Food Intelligence / Julia Belluz, Kevin Hall

 

3 out of 5 stars 

If losing weight was easy there would be no overweight people. These two authors explore the reasons for this. There are multiple brain areas and intertwining hormones involved in appetite and weight. We have less control over what we eat than we would like to believe—our bodies have secret override codes that can frustrate the most devoted dieter. Combined with our food environment (what foods are easily available, their cost, their palatability, etc.), our personal tastes, and our social cues, what we eat becomes very complicated very quickly.

”With something as fundamentally important to life as eating, biology wasn't messing around.”

I was surprised at how little the microbiome was discussed. Instead, the authors wrote about the companies offering personal nutrition guidance, sometimes using glucose monitors as a guide. The evidence for this is anemic at best, but it is a measure of people's worries about their health that many are willing to spend significant amounts of money for this advice. I tend to believe that if a particular program, supplement, or food provided a true dietary advantage, it would be featured in news headlines and on the cover of Time magazine. I occasionally get suckered into buying a bottle of vitamins—just recently it was Vitamin B complex. I'll finish them, mostly because I paid for them, but I know I'm better off eating foods with B vitamins in them.

Many of the issues discussed are what I think of as first world problems. Hunger is still a reality in many parts of the world (and among the poor in our own societies). The future of food production will have to deal with more equitable distribution of food. We are also going to have to face climate change and depleting water supplies.

In the end, Michael Pollan gave some of the best advice: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Air-Borne / Carl Zimmer

 

3.75 out of 5 stars 

Today, we do not doubt the existence of bacteria and viruses (at least the vast majority of us don't). Zimmer traces the development of disease theory from the belief in spontaneous generation to modern microbiology. In the days before microscopes and clinical trials, there were plenty of theories which were debated by the scientific community. There was a lot of animosity between various factions, proving that scientists are human too and have their prejudices. To some extent, the old saying “Seeing is believing” was one of the problems that they dealt with. The advent of the microscope helped a lot.

Every new disease, it seems, starts an argument about how it is spread. Is it by contact or is the vector airborne? No one apparently wants to believe in airborne bacteria or viruses. Zimmer describes the men and women who struggled in the early 20th century to study the droplets that we humans emit as we cough, sneeze, sing, or even just talk. Some were obsessed with the movement of air in buildings such as hospitals or other congregate settings. All were sidelined and their research largely ignored. Some of it was their own fault—they were often contentious people, obsessed with their subject, but hopeless at explaining it or convincing others of its importance. They were their own worst enemies.

Zimmer hits many of the high spots in air borne illness over recent decades. Remember the envelopes of anthrax spores that closed down the U.S. senate shortly after the 9/11 attacks? The SARS outbreak of 2002-2004, our first nasty encounter with a coronavirus? The H1N1 flu outbreak of 2009? (I traveled to India that year shortly after suffering through a bout of H1N1 and was worried about their checks for passengers with fevers on arrival. Thankfully I passed that test.)

Enter, stage left, Covid-19 in 2020. Old prejudices stubbornly prevented recognition of air transmission of the virus. Trump's White House dismissed the disease as inconsequential. They hadn't laid in stocks of either N95 masks or antiviral drugs (which the departing Obama administration recommended), leaving the country drastically short. The Biden administration didn't excel either. We didn't fare much better here in Canada—some of our guidelines were nonsense, which reduced confidence in the useful ones.

I found it fascinating that UV lights can kill airborne viruses. This has been known since the early 20th century, yet hasn't been incorporated into hospitals, homeless shelters, or other public gathering spaces. Zimmer tries to strike an optimistic mood about what we have learned over the pandemic, but I found my faith in that wavering as I finished. Governments change course with reluctance and recent events have shaken our confidence in governmental pronouncements. Here's hoping we don't have to test our readiness again too soon.

The Devil in the Details / Vicki Delany

 

4 out of 5 stars 

Book 11 of this series and it's one of the better ones. The main character, Gemma Doyle, is written as an acutely observant person who sometimes lacks discretion about sharing her conclusions. She has the tendency to be overbearing, especially when she is pursuing a line of inquiry. Delany has written her this way on purpose, as the Sherlock Holmes stories feature prominently in this series and Gemma is potentially related to Arthur Conan Doyle. It's hinted that she may be very much like his famous creation.

Often Gemma drives me a bit crazy with her obtuseness in her treatment of other people. In this novel, however, she is blunt and a bit pushy from time to time, but not obnoxious about it. I liked this version of Gemma and that's why I keep reading this series. To quote the nursery rhyme, when she's good she's very, very good and when she's bad, she's horrid.

Gemma is extremely happy that her best friend and business partner, Jayne, is marrying a local restaurateur Andy. The couple seem perfectly happy. Jayne's birthday party is going well, until Gemma realizes that Jayne's ex is working the event as a waiter. It's obvious from watching him that he is jealous of her happiness and hates Andy. If that wasn't enough, an ex of Andy's crashes the party, hoping renew their relationship. Andy is not pleased to see her. When she ends up dead at the end of the evening, Andy appears to have the best motive of anyone to kill her.

Gemma pulls out all the stops to save the wedding. With her eye for detail, she combs through online news, records, and social media accounts. Can she determine who benefits from this death? Delany provides a couple of very plausible red herrings. At least this time, Gemma has the sense to keep her detective boyfriend informed and near by.

A very enjoyable installment of this long running series.

Slayers of Old / Jim C. Hines

 

4 out of 5 stars 

This book has so many things that I like. It's urban fantasy, so there's all kinds of nonhuman beings. There is found family—Jenny, Annette, and Temple live in Temple's family home and take care of each other. And all of them are older folks with creaks and pains, moving slower than they used to.

Jenny was trained as a Hunter in her youth, but she lost her trust in the Council that oversaw her activities. She regrets many of her early decisions, including initiating three of her friends into her paranormal world without permission. She hasn't seen any of them for years. Annette is a half-succubus with an uneasy relationship with her son and two grandchildren. They live in the same town, but there's still distance between them. Temple, the wizard, is the oldest of them at a hundred years and he is slow to get going in the morning, prone to falling asleep after a big spell, and addicted to sugary desserts. The house is linked to him and his magic.

A quiet retirement is interrupted when high school students start to get sick and disappear. When Annette's granddaughter asks for her help, the three housemates are drawn into a battle with eldritch horrors.

The tentacle business reminded me a bit of Tanya Huff's Direct Descendant, which I also enjoyed. Plus I loved the eldritch cat, christened Squidward. Genius name!

The Queen / Andrew Morton

 

3.5 out of 5 stars 

I've been meaning to read this book since the Queen's death in 2022. I have also recently finished On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent, a memoir of Canadian news correspondent Brian Stewart. It was fascinating to see many of the same historical events through two so very different lenses. The Falkland War is a case in point. The contrast between Stewart's account (an entire chapter with political and military analysis) and the Morton version (a few paragraphs focused on Andrew's role in the conflict). Each book covers it's subject appropriately, but the contrast amused me.

I gained a new view of Queen Elizabeth II, something I would never actually have guessed, although hindsight makes it look obvious. Her Majesty had a very difficult time facing sticky, emotional family questions. She procrastinated on making decisions on them and, as Morton puts it, was reluctant to “grasp the nettle.” This had a tendency to prolong everyone's misery and make bad situations worse. It began with her sister's romance with a divorced man, Peter Townsend. The Queen was right in thinking that allowing the match would be hypocritical after her uncle's forced abdication over Wallis Simpson, but she avoided doing the difficult thing. It would have been kinder to just say no and instruct the pair to get on with their separate lives. This pattern was repeated over and over, culminating in the War of the Waleses, as Prince Charles and Diana duked it out in the popular press as their marriage ended. A decisive Queen could have headed that calamity off at the pass.

This book was published before the sovereigns death in 2022. Events have moved along, seeing King Charles crowned and his brother Andrew stripped of all his royal titles (and rightly so, for being arrogant, selfish, and insufferably stupid). If Elizabeth II was still alive, would it have been possible to deal with her second son this way? He was reputedly her favourite child, but is certainly not beloved by Prince William. It is probably for the best that she not have to feel paralyzed by this situation.

With her death, we have reached the end of an era. Despite the turmoil caused by her family, she will undoubtedly be remembered fondly by many of her subjects, myself included.

The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective / Jo Nichols

 

4 out of 5 stars 

The world didn't produce unbroken people.

I was charmed by the title of this book. How could I not want to read it? And it turned out to be just the kind of thing that I enjoy: a group of quirky people working to solve a common problem. Mrs. B owns the Marigold Cottages and rents to people that she feels need a helping hand of some kind. It's her latest renter that catalyzes the plot. Anthony is an ex-con who sports tattoos, barely speaks, and is large enough to loom. So when a body is found in the courtyard, the detective in charge automatically assumes that he did it.

Mrs. B will hear none of it and she recruits the rest of her tenants to help her prove it. As the story progresses we learn more about each of the denizens of the Marigold Cottages as they learn about each other. Of course there are many twists and turns to their investigation which are entertaining, but it was the developing community that drew my attention. I will always favour character driven novels.

Several of my favourite series are written by husband and wife teams. Add this book to the pile. I was delighted to see that a second volume will be published this year.

On the Ground / Brian Stewart

 

R

4 out of 5 stars 

Who has favourite foreign news correspondents? Well, apparently I do/did. Back in the day, when I had a TV, I always was glad when Brian Stewart of the CBC was covering a story. The man seemed to be a font of information, who knew all the background to whatever subject he was discussing and also able to offer accurate analysis. I was sad when he retired from the CBC.

Now I know why Stewart always seemed so prepared. He literally began his quest for a job as a foreign correspondent when he was still in grade school. It's all he ever considered as a career and he spent all his effort honing his knowledge of politics, history, and military strategy from that time forward. In that respect, he reminded me of astronaut Chris Hadfield, who pointed his nose towards the space program and just kept moving. Both men possessed an early single-mindedness that propelled them to success in their choice of career.

Stewart is just enough older than me that he was covering stories that I was just becoming aware of. I was gaining a hazy understanding of larger world events during the 1970s and I vividly remember being scared by the FLQ crisis and the murder of Pierre Laporte. I had no idea how far away Quebec was from my Alberta home, so the news was worrying to me. It was interesting now to see it through Stewart's eyes and get an adult understanding of events.

I was a young adult entering the world of work when Stewart was in Ethiopia during the awful famine. It was his story that got Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney involved in relief efforts. Stewart's video story was played at Geldof's Live Aid concert and it galvanized the Western world. This is the era that the book started with and I cried my way through it. Stewart has never abandoned the Ethiopian people. He returned to that country and tracked down the family that his story had featured. Stewart paid for the children's education and assisted the family in as many ways as he could. They remain in touch.

I was somewhat surprised by Stewart's knowledge of literature (in Russia, he visited a place associated with his favourite poet). He casually mentions friendships with characters like author Mordecai Richler and infamous Conrad Black. As a result of his reporting on conflict and tragedy, it is unsurprising that he experienced flashbacks and nervous system glitches. Some reporters suffer from PTSD, but Stewart was diagnosed with conversion disorder, where the body converts emotional distress into physical symptoms. He seems to have dealt with it and has a calm life now. A well deserved retirement.