I have moved my Bookwyrming to @kingrat@sfba.club
This link opens in a pop-up window
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made …
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
After 20+ years of advocacy Harvey Wiley sees the Pure Food and Drug Act. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published widely just before, though apparently it omitted a pro socialism ending that had been present in the original serial.
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
Doctors continued to worry over continued reports of "grocer's itch," a side effect of the deceptive practice of grinding up insects and passing the result off as brown sugar. Sometimes live lice survived the process.
What?? Brown sugar??! How?
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
In thirteenth-century England there were tradespeople called garblers (from an old Arabic word for sieve), hired to inspect imported spices and sift out grain and grit. Predictably, some garblers, those in the employ of unscrupulous importers or merchants, did just the opposite, mixing ground twigs and sand into the spices themselves. Eventually the very word "garble" came to mean mixing things up incorrectly.
Not just history of food adulteration, this is also a book of etymology.
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
The ability of producers to so mislead resulted from the work of several French chemists, including one of the 19th centuries greatest, Michael Eugène Chevreul. He drew from the Greek word margarites, meaning pearl, and added the Latin for olive, oleum, to coin the term oléomargarine, which is what he called a glossy, whitish, semi-solid that two colleagues had to arrived from olive oil. In 1869 inventor Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès appropriated Chevreul's terminology and applied it to a butter substitute he made from beef tallow and finely ground animal stomachs.
I wonder what people who knew about what was in these products did for cooking.
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
To mimic the expected layer of cream on top, they might also add a final squirt of something yellowish, occasionally pureed calf brains.
Kicking off, paragraph 4 offers this disgusting note about how dairymen replaced the cream they'd already skimmed.
From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story …
Picked up The Poison Squad a few years ago in order to have more science books by women, though this one seems to be a bit of science and a bit of history.
Jack Reacher, alone, strolling nowhere. A Chicago street in bright sunshine. A young woman, struggling …
Content warning Spoilers, mild
It's Jack Reacher. There's a dozen or more books in the series. Reacher is going to survive until those books. In Die Trying, Reacher accidentally stumbles across a plot by a Montana militia to kidnap the president's god daughter and hold her hostage so that the militia can declare a remote Montana county independent. They think the president will let them because of his god daughter. But Jack Reacher doesn't miss at 1200 yards. Ludicrous, sure. But I don't read Jack Reacher for a plot that makes a lick of sense.
Jack Reacher, alone, strolling nowhere. A Chicago street in bright sunshine. A young woman, struggling …
This is only the second Jack Reacher novel I've picked up, so maybe this changes in the future. But I really enjoy that there's no real sense of danger. Jack Reacher is such an über competent badass that I know he's not going to get more than a scratch. It means the story is not really allowed to have possibility, but I'm in the mood for a predictable story.
Emperor of Ruin (2023, Orbit)
Added to hold list at Sno-Isle Libraries. (Try #2 at this status.)
Princess Sun has finally come of age.
Growing up in the shadow of her mother, …
Court intrigue and space opera. As i noted in a previous comment, the plot in Unconquerable Sun is convoluted and busy. Even after finishing the book, I still don't understand most of what happened.
Princess Sun has finally come of age.
Growing up in the shadow of her mother, …
This book is far too complicated and "busy" for my taste. But I'm already halfway through, so I might as well finish it.
Easily the most engrossing book I've read in a long time. Take science fiction (cloning) and mix it with domestic suspense (murder!) into a very compelling and original plot. Rather than presenting the reader with a babyface and heels, the book has complex characters that lean toward mean because they come from damaging backgrounds. And while I didn't want to root for them, the story drew me in to where I wanted to see everyone have a satisfying end, rather than get what they deserved.
The background of these characters makes the story extremely layered and rich, but a warning. As the author writes in their acknowledgements, The Echo Wife is about abuse, grooming and identity. My abuse was long enough ago, and my psyche is hard to damage these days. The specific situations described are also dissimilar enough from what I faced that I did not have trouble with …
Easily the most engrossing book I've read in a long time. Take science fiction (cloning) and mix it with domestic suspense (murder!) into a very compelling and original plot. Rather than presenting the reader with a babyface and heels, the book has complex characters that lean toward mean because they come from damaging backgrounds. And while I didn't want to root for them, the story drew me in to where I wanted to see everyone have a satisfying end, rather than get what they deserved.
The background of these characters makes the story extremely layered and rich, but a warning. As the author writes in their acknowledgements, The Echo Wife is about abuse, grooming and identity. My abuse was long enough ago, and my psyche is hard to damage these days. The specific situations described are also dissimilar enough from what I faced that I did not have trouble with my own memories while reading. However, there are a lot of people for whom this will be tough reading. Check your headspace before diving in.
Still digging this. Our protagonist, self involved and oblivious, ignores another's subtle warning. And now they're all one bit more screwed. Noir
Content warning Spoiler
"Well," I said at last, buckling under her steady gaze, "I suppose the first thing is, we would need to dig up the body."
Very noir! As the reader, I am immediately thinking, "there's no way this is going to go well." But that's the point of noir. So much anticipation to find out just how this is going to get worse.
