attracted to Gillian – but she just thinks it is the new Marilyn makeover. He keeps trying to protect her from odd incidents on the ship and make sure she stays alive.

Thompson once again builds a fun cast of characters who provide Gillian with her “family”. The murderer is kinda creepy, but we know that the nerds will prevail. Definitely fun and frothy.

The River Knows

Everytime I hear the title The River Knows by Amanda Quick, I am reminded of the Gordon Lightfoot song about Lake Superior - with the line "never gives up her dead". In this case however, body of water is the river Thames, and it does give up it's dead - but they are listed as suicides. Not very acceptable in Victorian times. The book starts out with the death of three respectable women and it becomes clearer that their cases are indeed related.

Louisa Bryce and Anthony Stalbridge run into each other at a high society party. Sounds lovely? Did I mention the fact that they are both snooping into their host Elwin Hastings's bedroom? In order to escape the bodyguard - they feign a lover's kiss. Stalbridge wants to know why he keeps running into Louisa while he's investigating, what is she up to? She believes that Hastings has connections to a brothel and she is trying to dig up the truth to expose him - she is a secret newspaper correspondent. It turns out Stalbridge thinks that Hastings has a connection to his fiance' s death. The authorities said it was a suicide - but Anthony does not believe it.

They join as partners in this investigation. Anthony has a bad reputation since his fiance died - and he is noted to be from an eccentric family. Louisa is supposed to a be a quiet dull widow - but Anthony learns that there is much more to her than meets the eye. As they discover more clues and questions, they learn more about each other, and their hidden pasts and their attraction grows.

Come join the adventure - with a stalwart "modern" heroine and a hero worth cheering for.
Another one of Quick's finest. A very fun read.

Audio Books and Mysteries

I went on a road trip and needed something to entertain me. So I got an audio book. Usually I read faster than an audio book, but driving through Indiana is fairly dull. So I grabbed a CD mystery, one in series my mystery buff friend had suggested to me in the past.

Cherry Cheesecake Murder
by Joanne Fluke

Hannah Swensen is the owner of the Cookie Jar shop. In this small town, she has two beaus, a cat with personality and a mother who hovers. And then on the side she solves murders. Yes, this is a cozy mystery with recipes. (And when you are listening to the recipes - believe me - you get hungry!) Yes, this book will not change the world, and I figured out who the murderer was before the end. But she writes with such humor and fun with this cast of town characters who seem like people you know. The personalities will keep you moving along in this series. Now I just have to find the first book, and start from there. Enjoy the fun!

I Feel Bad About My Neck...

Gee thanks, Nora - now we can all be self conscious about our necks. Never realized it was an issue until reading her book.

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron, provides one with a bit of humor for your day. The short essays are fun to read in a pinch or that last bit of reading before going to bed. Ephron has a great sense of humor and she reminds me of a snarkier Erma Bombeck. A fast, fun read.

Then We Came to the End

Do you think the movie Office Space is in your top ten list? Does the TV series the Office make you laugh - however uncomfortable it gets? I have the book for you. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, has enough in it to make you laugh, take a closer look at your co-workers, and think a little about why we are really working anyway?

Ferris sets his tale in the 1990s - before 9/11, in an ad agency in Chicago. He has a wide range of character types - the cut up, the diligent one, the popular one with all the gossip, and if you have ever worked in a pressured environment filled with cubicles - you may have experienced some of the wackiness of this kind of office life. (Sometimes I think those days were a variation of an adult version of high school continued! Yeah, a bit scary!)

With a mixture of humor - the office pranks: the mysterious smell that turned out to be sushi taped to the back of a certain someone's bookcase, the radio stations that are changed each morning, and the various techniques used in looking busy for the boss, and with a mixture of pathos: the office mate whose young daughter is found murdered, the office member who dies and the threat of the boss having cancer, Ferris manages to make us care about this group. It comes to play when the corporate layoffs and cuts start happening and it starts spliting up the creative teams.

Some thoughts this book might leave you with - Who are those people you are working with? Is their office face different from who they are in their home lives? And what kind of work life do you want to have - since you spend so much time there anyway?

A very good read.

The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Who knew that a tale of the Ebola virus could be such a thriller? Preston takes us on a journey of the discovery of the Marburg and Ebola virus strains, and then shares the story of how it came to the United States and how scientists battled with it. He manages to engage you in the characters and include you in their terrifying story. A bit gorey in parts, but in the age of SARs and the threat of world wide flu strains, this is a book worth reading.

Where Stuff Comes From

Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers, and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are by Harvey Molotch

This book looks like it is going to be about how things work, but really it is about how things are designed. If you are interested in industrial design, this is the book for you. A bit dry in parts, but if you are fascinated with how designers change "everyday" objects - take a look at this.

Molotch offers some interesting points when he suggests that designers can effect social responsibility - when it comes to the things they design and thus can lighten the ecological load.

I Take This Man

Valerie Frankel's book, I Take This Man, skillfully mixes comedy and tragedy in the lives of her characters. You may start the book thinking it is about the bride Penny - but it really develops into the relationship between Penny and her mother Esther. And how they need to deal the past history and "baggage" of their lives before they can move on to future happiness. And if the bride gets dumped at the altar and the mother knocks out the groom, and kidnaps him, and holds him hostage until he writes all the thank you notes for the soon to be returned gifts, well these things can happen in the best of families.

She is able to blend the wackiness of life with the revelation that it is who you have in your life what matters most. Watching Penny and Bram's relationship change to a deeper one, and seeing Esther take a chance on having man in her life again, the groom's widowed dad - none the less, makes the reader stay up late, and want to see how this is all going to end. Frankel manages to create great characters that we can relate to and cheer for when they finally find their way.
A great read!

Flower Confidential

Be careful the next time you buy that cheap floral bouquet. Do you know where your flowers have been? And what they have been dipped in? You might want to read Amy Stewart's book about the floral industry - Flower Confidential. This is a well written book that takes the reader through the international market of cut flowers.

Some fun facts:
- Europeans buy more flowers per capita than folks in the United States - especially Germany and Switzerland.

-The United States' consumers may pay less for flowers than other countries - but there is a reason those flowers are cheap: they are not top quality and do not last as long.

- Most U.S. grocery stores have their floral areas in the worst possible place - near the produce area where the riping fruit and veggies produce ethylene. Ethylene - "which will cause downward bending of flower foliage, failure of buds to open, or open flowers to close or fall off. Florist greens will yellow, and leaves and berries will bend downward or fall off in the presence of ethylene. Damaged or diseased plant material also give off ethylene. " (from the USDA website) (Costco supposedly does a better job with their floral area than most!)

- Some foreign growers use pesticides that are banned in the United States. But try telling which flowers are which...

Stewart takes you to rose growers in Ecuador, the Miami airport's inspection area for cut flowers - where most of them are dipped in fungicide - remember that next time you take a sniff from cut flowers (most of which do not smell anyway), and the frenzied Dutch Flower auction which sets prices for most of Europe's flowers. She also writes about the growing movement for organic certification (most of Europe is already there) for flowers in the U.S.

This book is definitely worth a look if you are a flower lover. It will make you want to buy a bouquet - or run outside and cut your own. But be careful where and what you are buying.

Defiant Gardens

Defiant Gardens : Making Gardens in Wartime by Kenneth I. Helphand, is a good book to read in the spring when the desire to garden and dig about in the dirt is very strong after a long winter. He studies very specific periods of history where gardening not only helped with physical survival, but helped people mentally survive.

He looks into the gardens that were created and documented in wartime. He starts with the trenches during World War I, proceeds to the horrors of the Jewish ghettos in WWII, and informs us about the gardens of prisoner of war camps in Europe as well as the civilian war camps in Asia. He ends with a chapter about the Japanese-American camps in the U.S. And in a final chapter mentions more recent wars in Serbia, Africa and in Iraq.

He explains the conditions of the war, the situations that these people found themselves in or were forced into. He goes into the documentation of the gardens - photographs and writings to show how these gardens sustained the people around them. And in some cases, he can tell us whether these gardeners survived their war.

This ended up being one of my favorite passages:

"In an extreme situation beyond an individual's control, such as is common during war, the manifestation of the human ability to wield power over something is a potent reminder of our ability to withstand emotional despair and the forces of chaos. Gardens domesticate and humanize dehumanized situations. They offer a way to reject suffering, an inherent affirmation and sign of human perseverance. In contrast to war, gardens assert the dignity of life, human and nonhuman, and celebrate it."

A very powerful book about a little known area of history. For serious gardeners and students of history.