Favorite Lines Friday

Here are a few lines from my first major Distraction of the year: Cooked by Michael Pollan. These are great thoughts on why anyone would ever bother to cook for herself:

To brew beer, to make cheese, to bake a loaf of bread, to braise a pork shoulder, is to be forcibly reminded that all these things are not just products, in fact are not even really “things.” Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships, between people, yes, but also between ourselves and all the other species on which we depend.

A Year of Books I've Read Before

Distraction: Cooked by Michael Pollan

A Natural History of Transformation

I’m actually a little surprised that I made it halfway through this year before completely succumbing to a Distraction: a book I haven’t read before but I nonetheless must read. Cooked, the newest book by one of my favorite authors, also happens to be about one of my favorite subjects: food and cooking. Once I had access to this book, I didn’t stand a chance of sticking solely with all those Books I’ve Read Before.

Cooked is Michael Pollan’s chronicle of learning to cook from scratch in terms of four elements: fire, water, air, earth. In the realm of fire, he explores whole hog pit barbecue. For water, he learns to braise. Air is the element leavening the sourdough bread he learned to make and earth is the natural home of the microbes he borrowed to ferment vegetables, milk and grains. This, to me, was a surprising way to organize a book on cooking and it proved to be very interesting.

Of course, Pollan isn’t just going to give us a recipe diary. The book is filled with accounts of his time with experts on each subject (I particularly like the cheese-making, microbiologist nun) and more of his characteristic quality journalism along with tactful but frank opinions. Plenty of facts and techniques, successful and less successful ventures are all chronicled in detail.

Through this giant set of cooking lessons, Pollan doesn’t just emphasize the importance of good recipes, quality ingredients, and healthy eating.  The real answers to questions about why anyone should want to cook when just about anything one needs is commercially (and usually affordably) available are complex and have as much or more to do with connections between people. And using the four traditional elements to transform products of the environment into nourishment for human communities has been the key to the idea of “cooking” for all of history.

 

You might also like: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

 

Startide Rising by David Brin

Startide Rising is the first book in David Brin’s brilliant Uplift science fiction series. It begins with the crash landing of Streaker, a dolphin-piloted, human-supervised ship, the crew of which has recently stumbled upon a discovery of galactic importance. They’re in a tight spot as some of the more fanatic races of the galaxy are after them, and the hostility of their new environment isn’t helping any.

I’m really intrigued by the “Uplift” concept in Brin’s future universe. Species with potential are genetically modified over centuries by a patron race to achieve sentience. Humans seem to be an amazing exception, “wolflings” who pulled themselves into sentience by their own bootstraps. Of course most of the Galactics, mired in millions if not billions of years of tradition as they are, aren’t particularly happy with Earth’s humanity.

By the beginning of Startide Rising, humans have done a bit of uplifting of their own, increasing the intelligence of chimpanzees and dolphins and making a few modifications to themselves as well. Now, Streaker is in a whole world (or perhaps a whole galaxy) of trouble. The reader gets pulled into the uplifted dolphin mind and into this grand science fiction adventure story. There are plenty of human characters as well and one particularly brilliant and arrogant chimpanzee. Not only are these characters trapped in a live-or-die adventure with large science fiction problems and solutions, but they also must deal with the more common personality dynamics of a marooned crew on a ship and the friction caused by big, dangerous secrets, conflicting agendas, and betrayal.

This is a great story with such a well-established science fiction setting in which I can settle quite comfortably. The suspension of disbelief is not the least bit difficult and I’ve continued to find myself a most willing believer in the Uplift universe. And humanity’s unique position as a “wolfling” race allows us to remain significant in the midst of a vast, complex, and ancient civilization in a mind-blowingly vast universe.

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before