Not My Favorite Reading, Recently

 

In response to my post about the beavers in my childhood imagination (Beaver Dreams), blogger David Gascoigne at Travels with Birds recommended the book Beaver Land by Leila Philip. I’ve read about half of it, but I’m pausing or maybe giving up on it because it’s too full of people without enough beavers. In fact, up to the point where I stopped reading, the author rarely sees a live wild beaver — if ever. Her experiences are mostly with dead beavers caught in traps or being skinned and turned into meat. Beavers are elusive, no doubt about it. 

I’d like to read some natural history, but at the moment I’m not in the mood to read about a lot of fur trappers, conservationists, quirky animal lovers, and historic voyagers. My negativity about this perfectly good book is about me, not about the book. I’m finding it to be a pretty typical story of a person’s search for information about an unfamiliar topic — quite similar to the works of Sy Mongomery, who similarly relates her interactions with animals and the people who work with them. At least Montgomery usually has some vivid encounters with the animals she writes about.

I’m disappointed in this book, and I guess I’ll save the second half for another time. Now I need a new idea of what to read.

Elizabeth Strout

My Name is Lucy Barton is ok but predictable. I liked Elizabeth Stout’s other books better, I think, especially Olive Kitteridge. Lucy is supposed to be very self-aware (I think) but I find her a bit whiny. I thought I would read this book first, then the author’s newer ones. However, now I’m not inclined to read any of the sequels including the one that was published this week.

Reviews © 2024 mae sander

“Frostbite” by Nicola Twilley

Frostbite by Nicola Twilley describes two centuries of development of refrigeration: from ice houses and wooden boxes of ice in the 19th century through early technology for railroad shipment of meat and produce and onward to our current situation where a “Cold Chain” transports optimally chilled food from farm to table. In the US today this huge network ensures that we have fresh produce and meat no matter how far our meals have had to travel. Here’s a summary from the end of the book:

“Since the early days of the ice trade, refrigeration has changed everything about how and what we eat—reshaping trade, transportation, politics, and economics in the process. It has redesigned not only the contents of our plates but also our bodies, our homes, our cities, our landscape, and the global atmosphere. … Fridges have freed women from daily shopping and made fresh food both affordable and available year-round. For some farmers, refrigeration has offered a route to riches—or a way to escape the land. …

“Still, a wholehearted appreciation of those benefits shouldn’t prevent us from counting the cold chain’s costs and considering its alternatives—especially as the rest of the world starts to refrigerate. Some of its disadvantages are inherent to the technology. It takes a lot of energy to remove heat, which has environmental consequences but also tends to create socioeconomic ones, as smaller farmers growing a diversity of foods for local consumption are less likely to benefit than large landholders cultivating export crops at scale. The resulting concentration and intensification have their own ecological impacts. … Other outcomes are enabled by the fridge rather than fundamental to it. Food waste is used as a justification for refrigeration, but refrigeration also seems to encourage waste. … Refrigeration tends to shift where the waste takes place, as opposed to eliminating it. … In short, our food system is frostbitten: it has been injured by its exposure to cold.” (p. 309-310)

Frostbite includes fascinating histories of changes in agriculture, shipping, industry, and domestic life. Refrigeration affects the way food is grown, transported, processed, and sold. Home refrigerators as well as industrial advances made enormous changes not only in what can be purchased and kept on hand in households, but also ultimately in what is eaten. Fresh produce from farms can be quickly chilled, shipped in refrigerated train cars or trucks, held in cold storage facilities, and then delivered to supermarket refrigerators. Produce like tomatoes and bananas is harvested early and ripened on demand. Consumers generally are unaware of this long process or of the surprising age of their "fresh" food. They don’t seem to notice the loss of flavor compared to naturally ripened local and seasonal fruit and vegetables.

Bagged salad mix is an example of a recent invention that depended on refrigeration and changed people’s eating habits. This product required unbelievable new technology to create the storage bags that kept the leaves alive. “Astonishingly, the bag itself—a cheap, disposable plastic lettuce bag—was a miniaturized version of [a] … controlled atmosphere warehouse. The microperforations in its carefully designed films let oxygen in at one rate and carbon dioxide out at another to maintain the ideal atmospheric microclimate around the leaves as they traveled the country and sat on supermarket shelves.” (p. 130)

Orange juice, another revolutionized product, was radically changed after World War II. In its new frozen-concentrate form, it became a commodity product, not something squeezed at home from a seasonal fruit. The availability of frozen orange juice affected both supply and demand, including many newly planted orchards in Florida; innovations in the processing, packaging, shipping, and retail environment; and family habits: “Frozen orange juice, as opposed to fish sticks, ice cream, or TV dinners, was the killer app for home freezers.” (p. 148) Fresh-chill juice, which has largely replaced frozen juice, is a subsequent invention dependent on the “cold chain.”

Every chapter of the book had a few surprises for me as I read. While the author was more focused on the American experience with the progression from ice houses to modern refrigerated warehouses and huge home refrigerators, there’s also quite a bit about the more recent proliferation of refrigeration to other countries — such as China (where we meet a “frozen dumpling millionaire”) and Ruanda (where virtually no cold storage is currently in use at all). The impact of continued expansion of supply-chain dependence on refrigeration, with its enormous and environmentally dangerous energy demands, is very interesting. I’ve read many books about the development of food technology and about changes in agriculture and taste, and this is a good one!

The Earliest Large-Scale Cold Technology

Frostbite described the earliest machinery for managing large quantities of meat and produce, especially for managing large animal carcasses, which require specialized chilling to create meat that is tender and flavorful. As I read, I realized that I had once actually seen such a processing plant that was made into a combined museum and hotel. (It’s not mentioned in the book). 

This relic stands nearly at the southern tip of South America in Puerto Bories, Puerto Natales, Chile. The Puerto Natales region once raised sheep and cattle to be shipped to England via the docks of this town. The now-hotel preserves probably the most complete example of an early 20th century meat shipping facility with its interesting technology. Note that via modern air travel, we took around 3 days to get to Puerto Natales from North America, as it’s not even close to the nearest airport, which is in Puento Arenas — a truly remote place. Here are some photos from our trip in 2017.

This is the pier where the refrigerator ships once were loaded with frozen meat headed to England. Two black-necked swans are in front of the pier. Our reason to travel so far was seeing both scenery and wildlife.

A view from our room in the hotel. We stayed here one night on our tour of Patagonia and then continued to Torres del Paine, a Chilean national park. Then we traveled by ship to see more wildlife and scenery.

Looking out of the hotel you see the contrast to what was once a busy dock area.
The slaughter house and packing plant operated from 1913 to 1993.

I find the look of the old equipment — which was all imported from England — fascinating and beautiful, with its bright colors and complex patterns. But what are we seeing? In one room there is a huge electric-generating plant that supplied power not only for the factory, but for the town. In the meat-cooling areas, electric compressors turned ammonia vapor to liquid. Held in sealed coils it circulated and turned back from liquid to vapor, which removed heat from the surroundings and thus acted as a refrigerant. The scale was large enough to process large numbers of slaughtered animals and have them ready to load on ships at the dock.

To get from the reception and dining areas of the hotel to the bedrooms, one walks past the equipment that once was used to slaughter, butcher, chill, and prepare meat to be shipped from the nearby dock.

Chilling meat is important for both preserving and making it palatable: “For most of refrigeration’s short history, humans have focused on its ability to stop spoilage by slowing down the reproduction of bad bacteria. But in the much longer annals of meat eating, cool air has been equally, if not more, appreciated for its ability to ripen red meat, turning dry, tough muscle fiber into a juicy, savory steak.” (p. 98)

The Hotel in the Factory

The breakfast buffet is in one of the many converted areas where meat packing once took place.

 

The Singular Hotel, Patagonia, Chile.

 Photos of the hotel © 2017 mae sander.

Blog post and book review © 2024 mae sander

A Miyazaki Film and some nice drinks

 

Yes it is a yellowjacket on my donut.

We like to go to the cider mill every autumn and have cider and donuts.

“The Boy and the Heron”

Finally, this long-awaited movie is on streaming.

We have watched this newly released film on streaming, and I’m sad to say, we didn’t find it as charming or captivating as our favorite Miyazaki films such as “Totoro,” “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service.”

The Japanese title is taken from a classic book written in 1937 and
 loved by Japanese youth.

I read the Japanese book How Do You Live last year, when I was first hearing about this new Miyazaki film. Like many reviewers, when I watched, I found the connection between them to be somewhat difficult to grasp, as the plot, setting and characters are all different. I reviewed this book in detail here:

How Do You Live?

Quite a few scenes include someone making tea served with bread & butter.

Miyazaki’s films often feature a “Granny” — in this one there are quite a few grannies who crave
food and cigarettes (since it’s set during the war when shortages were severe).

KAOS

Zeus drinks beer while barbecuing.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander.

Movie images from IMDB.

Shared with Elizabeth’s Tuesday party.

Art Everywhere

 Here in Ann Arbor

A very pretty old bridge in a park: the boardwalk uses the access under the railroad tracks.

From Elaine in Indiana and Evelyn in Montreal

blog post © 2024 mae sander

Beaver Dreams

 

The beaver dam in the Botanical Gardens was rebuilt this spring after winter flooding washed it away.
There have been only a few trailcam sightings of the actual beavers. I always enjoy walking past this site.

As a child, I was nervous about beavers. I thought they were lurking under my bed, and would grab my feet if I got up. I dreamed about them fearfully. Much later, my father mentioned a children’s book that probably inspired my worries. Thinking about the beaver dam that I saw recently made me remember about this book, so I looked online. 

Now I think I know what book it was. It was titled The Secret of the Ancient Oak and was published in 1942. In this children’s book (which isn’t all that suitable for children) a beaver terrorizes the other animals who live in a forest, especially those who inhabit a very ancient oak tree. Realizing his evil ways, they band together and drive him out. The author intended to write a story that was not just a for children, but was also an early allegory of the rise of Hitler. My father had evidently admired this secondary message, but regretted having read it to me: it was too effective in portraying a threatening dictator. 

I have no memory of actually seeing the book, as I believe it was disposed of when I was very young (but I guess that was too late for my fears). I learned a little about the book from my web search. The author went by the name WOLO, pseudonym for a German writer Wolf Erhardt Anton George Trutzschuler von Falkenstein (1902–1989). Copies are now rare and expensive, but I found several images of the book’s pages on websites that deal in collectibles. Here are some of the images.

I’m still afraid of the evil beaver who wanted to destroy the oak tree and take over the forest.

Review by mae sander © 2024.

Shared with Sunday Salon at https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/.

Good Fiction

 Elif Shafak

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak relates a tale of several rivers and the people who are fascinated by these rivers. Throughout the novel, one metaphor comes up over and over: that a drop of water has a memory that can connect these disparate individuals just as their personal fascination with rivers connects them. We hear a lot about their experiences with the rivers of London in the 19th and 20th centuries; the rivers of ancient and modern Mesopotamia; and also a bit about the rivers of Paris and the bodies of water around Istanbul. Metaphorically their experiences are reflected in a single drop of water that lasts through the ages. 

I was especially interested in the author’s use of the water-drop metaphor, because it’s based on a completely discredited scientific theory, specifically that of  “the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who developed the theory of ‘water memory’ at the cost of his career and professional reputation.” (p. 475)  What fascinates me is that a scientific disaster like this one can make a good literary device! Other novelists,  poets, dancers, musicians, and narrative writers, have also used this bad science as a good artistic metaphor.

The Lamassus

Each of the characters in the novel has a relationship with the ancient mythical hybrid creatures called Lamassus. 

The author explains:

“Lamassus are protective spirits. Hewn from a single slab of limestone, such sculptures have the head of a man, the wings of an eagle and the hulking body of a bull or a lion. Endowed with the best qualities of each of their three species, they represent anthropoid intelligence, avian insight, and taurine or leonine strength. They are the guardians of gateways that open on to other realms.” (p. 7) 

 

Ancient Times: King Ashurbanipal 

Ashurbanipal was the king of the Assyrians in the seventh century BCE. He collected clay and stone tablets on which were written both mundane records of crops and accountancy and also tablets with verses from the epic poem Gilgamesh. Eventually, archaeologists were fascinated with finding these tablets and reconstructing this ancient poem. Here is an image from that era showing Ashurbanipal and his wife:

“Ashurbanipal and his wife are drinking wine and enjoying a picnic in an idyllic garden, whilst from the boughs of a tree nearby, amidst ripe fruits, dangles the decapitated head of their enemy, the Elamite king Teumman.” (p. 7)

 

Born in 1840: “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums” — From the Thames to the Tigris River

Brought up in the most desperate poverty, the fancifully named “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums” was a young man with some very unusual gifts of memory and recognition of patterns. Although without formal education, he grasps the meaning of the writing on the clay tablets — once owned by Ashurbanipal, now in the British museum — and becomes a scholar, eventually traveling to the site beside the Tigris River where he hopes to find some of the missing verses of Gilgamesh. Here are his thoughts as he approaches the site where he hopes to search for the clay tablets:

“If he closes his eyes he can imagine an utterly different view from thousands of years back and see his surroundings as if looking through cut glass: gardens lush as paradise, palms and grape vines, edible and ornamental plants; pine, olive, juniper, cypress, pomegranate and fig trees all around. Parrots gliding about among the branches, while tame lions roam below. Fruit of all kinds, luxurious orchards and, spreading far out into the distance, grain fields on four sides. All of it possible because thousands of slaves, their bodies tattooed with the identification marks of their owners, labored with pickaxes carving channels to bring water into this barren landscape, diverting the river from the mountains all the way into Nineveh. They were here, the kings and the canal builders. It all happened here—the ambitious dream of King Sennacherib, continued and expanded by his grandson King Ashurbanipal.” (p. 312)

 

Born in 2005: Narin in Turkey and Iraq

Member of a long-persecuted Christian minority in Turkey and Iraq, the child Narin seemed doomed throughout the chapters that described her life. The events she experienced took place in 2014, both in Turkey and later in the same area where King Ashurbanipal once reigned and where Arthur conducted his search for the missing verses of Gilgamesh. At age nine, she wants to know why her people are reviled, but her grandmother instead offers her food:

“Sensing her disappointment, Grandma opens another bag. Inside, wrapped in a cloth to keep them warm, are flatbreads—each spread with sheep’s milk butter and filled with herbed cheese. The old woman makes these every morning at the crack of dawn, settled on a stool in the courtyard. She pats the dough into round pieces, slaps them against the tandoor and bakes them until they are crisp and puffy. She knows how much the girl loves them.” (p. 42)

Born in the 1980s: Zaleekhah in London

Zaleekhah Clarke is a scientist who studies rivers. In 2018 her life is in flux as she has just moved out of  the apartment she shares with her husband, and moved to a houseboat docked in the Thames, another significant river. Her relationship with her uncle, who comes from an unspecified part of “The Levant” includes her views of many rivers in both London and the Middle East. Here is just one example of the water drop that remembers — a tear that she sheds as she first sees her new home, the houseboat:

“A tear falls on the back of her hand. Lacrimal fluid, composed of intricate patterns of crystallized salt invisible to the eye. This drop, water from her own body, containing a trace of her DNA, was a snowflake once upon a time or a wisp of steam, perhaps here or many kilometers away, repeatedly mutating from liquid to solid to vapor and back again, yet retaining its molecular essence. It remained hidden under the fossil-filled earth for tens if not thousands of years, climbed up to the skies and returned to earth in mist, fog, monsoon or hailstorm, perpetually displaced and relocated. Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.” (p. 77)

 

So Many Interesting Stories

My introductions to these major characters are very brief and I haven’t really showed you how interesting they are, maybe just that they are quite intriguing. It’s difficult to capture what really appeals to me in this novel, which is so different from the others I’ve read by Elif Shafak.

I’ll end my very selective and digressive review by quoting the passage about the water drop from the beginning of the novel:

“Dangling from the edge of the storm cloud is a single drop of rain—no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea. For a while it quivers precariously—small, spherical and scared. How frightening it is to observe the earth below opening like a lonely lotus flower. Not that this will be the first time: it has made the journey before—ascending to the sky, descending to terra firma and rising heavenwards again—and yet it still finds the fall terrifying. 

“Remember that drop, inconsequential though it may be compared with the magnitude of the universe. Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own. When it finally musters the courage, it leaps into the ether. It is falling now—fast, faster. Gravity always helps. From a height of 3,080 feet it races down. Only three minutes until it reaches the ground.” (p. 4)

Review  © 2024 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com

Insects that Spin

A spider made her web in the doorway to our deck. (Two commenters have mentioned that spiders
are not insects, just similar to them.)

The life cycle of monarch butterflies is given a lot of attention, as they fly away to Mexico in the fall.

The Silkworm and Other Creatures

A very poor treatment of a potentially interesting topic.

In a meandering and undisciplined book titled Silk (published 2023) author Aarathi Prasad presents the story of several insects and a few sea creatures that spin silken fibers. Best known is Bombyx Mori the scientific name for the silkworm, a domesticated insect that can live only in the environment provided by its human owners. For millennia, silk thread has been collected from generations of captive Bombyx and woven into cloth. The life and times of the insect are described in detail, but alas, the book is strikingly free of vivid images of the uses of silk fabrics. The book’s few illustrations mainly show portraits of men who studied the science of silk or the natural history of silkworms and other silk producing creatures.

Prasad covers a huge number of topics about silkworms, including a history of their cultivation in a number of places; the use of mulberry trees for their food; the types of cloth made from spun silk; the insects’ anatomy; the names and accomplishments of scientists who studied their anatomy; military uses for silk in such devices as bullet-proof clothing; medical uses for silk fiber and special-purpose fabric; experimental uses for silk, and much more. Further, the author describes several closely-related wild insects and how people managed to capture their silk for various purposes. Historic efforts to use the silk-like fibers produced by sessile sea animals, which use these fibers to cement themselves in place on the sea bed, is another long topic. The level of detail about the sea creatures is frustrating to read, as these efforts on the whole never succeeded in a practical way, so it’s more of a digression than a relevant topic for the book.

Prasad finds that almost any subject is worthy of a digression. Did a scientist who later worked on silk come from an interesting historic city? You’ll read a long description of the city which in fact had no relevance to silk at all. Did the silk from one of the sea creatures appear in a Roman grave or in a Medieval archaeology site? You’ll find out a whole lot of stuff about that. Why do we need a full paragraph describing all the features of a house in Pompeii where a silk item was found? Silk was used in one of the earliest examples of knitted fabric — does this mean we need to go back and hear about a completely irrelevant city where ANOTHER early knit item made of some other fabric was found? The indisciplined digressions are mostly maddening to read. 

Only one topic is missing that might seem quite relevant: there’s virtually no discussion of how silk textiles look or how they were used in fashion through the ages. There’s very little description of how the threads were spun, processed, dyed, or crafted into fashion items like clothing, upholstery or other uses like for tents or blankets; for example, I would like to have heard about just what textiles were displayed in the numerous silk stalls at the famous Crystal Palace Exposition that the author mentioned.

I did enjoy the one and only description of a popular wild silk fabric from a not-domesticated silkworm in the 19th century, which was shown at the famous Paris Exposition. I wish there had been more about such fabrics — I loved the fact that the wild silk fabric could be dyed fourteen “gem colors” that were “wonderfully named sapphire, emerald, topaz, pink topaz, spinel-ruby, beryl, jacinth, chrysoprase, amethyst, coral, gold-quartz, turquoise, ruby, and peridot, all laid out like jewels in a glass case in the great exhibition hall in the heart of Paris.” (p. 129)

The book is so silent about fashion that I didn’t even find out, from reading it, the functions that silk fabrics played in the fashions of various historic eras, other than generically for clothing. The only memorable description of a garment was of a dress worn by Queen Anne, wife of James I of England, which was embroidered with images of silkworms on the sleeves. The book didn’t include an illustration of this intriguing dress, but I found it online and here it is:

As you can tell, I think you should avoid reading this book. Review © 2024 mae sander.

NOTE ADDED Sept. 10: A review of this book by Jenny Uglow titled “Worms’ Work” summarizes all the interesting parts and leaves out all the irrelevant parts. It’s behind a paywall, but if you can get to it here’s the link:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/09/19/worms-work-silk-aarathi-prasad/

Around Ann Arbor

A Few Graffiti We Have Seen

Dexter, Michigan: a cute tiny mural by famous Ann Arbor artist David Zinn.
Unlike his usual chalk drawings, this one is durable and has been in place for over a year.

Near the railroad tracks on North Main, Ann Arbor. Various graffiti on RR boxes.
I know nothing whatsoever about what these mean, I hope they aren’t offensive!

The Wrecking Ball is Coming

Everyone recognizes the unique dome on this old house quite near the UofM campus.
Like many older houses that have long been student rentals, it will soon be demolished and replaced by a high-rise apartment building, also catering to students. Ironically, after years of neglect this house seems to have recently been very nicely repainted.

Another view of the construction site showing the beautiful old stone porch that will soon be rubble.
Does this mean our town is losing its character and its connections to its history? Maybe it means that.
In case you are wondering about the shoes: after graduating, students throw their shoes over the utility wires.

On Our Walks

A view of Argo Dam from the far side of the river. An expanded park is being constructed here.

Not far from the Huron River: a tree has begun to turn red and the vegetation is looking very much like autumn.

 All photos © mae sander 2024

Shared with Sami’s Monday Murals.

Recent Reading

Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux (published in February, 2024) is a novel based on the true experiences of a man named Eric Blair in Burma approximately 100 years ago. The story begins when Blair is 19 years old, recently graduated from the famed prep school Eton, where he was not at all happy. He has gone to Burma to become a policeman and an officer of the British Empire. This is in stark contrast to most of the other Eton graduates who would have enrolled at Oxford or gone on to something else very upper class, but Blair wasn’t upper class. His father had been a rather lowly civil servant in charge of a minor aspect of the British-state-run opium business in a nearby part of the empire. 

Theroux selects wonderful detail about life in colonial Burma. For example, I really enjoyed his descriptions of the occasional native meals that Blair tried, as well as very British food that the Indian cooks prepared: food that they wouldn’t eat themselves because they were vegetarians. For example, a lunch of “boiled fowl, mashed potatoes, and a slimy vegetable no one could name.” (p. 33).

Food often contrasts to the political environment in which Blair exists; consider this:

“And the other memory was of an occurrence at the end of the meal (veal chop, mash, brown gravy, bottled peas). The boat that had brought the arresting officers had also brought provisions: crates of wine, potted meat, packets of water biscuits, tins of salmon, and a chest of cheeses.   

 

“Wearing gloves, the khidmatgar placed a cheese board on the dining table next to Oliphant. Grasping a cheese knife, Oliphant tapped it on a large wedge of Stilton, lowering his head so that his slicked-down hair gleamed in the lamplight, scrutinizing the Stilton. All the cheeses on the board were sweating slightly, a moist double Gloucester, a damp cheddar, a softening brie…. 

 

“There were more shouts, a yelping from one person, a woman’s shrieks, and Oliphant paused. … And that was the moment Blair heard the ruckus—yells from the precincts of the pagoda, the frantic jangling of bells, hoarse shouted orders from the arresting officers. Oliphant did not look up but instead studied the cheese.” (p. 144) 

Basically, being a policeman does not suit Blair at all; he finds that he doesn’t fit in at all with the colonial society and its repressive racist greed. He also doesn’t fit in with any of the various Asian people he gets to know, though unlike most of his fellow policemen, he learns the local language and has a lot of sympathy for the people. In fact, he is stymied by the rampant prejudices, the cruelty, and the pettiness that he finds all around him. 

Blair wants to write poetry, but is never satisfied with his efforts, and begins to write stories about his experiences. I loved reading about this five-year period in Blair’s life. His growing awareness of people and relationships, as well as his many frustrations and humiliations, are portrayed in a very fascinating and effectively dramatic way — much of this due to the imagination and inventiveness of the novelist. As you may know, Eric Blair was a very real person who did in fact become a writer. His nom de plume was George Orwell.

The Soul of an Octopus (published 2016) is the third book by Sy Montgomery that I have read. The others were about turtles and dolphins. But in fact all of them are really about Sy Montgomery. In The Soul of an Octopus, of course, you can learn a lot about the lives of octopuses that the author encountered — especially a few of them that live in a large aquarium in Boston. You can learn a bit about natural history, about scuba diving to see more of these creatures, about the dedicated caretakers who work in the aquarium, and about scientists who study the sea. But most of all, you learn about the author. I wasn’t as conscious of this in the earlier books of hers that I read but in retrospect I think it was the same. Not that it’s bad, that’s just the way it is.

I expected to enjoy The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (published August, 2024). I was very disappointed. It’s a soppy story about Hollywood. Unlike Moreno-Garcia’s other novels that I’ve read and liked, this one didn’t have any magical realism at all. Not recommended!

I’m also rereading Moby-Dick, in the aftermath of my trip to the Galapagos.

Reviews © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.