February / March Books: Food and Funnymen

In Defense of Food: Michael Pollen

Oh wow, this book really blew my mind. Not because I felt like I learned a whole lot of new information, the book has a lot in common with Marion Nestle's wonderful "What to Eat" but because I felt like he perfectly articulated my views/ideologies if you will on food and eating. Basically- stay as far away from processed foods as possible, use whole ingredients, use as short a food chain as you can, and cook for yourself. A bit of politics in there as well makes it interesting for me, and also has really practical pragmatic ideas about how to eat well as well as just pushing an ideology or ideas about why we should. I highly recommend this for food nerds.

Omnivore's Dillemma: Michael Pollan

I was actually a little bored with this at first- Pollan traces four meals he eats, a fast food meal, an organic TV dinner, a an all-local ingredient meal and a self-hunted and foraged dinner. Not surprisingly, they got more interesting as they went along, in part because I've already read a lot about industrial food and the conundrum of "big organic," in other places, which made reading the local food and the hunted food sections the most engaging and different. This was another really interesting and fun one, and I think this or In Defense would be interesting book group books. So with that- who wants to start a book group?

Botany of Desire: Michael Pollan

And here is where the Michael Pollan kick went too far. I think this is his first book, and it showed- overwritten and surprisingly dull. He traces the interrelationship of humans and four plants - corn, apples, tulips and help, and the co-evolution of both, which to me was a really interesting idea- that both species benefit and evolve with the help of the other. But the writing and the stories themselves were surprisingly dull, even if packed with amusing historical anecdotes about tulip investment bubbles and apple speculation. Not one I'd really recommend unless you are way into the history of food.

Mindless Eating: Brian Wansinck

The last in my "series" about food. For now... This was pretty fascinating book by a "food psychologist" who consults with academia, industry and the military on how people eat, decide about food, and why they eat the way they do. Full of quirky vignettes and studies (though some common sense) like that we eat more food if there are more kinds (ie at buffets, or we meet more m&m's when there are more colors), and that we really cant taste much (think chocolate yogurt is strawberry in the dark, or that lemon jello is strawberry if we put red food coloring in it), and that our bodies don't really tell us when to stop eating as much as our eyes do. The most interesting study here being about a "bottomless" bowl of soup that kept refilling itself and people ate quarts of the stuff, as opposed to when they had to serve themselves more. Sort of a quirky take on food and eating decisions- as if Malcolm Gladwell had written a book on food. Overall, pretty fascinating, if you are a major food nerd, and a major psychology nerd. Which is more likely me than it is you.

Hoodwinked: Perspectives of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins

What can I say, I love Perkins's muckracking about the international corporatocracy in his last two books, so I picked this one up with excitement and anticipation. And wow, I've not a read a book that made my blood boil anger that this did in a long time, about the outrageous behavior of the finance industry recklessly exploiting and destroying our own country, not just the developing world. I almost couldn't finish it it was so enraging. But what I like about Perkins, at least his last two books, is that he increasingly ends on a positive note of empowerment, what practical things we can do to make a difference, and it feels a lot more hopeful than just having the curtain pulled back on how terrifying the world really is.

Power- Thich Nhat Hanh
I really enjoyed this, the first book of his I'd read in a while. Really important messages about taking care of people if you are in a leadership position, and ways to maintain integrity when you have a little bit of power in the world. Important stuff, but will it be read by the right people? Although I do believe a lot of this was based on a presentation he gave a Davos, so we'll see. Its certainly in important time in history for corporate and political power to have some integrity...

Born Standing Up: Steve Martin

Now this memoir was really disappointing. I don't know how someone can make a book about standup unfunny and dry, but somehow Steve Martin managed to do it. Not even that I'm a huge fan of his recent past two decades of work, but I remember really enjoying his old standup albums fromt he 70's when I was younger, and thought this would recapture that. Yeah, it was about that, but he made the fatal error of describing the comedy from setup to punch line and explaining why it was funny rather than just letting the jokes speak for themselves. The effect was ridiculous as you would expect. Not very interesting, not really worth the time.