"Kraken" Wendy Williams

I had been meaning to read “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid” ever since I first saw it. But it after reading Sy Montgomery’s brilliant article on octupuses for Orion magazine and seeing Wendy Williams book listed as a suggested reading I had to order it right away.

And it is an amazing book. Packed with astounding information on these amazing cephalopods (and also octuposes and cuttlefish) that will make anyone realize just how incredible they are. While their physiology is so alien-like (three hearts, blue blood, capable on changing color) scientists have also found incredible similarities with human beings namely in the structure of their eyes and neurons. It was truly startling to learn of the many medical breakthroughs that have been based on research carried out on squid. Future treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will most likely owe something to these animals.

And yet they remain enigmas – do they think or communicate in ways we might fathom? Or did their brain structure and invertebrate body (not to mention their marine environment) cause them to evolve a relationship with the world and each other that our brains, so tightly wound inside our skulls will never be able to glimpse? It seems indisputable that there is “something” there, even if we try to stay away from loaded terms such as intelligence and conscience.

“Kraken” will fascinate anyone interested in natural history, science, animals and the sea. Wendy Williams has written a book that has not only a perfect rhythm but also a perfect length – and doesn’t shy away from the fact that there is still so much we don’t know about squid (and also doesn’t hide the immense amount of squid dissection needed for scientific research- which is the “slightly disturbing” part, I guess).

Any reader, even acquainted only with cephalopods in the form of lunch, will come away with a newfound respect for these creatures and maybe more importantly, a desire to know more.

What I'm reading

"Sketchbook From Southern France" Sara Midda

Another beautiful book of illustrations by Sara Midda.

"The Fox in the Cupboard" - Jane Shilling

I own a small, modern imitation of an antique clock which in I bought in my early teens because I loved the illustration it features: a rider in a red jacket, jumping a fence and three running hounds in the foreground all set in a bucolic landscape. Later, when I realized there was such a thing as fox-hunting and that this was unmistakably a representation of it (despite there being no fox in the picture) I was quite embarrassed by it. After reading “The Fox in the Cupboard” I went and got the broken, little plastic thing back from where it was hiding – fact is I quite still like that image for all it suggests to me: a welcoming, unthreatening countryside, horses and dogs and, why not? red jackets. As with Jane Shilling’s book it features no cruelty or violence and evokes a world that, as an adult, I still dream of being granted entrance to.

Jane Shilling’s “The Fox in the Cupboard” is certainly a book that left a deep impression, a memoir that enveloped me in an almost dream-like stupor while I wandered its pages and followed the author into the world of horses and hounds. There is an almost poetic rhythm to this book, the chapters on the first horse-riding lessons as an adult, interspersed with childhood memories, adult musings and first-hand accounts of hunts, horse-riding excursions and an episode on buying fox-hunting apparel which is straight out of a fairy tale, if in fairy tales girls ever chose clothes based on function as well as beauty.

There are some mildly frustrating passages mostly courtesy of Shilling’s (female) riding instructor who is not shall we say a very tactful or comforting person (and which coupled with the even worse description of female instructor’s in Lynn Reardon’s “Beyond the Homestretch” has me scared stiff of women riding teachers). I sometimes wondered how much more abuse Shilling was going to take from the woman (quite a bit). There is also a rambling chapter on the history of the hunt – who did what for the first time and whatnot, that has its interesting bits but felt a bit too long.

On more than one occasion Shilling states that she will never belong in the fox-hunting or even horse-riding crowd: to her everything feels artificial and must be thought out and carried out with enormous effort, while everyone else who has learned how to ride at an early age is at ease with the body language of horses, the labyrinth of tack and the lay of the land where fox hunting takes place. However there is something to be said of being an outsider (at least I hope there is) and certainly this sensitive account could never have come from someone brought up among the horses and hounds. Here we see everything through the eyes of the newly anointed – we feel with the author the challenge of being admitted into a closed off, highly ritualized endeavor: it is daunting, nerve-wrecking and sometimes downright embarrassing being the new adult in the gang, but on the other hand it keeps you from taking it all too seriously and allows you to recognize some pretty funny stuff going on while everyone is busy being proper (or properly drunk if you are witnessing a Hunt Ball).

My mother once asked me why on earth I would want to learn how to ride since I couldn’t possibly keep a horse (it was a good question and I still haven’t learned how to ride). Once you are learning it seems inevitable that you must do something with that knowledge – a horse after all, is not a bicycle, it needs to be exercised, challenged even humored – jumping and whatever that other thing when people dress up is called, or fox hunting seem perfectly adequate ways to keep a horse happy.

However, writing about “The Fox in the Cupboard” is a lot more difficult than enjoying it as a reader which is comparatively easy: try as I might to avoid it (and I did) I keep stumbling on the ethics of the whole thing. It must be said that there are no scenes of the actual killing of the fox by the hounds in the book and if I remember correctly the author describes seeing a fox once. Most of the memoir is concerned with the process of learning how to ride as an adult and the social aspects and rituals of fox-hunting. I never felt that Shilling was using her memoir as some sort of apologia of hunting but she did convince me that as far as animal cruelty goes there are far worse things going on in the world. To make matters more complicated for non-British readers there is also the fact that vocal pro and con opinions on fox hunting are deeply immersed in economic and social history and are sometimes as little concerned with the fate of that single fox as she is invisible to the majority of riders from start to finish.

To go down that endless road though, would really detract from the enjoyment of this singular memoir. To the reticent reader I would compare “The Fox in the Cupboard” with a painting featuring a hunting scene that would capture your imagination: it won’t convince you to go out shooting hares with bow and arrow (I hope) but the appreciation of it will enrich your mind.

Sara Midda "In and Out of the Garden"

Gardening tips, recipes and lore, beautifully illustrated.

Barbara Bash "True Nature"

"True Nature: an illustrated journal of four seasons in solitude"

Filled with the author's thoughts and drawings taken down in different occasions while spending time alone in a secluded cabin. A gem.

Amy Stewart "The Earth Moved"

"The Earth Moved: on the remarkable achievements of earthworms"

Leave it to Amy Stewart to write a book about earthworms that is actually a page turner. Taking her cue from a famous worm-lover, Evolution dad, Darwin, Stewart explores the natural history of worms: what are they exactly, how do they work, what do they do and how they do it.

Interviews with worm scientists (oligochaetologists) involved in different projects (taxonomy, for instance, since many earthworm species are yet unnamed and undescribed; their impact on ecosystems that evolved without worms; their possible role in waste management; and their quantifiable benefits in crop yield, for instance) are interspersed with tales of the author’s worm compost bin and vegetable garden.

More and more it amazes me how our very survival in this planet is intimately tied with creatures we don’t think much about and some of us even find repulsive. While large animals, predators and herbivores alike, are the poster children of conservation movements everywhere we are more intimately connected with insects – I find that humbling and somewhat magical.

The scientists Stewart interviews have a common tale of underfunding and little interest. No-one cares that you might want to devote your life wholeheartedly to worms and that they in turn, have many secrets to unravel or that agricultural fields rich in worms are many times more productive than the ones without. Pandas they are not.

And yet, according to Amy Stewart worms are probably the perfect pet. While I’m not completely sold on that one, “The Earth Moved” did convince me they are fascinating, mysterious and if not exactly beautiful, at least kind of cute.

Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum "A World Without Bees"

Just what is up with the vanishing honeybees?

The mysterious ailment with the X-files worthy name of “Colony Collapse Disorder” has scientists stumped since the spring of 2007 when American bee-keepers opened their hives to find a whole lot of nothing. Pretty soon European bees were disappearing too.

“A World Without Bees” is a fascinating, if unsettling book, which for some reason, I really didn’t get into when I first got it, a couple of years back.

I opened it again recently and became enthralled – sometimes you have to pick up a book at the right moment, I guess.

Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum have put together a very readable, detailed and interesting overview of CCD, that is also an exposé of modern agricultural practices and our very civilization’s dependence on bees.

Think I’m exaggerating? Well, consider that bees are responsible for pollinating something like 70% of crops: everything from most fruits and vegetables to cotton, needed for clothing manufacture, and coffee, not to mention most crops used as animal feed. No more bees = no more steak, milk, etc. Scary, hum?

In “A World Without Bees” several usual suspects are carefully looked over: monoculture techniques of growing crops, the massive transport of beehives to sites, viruses old and new, pesticides, climate change.

Even if scientists have yet to understand the mechanisms at work in the mysterious disappearance of honeybees one thing is made clear by the surprising picture painted by Benjamin and McCallum: agriculture these days is sounding more and more like a soil form of fois-gras production. We can’t expect to keep up it up without something going very wrong. For all intents and purposes it seems it already has.

A great book.

Hannah Holmes "Suburban Safari"

“A fungus scholar once told me that rain causes fungus spore-pouches to burst and release kazillions of spores into the air, and that the smell of baby fungi is mistaken for the smell of clean air.”

This was my favorite fact of Hannah Holmes “Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn” although it is filled with interesting stuff. How interesting is a suburban backyard? Well, not only is it chock-full of living stuff if anyone would care to notice, it also provides a series of initial points of reflection on the environment, which Holmes, a science writer and journalist, eagerly gets a hold of.

There are crows who enthusiastically line up for snacks, a cheeky chipmunk, mice, insects, squirrels and a woodchuck, which is a pretty cute animal. They all take advantage of what trees and shrubs there are around, and it turns out that, as along as you don’t drown it in pesticides, all these critters will not hate you for keeping a lawn.

In fact, that lawns are not necessarily evil, might be the most chocking revelation of “Suburban Safari”. Apparently, they are not nearly as damaging to soil health as agriculture…who would know?

However, I have to come clean. I detest lawns. Knowing that they that don’t have to be sterile, artificial, green moonscapes and that with a few adjustments they can actually provide a healthy ecosystem doesn’t change the fact they are boring, water-guzzling useless things.

However, even hard-core environmentalists Holmes comes across, have one. Why? The kids love to play ball. See? It’s useless, barely alive carpet for sports that might be natural in its motherland of Great-Britain, but can only be mimicked in most parts of the world through sheer, white-knuckle determination. And a lot of pesticides.

One of my favorite David Quammen essays is “Rethinking the Lawn: Turf Warfare in the American Suburbs” where the author decides to axe the lawn and stick to native species. But, sticking to native species, as Holmes finds out, is getting increasingly difficult in the New World. Colonization has an environmental counterpart which, although slower, is nonetheless ruthless. Bees, earthworms, birds, not to mention thousands of plants were all imported to the new colonies and it turns out they have been making a killing. English sparrows and starlings occupy the niche of native birds, as do European honeybees, and many other species. Keeping a garden planted solely with native plants and trees requires something of a guerilla mentality, as the author finds out.

There is a lot of information, most of it very interesting (although frankly, I could have done without the chapter that reconstructs the author’s geographical area through geological epochs), and a lot of pertinent, “guest stars”, mostly investigative scientists that kindly come by the author’s yard to elucidate us all on soil, insect and bird and mammal population.

My favorite bits were, as usual, the ones were she is on her on enjoying the company of cheeky, the chipmunk, luring the crows with food scraps or investigating spider webs and mouse footprints. I was only sorry that this book is about such a different area. I would love to read something like this about the plants and animals of Portuguese backyards.