What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part III

Well, I think this will finally wrap up all of my 2010 reading.  I didn't realize it at the time, but I did a pretty good job divvying up Part I and Part III.  I guess the trick is to just quit when you get tired.  Isn't that what all the great how-to-succeed-in-life books say?  No?  So, I can take full credit for that?  Awesome.

Anyhooo...Where was I?  Oh, right.  I did a much better job of making some notes on Goodreads after finishing these books, so a lot of what you are going to see below has already appeared on my Goodreads reviews, but I've added new content as well.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan-Not that I can claim any kind of aficionado status when it comes to vampire lore, but I think this is the most plausible explanation of vampirism-as-virus that I've come across.  I generally don't get too freaked out by books, but I couldn't do my normal before-bedtime reading with this; I had to read this during the day, otherwise the 12 steps from my couch to my bedroom were too much for me to handle with all the lights off!  There were just too many opportunities for creepy things to be lurking in the hallway.    

The Best of the Best of American Science Writing edited by Jesse Cohen-  This collection covers 2000-2009, and although I was a little surprised at what comprised "the best" science writing for some of those years (Darwin's had a big influence on modern thought? Really? That's the best you've got for the whole year?), over all I enjoyed the articles. It was interesting to see how scientific focus has progressed over the last decade, knowing where we were just a decade before and, even, where we are now. Although the articles are all science-based, they aren't all technical; many investigate the moral and ethical aspects of science as well, and these were the ones that I found most interesting.  I started reading this back in April during the Read-a-Thon; if you want more details you can visit my Read-a-Thon updates about doctors making mistakes, ambitious plastic surgeons, people who want to become amputees, and why low-fat diets may not really be all they're cracked up to be.   

This Is My Letter To The World:  The Omikuji Project Cycle One by Catherynne M. Valente-Whenever I think of Catherynne M. Valente, I also think of Nymeth.  I don't think I can document this anywhere, but I'm pretty sure it was some of her high praise (possibly for Palimpsest?) that sent me seeking out Valente in the first place.

I'm not much of a short-story person, but overall, I really enjoyed this collection. Many of Valente's stories are twists on the classic fairy tales we all know and love, but many are pure originals (at least as far as I know).  If you're like me, and not sure if a whole book of short stories is where you want to spend your money, you can check out Valente's writing at her blog, and you can subscribe to her Omikuji project and receive one short story a month. This is how I discovered her writing; and in full disclosure, I received a free copy of her book as a token of apology in regard to a billing mix-up, which was awesome and way more than was necessary. So, not only do I like her writing, but now she seems like good people, which never hurts!

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis-I liked this book enough to keep reading to see what was going to happen, but I think I could have just as easily not finished it and not been too heartbroken. I think the story about an English girl time-traveling to the 14th century is solid, but it just didn't quite have that on-the-edge-of-my-seat quality that I was hoping for, and I never felt all that much for the characters even though their lives were full of peril and drama. I've heard great things about this author though, so I'm willing to give her another chance.

The Ruins by Scott B. Smith-Ann at Books on the Nightstand named this the best airplane book ever back in 2008.  This past October, one of their podcast listeners also called in to recommend it as a good, spooky Halloween read.  I don't know if I would call it the best airplane book ever, but I can see where it would make a good vacation read (as long as you're not going to be tramping through the jungles of Mexico on your vacation!)  It provides a definite creep factor that builds all the way to the end of the book. I feel like this was sort of a "safe" psychological horror. You can easily imagine the horror of the situation that the characters find themselves in, but there's that reassurance in the back of your mind that it could never really happen. Probably.

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo-Quiet little story with some charming bits, but overall, it felt a little slow for me.  I'm not sure that the intended audience, kids, would be entranced enough to stick around.

Ugh.  Remember how at the beginning of this post I said that I thought this would wrap-up all of my 2010 reading?  Well, that's not quite the case.  I realized that I left The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society off my list.  Since I also realized that I had a fair amount to say about it, it will get its own post a la Flower Confidential.  But THEN I will be done for real. I think.

What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part II/The Valentine's Day Edition

Even though this is part of my Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition series, Flower Confidential gets its own post because apparently my exercise in creativity and brevity is on hiatus.

Flower Confidential:  The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers by Amy Stewart-I just love looking at this book!  Isn't it pretty?  I wish the theme had been continued inside; instead we just get a few boring black and white photos and some line drawings, but, being a plant person, I still feel like it's a fascinating look at the cut-flower industry. Given the sparse visuals, plant people will appreciate Stewart's descriptions of flowers, like this bit about her first impressions of Terra Nigra's gerbera daisies.  As I stood with him and looked out across several dozen rows of sunny orange gerberas in bloom, I thought that I'd probably never seen so much exuberance in one place.  This is not a flower with nuance.  It radiates pure, uncomplicated happiness.  You have to love it, although I can see how a person could get cynical enough to be irritated by its unwavering good cheer.  I know some florists who are sick of gerberas, bored with their endlessly sunny dispositions and their utter lack of mystery or depth, but not me.  A single gerbera on my desk makes me smile every time I look at it.  I'm grateful to it for that.


I don't know if this book would have quite the same appeal for someone who isn't a plant person, but I think the information is interesting enough to appeal to most people on some level; it's operationally interesting.  For instance, did you know that the cut-flower market was hit hard during WWII because so many of the California growers were Japanese Americans who were rounded up and sent to internment camps.  Many had no choice but to simply abandon their land and their crops.  Bill Sakai, whose grandfather started growing roses in the Richmond area in 1927, remembers how the war hurt their business, which was primarily run by Bill's father and brothers at that time.  "We left it in the hands of some German employees," he told me, without a trace of irony in his voice.  "We were fortunate that we had someone we could trust so that we'd have a nursery to come back to."  (p. 74)    

I feel like this is a pretty timely post, given that Valentine's Day is just around the corner.  Do you have any idea what that bouquet of flowers that you're thinking about picking up at the grocery store or ordering for your loved one went through prior to arriving at its final destination? Amy Stewart traveled all over the planet to give her readers a better understanding of the hybridizing, the growing, the selecting, the auctioning, and the shipping involved in getting cut flowers from the field to your home or, more impressively, into the hands of your loved ones on Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.  Did you know that the Miami airport, where 88% of our cut flowers enter the country, usually sees about ten to twelve flights from Columbia a day, but that around Valentine's Day it might be as many as forty?  The problem is those planes are full of one-way flowers, not round-trip passengers, and they usually return home empty.  How do you cover that cost?  Jack up the price of flowers on Valentine's Day.  Ahhh, so that explains it (or at least part of it)!       

Stewart also talks about the role of oraganically-grown flowers in this industry-is it possible to mass produce perfect blossoms without all the pesticides and fungicides that have traditionally been used and at what cost? All I'm going to say about that is if you've ever thought it would be romantic to woo your loved one in a bathtub filled with rose petals, you might want to rethink that particular seduction after you read about what most roses go through prior to arriving in that beautiful, pest-free, disease-free, blemish-free bouquet.  You'll either skip the rose petals or don a Hazmat suit prior to submersion.  (Pssst, Hazmat suit=not sexy).  Speaking of organics, I'm going to do a little shilling for Organic Bouquet here because A) I have ordered their products in the past and received good feedback from the recipients, B) I  feel like I could handle their products without fearing for the life of my unborn children, and C) Have you seen their Extraordinary Roses?  Yeah, they're kinda pricey ($259.99/dozen), but aren't they cool??  

On the other hand, if value is what you're looking for, you might consider a box of 150 stems for $349.99 from FiftyFlowers.com, an on-line flower wholesales.  To put it another way, that's 12.5 dozen flowers for $12/dozen.  Get a few friends to pitch in, and you've got yourself one heck of a deal.  I've never had any dealings with FiftyFlowers.com (and I'm not sure where they fall on the "organic" scale), but they seem to be embracing the idea of bulk flower sales, as is Costco, someplace you probably never seriously considered for your floral needs (even bridal).  At $100 for 75 stems of Rainforest Alliance Certified long-stem pink roses, you might consider taking a second look though.  


Well, I seem to have strayed from my book review, but that's part of why I liked this book.  I learned a lot and it made me curious to know more.  I love that!


Please note that all prices referenced here are current as of posting.  If you are considering ordering from any of the companies I mentioned, please be sure to double check their product pricing and find out about their shipping prices and policies.  I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, but, as stated, I have ordered from Organic Bouquet before and been very happy with the results, so I'm happy to send you their way. 

What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part I

In an effort to cross some things off my aging to-do list, here is a wrap-up of my 2010 reading.  At some point, it all just got away from me.  I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, so here goes a giant exercise in brevity and creativity.

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1) by James Dashner-A boy wakes up in an elevator that dumps him out into a maze.  There are lots of other boys there.  Nobody remembers anything before the maze.  *Gasp*  A girl appears!  What does it all mean?  Don't go out into the maze after dark or you'll likely be killed by giant armored amoeba-y things.  Action ensues.  I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads, but I might downgrade it to 3.  Not sure if I'm interested in the follow-up.

The Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler-I picked this up because my favorite author, Mary Doria Russell, lists it on her  "Recommendations" page; and, by golly, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me!  It's about a women's wartime baseball (softball?) league.  The problem with that is that it immediately makes me think of A League of Their Own, which this was nothing like.  Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself but I went into it expecting it to be something it wasn't.  I think this is one that I need to reread, this time with no expectations.  Although I didn't walk away loving this, I did take copious notes on things that I liked within it, so...that's gotta count for something, right?  Give it a read, just don't expect it to be very much about baseball.

The Ask and the Answer:  Chaos Walking:  Book Two by Patrick Ness-Still dark and depressing, but not quite as bad as The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Don't get me wrong, it's still dark, just in a different way. It's been a while since I read this, but if I remember correctly, there might have been a tiny bit of hope at the end of this one.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller-This is another book that I was inspired to read after I found it on Mary Doria Russell's list of recommendations.  And now I am going to cut and paste from my Goodreads review: Although I didn't love this book from beginning to end, the ending affected me deeply and in a way that I totally did not expect, and that's what pushed it from 4 stars to 5 for me...even though I knew how the book was going to end since I read Norman Spinrad's Introduction in the 1975 Gregg Press edition. Thanks a lot for the giant spolier, Norman! (Note to writers: If you are ever asked to write an Introduction for a book, please don't include any version of, "the book ends with [insert final climactic event here:]..."  I'm just sayin'.)...I originally checked this out from the library. Time was up, but I knew I wanted to keep reading it and that I would want to refer to it later, so I returned my giant spoiler-filled copy to the library and bought a new copy. What do you know-I opened it up to find a new (spoiler-free) Introduction by Mary Doria Russell! [Which shouldn't have been a surprise, seeing as how she mentions it on her web site, but I guess I forgot about that part].  I enjoyed the book on its own merits, but I can also definitely see where it influenced her book, The Sparrow, which, I admit, makes me love it just a little bit more.  One more note:  There is a lot of latin in this book, and I finally went on line and found a study guide from Washington State University that turned out to be most helpful.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese-Ann has raved about this again and again on Books on the Nightstand (in 6 different podcasts and one blog post (the link takes you to a page where you can search for podcasts and posts by book title, but I can only get the two most recent podcasts to play-you might have to get the others from iTunes if you want to listen to them)), so I finally picked it up.  Again, from my Goodreads review:  Great depth of story here and I loved all the medical detail-enough to be fascinating but not so much as to lose the average reader. Also, when I started reading, I didn't realize that part of this story revolves around live-donor liver transplants. My husband's side of the family went through this process, all except the actual transplant itself-at the last minute it was determined that the vasculature of the intended donor did not line up with the recipient's and the surgery had to be called off. (In the end, a cadavar donor was found, and hubby's family is doing well and we are all very grateful.) With this family history, the story resonated for me in a way that I hadn't been expecting when I picked up this book about twin boys living in Ethiopia. A lilve-donor liver transplant is not something that most people have any familiarity with at all, so to randomly run across it in a work of fiction was kind of cool. 

The Magicians by Lev Grossman-Part Harry Potter, part Chronicles of Narnia, but then it finally gets its own legs under it and goes off in a darker direction.  Thanks to Jeanne's review at Necromancy Never Pays for finally convincing me to read it.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks-This is a fictionalized account of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Jewish manuscript from the 1300s, that was thought to have been destroyed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Thanks to the brave efforts of the director of the National Museum, the Haggadah was safe, contrary to rumors that it had been destroyed or sold for arms.  The Haggadah faced a similar threat in the '40s when the Nazis came looking for it; again, it was saved, this time by the director and the curator of the National Museaum, both of whom risked their lives to save it.  People of the Book traces the Haggadah's history through various stories of narrow escape all the way back to its creation.  I started reading this on my Kindle months (years?) ago, and I finally picked it back up on the plane, on the way home from our trip to France, which included a side trip to Venice.  Turns out that part of this book takes place in Venice during the 1600s!  Imagine how psyched I was to recognize the places in this story that would have meant nothing to me one week earlier!  Heather J. gave the audio version a rave review, along with a better plot summary.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-January 2011

Happy New Year, everyone!  Let's see what the torrents of rain have brought in the way of blooms recently.

I can't believe my Pink Quill (Tillandsia cyanea) is still blooming.  I thought everything would be blown out and faded by now, but as you can see, there is still quite a show going on.

I know it looks dark, but that was the setting I had to go with to get an accurate representation of that purple, and the pink is accurate too.  Isn't that a great combination?  

Similar in structure, but totally different in pallet is one of my most consistent bloomers,  my golden shrimp plant (Pachystachys lutea (hee hee-it sounds like it's related to a pachyderm)).

Well, unlike a pachyderm, the flowers on my polka dot plant are teeny tiny and freakin' hard to focus on when there is any sort of breeze in the yard (which there always is when I'm trying to get my GBBD photos! Not that I'm complaining-it's awfully muggy without it.)

In the same pot and also with great foliage and tiny flowers is my coleus. It's hard to focus on the flowers with such pretty leaves below, but they are an awfully nice purple. 

And, speaking of purple, my African Daisy (Osteospermum) still has a few nice blooms on it and even a couple specks of pollen in the middle for contrast.

My bougainvillea is beginning to fade a bit, but I still found one creamy flower very much on display for GBBD.

And, finally, I've shown you what my red ginger (Alpinia purpurata) does when it's done blooming.  It starts putting out new foliage to grow new plants...except when it puts out new flowers instead.  See the gangly, spent flower coming up out of the middle and falling over toward the left?  All the other flowers are coming out from around the base of that one. I haven't yet figured out when it makes foliage and when it makes flowers-anyone out there know?  

To see what is going on in other gardens around the world, or to share what is going on in your garden, visit our Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day host, Carol, at May Dreams' Gardens

It's a New Year, and Already I'm Behind!

Well, OK, I guess I'm not really behind on the new year, I'm just not caught up on the old year yet.  Here's what I meant to blog about last year that I haven't gotten around to yet:

Books-As close as I can figure, I've got about 15 that I read and never blogged about.  I'm thinking about trying to just do a one-sentence summary for each of these.  This would be a good exercise in creativity as well as brevity.

Our trip to the mainland-I did cover some of this already-Hubby's paragliding clinic, the Rat Race, and the nice people who let us stay with them in Oregon-but I still haven't told you about our camping in the redwoods and our visit to Yosemite.  I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath-"Ooh, let me guess, I bet there were camp fires and tents and big trees and breathtaking scenery!"  Um...well, yeah.  Maybe I'll just put up some pictures and call it a day.

Our trip to France-France?  How exciting!

Our trip to Venice-This was really just an extension of the France trip, but gondola rides!  Old buildings!  Lots of water!  Huh.  I guess that about covers that too...I'll put up some pictures.

Our trip to Molokai...in 2009-I did write about Day 1 and Day 2, but I still want to tell you about our Nature Conservancy hike on Day 3.  It was awesome.  I'll put up some pictures.

How's your new year going?