Book 33: Moll Flanders

I needed a classic fix this week. Moll Flanders was on my phone, so I gave it a listen. It was a pleasure to listen to.



Oooh la la, that cover is a bit racy, no? Yep, the story was a bit racy, too--for 1722.

The improbability of all these things happening to one person was pretty funny. When my husband asked what I was reading/listening to and I told him, it really sounded a bit like a soap opera.

The genre of the novel has really changed, though, and its place in literature is solidified in a way that it was not in the early 18th century. It's a good reminder even something that seems as basic and timeless as the novel has not always existed in its current form.

Book 32: Little Princes

This was another unexpected pick, chosen out of a bit of desperation. It turned out to be surprisingly good.



Conor Grennan sounds, at first, like a Gen X-er without much to motivate him except pleasure, but an off-hand decision to volunteer at a Nepali orphanage changes that forever.

Although the book seems simple, it discusses some of the very complicated issues of reuniting trafficked children with their families.

Book 31: Love in the Time of Cholera

This was on display at the library with a bunch of other Latin American literature. I haven't read any other Garcia Marquez, though I started One Hundred Years of Solitude ages ago and didn't get far.



I liked it quite a lot, though I did feel in the middle that the story stalled for a bit. I really enjoyed the inner lives of the characters, which were often sort of puzzling, but that's about how people are, really, as rational as we claim to be.

Book 30: Mountains Beyond Mountains

I almost didn't pick this to listen to. It was a second choice, after my first choice couldn't be put on an Apple device. I'm so glad that that's how it worked out, because this was amazing.



Dr. Paul Farmer is the founder of Partners in Health (called Zanmi Lasante in Haiti), an organization that provides medical care to the poor. Zanmi Lasante has built a comprehensive health system on the Haitian central plateau. Farmer is an advocate of social justice and liberation theology. He seeks to offer a preferential option to the poor--they receive no less care than those who can pay for treatment.

Kidder recounts that Dr. Farmer often carried two photos with him when he traveled: one of his own toddler daughter, and another of a young child with kwashiorkor. He would show one or the other of those photos to people he met. The message is that one's own child is not more valuable than a poor child; no child is worth more than another.

Book 29: Good Calories, Bad Calories

Given my suggestibility, you might think that having finished this book, I have now gone low-carb. I am not a low-carb person--it is virtually impossible to be truly low-carb and vegetarian/vegan, so it is not really my thing. But I did find the book interesting anyway. I have given some thought to being more cautious about refined carbohydrates like flour (even whole grain flours).



The book is so full of research that it's hard to imagine how scientists have not come to these conclusions--Taubes makes it sound like it's *so obvious* that insulin is the issue, not calories. But it makes me wonder how it could be so obvious and yet missed by so many.

In light of my intermittent fasting, I did like his explanation of waves of hunger possibly representing the body switching from using glucose as fuel to using glycogen and ketone bodies, and I like the idea that the brain might run better on ketone bodies than glucose! Bring on the fasting for brain power.

This is a 26-hour beast. Woe be unto the one who loses her place in the middle on an iPod Shuffle.

Book 28: The FastDiet

After I finished reading Food in Jars, I bought a water bath canner. Before I even started reading The FastDiet, I started intermittent fasting. Clearly, I'm very suggestible.



We watched the BBC Horizon documentary called Eat, Fast and Live Longer and jumped right in. I knew about research that showed that people who restrict calories essentially for their entire lives have longer, healthier lifespans, but most of us (including me) aren't superhuman enough to be able to do that. I'd also heard an episode of our local NPR station's program Radio West about the benefits of fasting. I've fasted for religious purposes, but not for health reasons. And having been pregnant and/or nursing for many a year, I haven't fasted in a long time.

The book gave some important details that have helped us have successful fasts, and it has fasting meal ideas, which are also really helpful. But I know there is more research out there about fasting and health, and I would have liked to read more about it. There was a little too much anecdata--I really didn't want to read tweets from 5:2 fasters. The cover (though I had the Kindle version) also looks like something designed in the 1980s. Maybe that's trendy now and I'm hopelessly un-trendy?

Overall, the idea of fasting is great, but the book was a little bit goofy. I personally have discovered that fasting won't cure you of a sinus infection. How's that for anecdata?

Book 27: Food in Jars

I almost feel like this doesn't count, because there wasn't too much narrative or exposition in this book; it includes a lot of recipes, and I can't claim to have actually read every ingredient and every stop in the process. But I did read most of them, so I'm counting it!



The recipes and ideas in this book sound scrumptious! I was drawn to the book because of the premise that one can preserve small quantities at a time, instead of putting up dozens of quarts of something. I am determined do some preserving this year.