Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn’t Food by Chris Van Tulleken.
If there’s anything that will make you put down that pre-packaged food and drink, this book is it.
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Now there’s a coincidence. It was only the other day, I was watching an episode of the BBC’s family history programme “Who do you think you are” which featured the Van Tullekin twins. It was a fascinating story which traced ancestors back to Dutch colonial times in Indonesia and to one slave owning ancestor in Guyana. They are both hereditary members of the lowest rung of Dutch aristocracy.
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I’m glad you recognise that there is no real cause to hold onto that position (audio as cheating, or inferior somehow.) Would we assume a partially sighted or blind person is cheating, or not really reading if they were using audio books or text to voice technology? Yes there are sensory dynamics of every experience that people are going to experience differently, but I’m leery of the way value judgements can get applied even when unintended. (And I should emphasise ‘unintended’ because it’s fairly clear to me you are flexible and sensitive around issues. I’m not assuming the worst, but showing some of the extrapolations or unintended consequences of dismissing assistive technologies.
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Family history can fascinating. I recently did some DNA testing and found that my heritage is a huge mix of all over Europe and the British Isles. So much for people not travelling as much before planes, trains and automobiles were the norm.
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I haven’t read it yet; I’ll have to do a little comparison shopping on the subject, but I stumbled on this, reading about turkey tails.
Anyone read it, or something similar?
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I read Klara and the sun, on holiday and forgot how much I’d enjoyed Remains of the day when I read it many years ago. I got this and Never let me go for Xmas.
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Not to be a pedant but nobody has ever said that people didn’t move in great numbers prior to the invention of newer automotive technologies. However, individuals did not move around nearly as much as we do within our lifetimes. (There[s some really fun maps).
As for what DNA “heritage” tells you, I won’t go into that.
I was just surprised at how much of a mix I am. I don’t know that much about my background, so it was pretty interesting. Geographically speaking, the area covers all of Europe and into west and south Asia.
One of my daughters was surprised to learn that I’d never read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. She said there should be a copy in the bookcases in her old room. I read it last month, and was really quite happy with it. I didn’t figure out who the murderer was and instead was convinced it had to be some outside party. She claims she got it figured out just as the last deaths were happening.
Like @Lectroid mentions, in the last 10 years or so I’ve really let electronic media seriously reduce my reading of novels, with most of my reading being online stuff for cooking, politics, essays and the like.
But Ms. Christie got me going again, and I remembered I’d bought a couple of Chris Fowler’s Peculiar Crimes Unit novels (humorous detective stories) on the recommendation of an e-friend and read them, and they were a lot of fun.
I don’t have a lot of mystery fiction in the house but wanted some more. Another daughter mentioned that the kids/young-adult focused series The Mysterious Benedict Society (“TMBS”) was in a boxed set in her old room and was well-received by young and adult alike, so I read and enjoyed all five of them (titles are TMBS (original), TMBS and The Perilous Journey, TMBS and The Prisoner’s Dilemma, TMBS and The Riddle Of Ages, and The Extraordinary Education Of Nicholas Benedict).
My son had been bugging me to read Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time so we could discuss its concepts properly, so I got that one done.
And I had two unread Christmas gift novels from my MIL; my wife was a bit miffed that I’d been ignoring them. Recursion from Blake Crouch (a NYT bestseller and very interesting speculative fiction that really bends the notion of time and how we perceive it) and Unidentified by Douglas Richards (near-future SciFi riffing on the US military’s fairly recent release of a cache of photos/vids of unidentified aerial phenomenon).
So that was June. Of the above I’d recommend the Christie novel as good old classic mystery stuff and the Crouch novel Recursion as being really thought-provoking while still being a very well written novel. The rest were just fluff/fun reading, except Hawking which I’ll provisionally recommend only if one has an interest in those sorts of things.
July so far has been A Study In Crimson, a Sherlock Holmes novel set during WWII by Robert Harris, and 5 novels by David Eddings making up his The Belgariad series (sword/sorcery fantasy from the 1980s, following a young man as he grows into his power. Supposedly YA-fiction but there’s a fair amount of gore - basically just fun reading but nothing Earth-shattering or new, although they were bestsellers back in the day).
I’ve been doing a lot more long-distance driving this month, and have one more long trip to make next week, so I’ll probably not get as many done as I did in June.
Then who knows, I’ll probably backslide into my old habits. But I’m hoping not.
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Have you considered Audible? I have been “binge listening” to Hamish Macbeth on Audible,vand that was after listening to all of Agatha Raisin. There’s nothing like Agatha Christie, but you may be able to listen and drive.
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There was a time in my twenties when I read through that one, and KEPT re-reading it, convinced that if I just thought about it long enough, I would finally understand it well enough to explain it properly to someone else. And each time I read it, I was SURE I finally had it, only to find that going back to restate it all, I absolutely did NOT have it.
From Verifying the Theory of Relativity by Chandrasekhar:
Sir J.J. Thomson, as President of the Royal Society at that time, concluded the meeting with the statement’, I have to confess that no one has yet succeeded in stating in clear language what the theory of Einstein’s really is’. And Eddington recalled that as the meeting was dispersing, Ludwig Silberstei (the author of one of the early books on relativity), came up to him and said,’ Professor Eddington, you must be one of three persons in the world who understands general relativity’. On Eddington demuring to this statement, Silberstein responded, ‘Don’t be modest Eddington’. And Eddington’s reply was, ‘On the contrary, I am trying to think who the third person is!’
Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/only-three-people-understand-general-relativity.935624/
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I thought of you and your comment when reading this, John:
(it’s a gift link).
Other than alternating fiction and nonfiction, and alternating topics and genres, which are not hard rules, I don’t think I have any other major guidelines.
That said, I do not write in books, nor dog ear pages, and while I love the sturdiness of a hardcover I tend to prefer paperback as being physically more comfortable.
I also have very mixed feelings about used/pre-read books. I know they’re better for the environment, and I do purchase them (along with checking out from the library), but there’s also a certain level of trepidation - I have encountered an icky thing or two between pages, under the flap, etc. Icky enough that I now do a once over exam before bringing a used book into the house.
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Fun and interesting read. Got it on a kindle deal of the day.
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‘Dinners With Ruth’ by Nina Totenberg. Downloaded through the library system’s OverDrive account.
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I gas no idea it was so controversial and picked it because it was a prize winner with an intriguing premise.
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Loved that one; it was a favorite of our book club years ago.
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I basically read in order of purchase too. I just got seven books from Amazon and will read those before I buy more.
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I read ( actually , I listened to) A Free Man of Color" by Barbara Hambly ( there’s more than one!) during a recent trip to New Orleans, and am now reading the next in the Benjamin January Mystery series.
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Anyone who wants to see what I am reading, have read, or will read is invited to my Goodreads page! Lots of American history, military history, bios, crime fiction, humor, contemporary American fiction…Hope to see some of you on Goodreads.
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I’m reading The Cooking Gene–a Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. It’s dense and difficult. The author has traced his genealogy to eight generations, including white slaver ancestors who basically raped their Black slaves. It is a journey, as he shows how different regions in the South adapted local ingredients, from Chesapeake Bay oysters to South Carolina rice to Louisiana Bayou critters. He doesn’t mince words on how brutal conditions were, but also provides lavish descriptions of the great variety of dishes that the slaves cooked for their slavers, while living on cornmeal mush themselves. Paula Deen, this ain’t.
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