Inferno - Dan Brown

With all the hype and promotions there is very little new to write about this book so let me just share a short synopsis and a few key points.

The novel is about an intellectual person who has gone rogue - a futurist and thinker who sees a hopeless scenario playing out because of the growth in population.  So the question, like that of the movie and graphic novel - Watchmen - is: Is it acceptable to sacrifice millions of people for the bettermen of the entire race?  It is the question that is faced in every war when faceless sacrifices are made because others have decided on a course of action.

Langdon is brought in because the evil genius just cannot help but leave cryptic clues based on Dante's Inferno all over Italy giving us a chance to explore the art and architecture as Langdon pursues the answers.  Along the way are shady characters, none of whom are particularly believable and the inevitable hair raising race against time.

But the ending is not what I would expect and I would be surprised if anyone can guess the ending without some clues or reviews that give away too much.  I would also add that for me the ending is a let down, but lets see how the rest of the readers react.

So in summary:

1. It is a fast and fun read
2. The research that Dan Brown has done is excellent
3. You can learn a lot about architecture, art, and history reading this novel
4. Please - suspend your sense of realism - there are too many points that are really hard to accept, but they are necessary to move the novel along.  The elaborate hoax that Langdon is subjected to is really hard to accept - but like I said just go along with it.  
5. If you have accepted Langdon - art historian as adventure hero you know that you are in the Indiana Jones arena and let it go at that. 
6. The pace is excellent and enjoyable.
7. And finally the most important point is the issue of over population has never been the central theme of a novel like this that I have read and it is a good theme.  It is a true threat, although the response to it is still hard to accept.  But the graphs that are in the novel are not fictitious and the population trends and growth deserve to have our attention and our concern.  It is great that Brown could incorporate so much into the novel that are essential facts.
8. I would give it 3 1/2 out of 5 as an overall rating, but make it a 5 as a pleasurable read. 

Cooked - Michael Pollan

My favorite food author does it again - exploring more varieties of food and cooking while testing - in his mind - the theory that cooking is responsible for the evolution of humans and human culture.  He begins with the classicist Fire, water, air, earth and sets out to see those elements through a variety of cooking lessons that he gets from experts in the field.

The book begins with barbecuing a big through southern barbecue lessons.  As always he apprentices with experts and we see through Pollan both the cook and the cooking.  A North Carolina barbecue pit master teaches us to grill, a Chez-Panisse cooks teachs braising, an eccentric baker helps us understand how air enters the bread and the development of sour dough, while a strange breed of "fermentos" give insight into cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, and beer.

The lessons help us learn biology of yeasts and microbes, the living matters that become our living matter.  Soil, cooking, basic ingredients and the time to nurture the food are a welcome contrast to quick, fat, sugar, salt of processed, quick and easy foods.

Wedded to the Land by Joan Donaldson

This understated book is a surprise.  It is the story of a family living with the land on an organic farm in Michigan.  The grow blueberries and fruit trees, make maple syrup, and plant organic vegetables while living a simple life that is short on the normal accouterments of today's farmers.  They live with wood fire and for a period in that is described in the book they lived without electricity.

The story is one of adjusting to the snow, the drought, the rain, and the vagaries of frosts.  It is about listening to the land, working on basic life needs and a lack of wants.  We join the raising of a barn, rush to the hospital when there is an accident that hurts John and we feel the sadness of loss of family through death and the departure of children.

This book is more than being wedded to the land, which we learn is the true meaning of husbandry - the original term for farming.  It is a personal odyssey that is private and insightful.  We learn about adjustments and expectations, and the book is a lesson in perseverance.

Joan Donaldson is a fine writer who paints vivid word pictures - "Rural winters are snow leopards that pounce upon the landscape.  They shake their prey, scattering isolation and loneliness."  "Because dairy animals must be milked at twelve hour intervals, three hundred days of the year, their needs would establish the boundaries of time and distance."

I feel like I know and would enjoy this couple based on the personal sharing of the book.