Postcards from the Zoo by Darill Clements

Darill Clements stumbled into her job in PR and Marketing for Taronga Zoo almost on accident. She answered an add in the paper–and even though she’d never liked animals–she landed the job that would change her life. For 25 years she worked closely with people and exotic animals at one of Australia’s most famous zoos and now, after retirement, she shares her experiences.  

I just want to start off by saying how extremely jealous of her I am. I’d love to work at a zoo and I’ve always LOVED animals. It wouldn’t be like going to work at all, and would teach you a lot about life. (I’m still devastated that Steve Irwin will never be my husband/best friend. I cried for two weeks when he died).

I couldn’t really get into Postcards from the Zoo, though. It was one of those books where I’d find myself at the bottom of the page and not remember how I got there. I don’t know if there were just too many superfluous dates and places thrown in there, to where it read too much like a timeline and not enough like little anecdotes.

The stories were cute, but not very entertaining. Oh, the monkeys escaped, and oh the pandas came to visit. I’ve read similar books with funnier/sweeter/more touching stories. I did like her describing the transformation the zoo underwent through the years, from concert slabs and bars to more natural habitats. Not only is it more visually appealing to the guests, but also a much more pleasant place to live for the animals. Plus, she gained a newfound love and respect for animals that she never had before. The little blocks of text with animal and zoo facts were very informative, but also distracting.

It was an easy read, but I’d skip it.

2 blue giraffe tongues of 5

Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter

So all my Facebook friends know that I love cooking and I try and make something yummy for my boyfriend every night. When I lived in England I cooked up a storm! (The food there actually is gross. And then there’s this… I knew the burgers tasted too gamey…) Well, my mad skills carried over back in the States and I haven’t looked back.

Cooking for Geeks combines two of my greatest loves–science and cooking. From the time I was a little kid I used to go in the kitchen or bathroom and mix random ingredients together to make “potions.” (I still don’t know why my mom wouldn’t drink Listerine/glitter/concealer potion–sheesh).

I figured that CFG would be a cookbook with interesting little Pop Up Video-style notes in the margins talking about why this ingredient reacted to that and blah blah blah. Not really. It was more of a whole book of scientific methods involved in cooking–like the Maillard reaction involved in browning meat–with recipes interspersed here and there.

They also had mini-interviews with well-known geeks who were into cooking, like Adam Savage from Mythbusters. My inner geek glowed.

Potter clearly loves experimenting with food and encourages people to not be afraid to fail in cooking. You have to make some nasty food before you can figure out how to make something truly delicious. (Like the time I cooked chicken IN red wine and got purple, tough meat. Blegh!) After all, he notes, you can always order a pizza.

He talks a lot about food safety and cooking things to the correct temperature–and how long things last before they get dangerously full of microbes. Yikes. I’m a little paranoid now.

I do think that he went a little too in depth with some of the cooking methods–either that or this manuel is clearly not for beginners. A lot of these techniques I will probably never use (who has time to foam an egg?) but they were interesting to read about all the same. I’m never gonna make instant ice cream with dry ice, but hey–whatever floats your boat.

This is NOT a cookbook, but rather a kitchen guide for the scientifically-minded.

Enjoy, fellow geeks!

4 in-oven pizza stones of 5

Quote of the Day: Danielle Wood

“Faye’s giggle is one of the things Tamsin likes most about her. It is a delighted, girlish giggle, and far from being at odds with her old woman’s face, it gives purpose to every crease. When Faye giggles, Tamsin does too. She has never known anyone to approach death so cheerfully, as if it were just a thing she had never got around to doing before.”

-Danielle Wood, from Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls 

Quote of the Day: James Harriet

This is the newest addition to our family, Cairo! We adopted him from PetSmart a few days ago and couldn’t be happier. He’s the sweetest and most beautiful cat I’ve ever met.

 

“I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.”

-James Harriet

The Mammoth Book of Erotica edt. by Maxim Jakubowski

The Mammoth Book of Erotica has been sitting on a bookshelf somewhere in my vicinity since I was a teenager. I started reading it back then, killed a hundred pages, and then walked away. I still had an old piece of ripped paper marking the spot where I left off. Maybe I was afraid of my mom busting me or something. Who knows?

But I finally came back and finished the job. 

As with all anthologies, TMBOE had it it’s ups and downs (tee hee). Rarely did I find any of these stories arousing or titillating (I love that word) but many of them were entertaining outside of the sexual spectrum.

Some of my favorites included:

• The Isle of the Dead by Thomas S. Roche- Queen of the Damned meets transgender lead singer. 
• Beauty’s Punishment by Anne Rice- An excerpt of Rice’s famous Beauty BDSM trilogy.
• Hollow Hills by Michael Hemmingson- Six youths get frisky in the back of a 1971 Mustang.
• A Carcass of Dreams by Marco Grassi- His “story” was several separate individual pieces. Some were of strange subject matter, but all were well written. (Coprophilia, anyone?)
• The Girl in Booth Nine by Adam-Troy Castro- One of my favorites of the whole anthology. A sci-fi thriller about a guy who visits viewing booths at a XXX store and how a virtual video vixen gets her revenge.
• The Safety of Unknown Cities by Lucy Taylor- Sodom and Gomorrah meets hermaphrodite meets evil sorcerer. My other favorite.
• Violent Silence by Paul Mayersberg- A poolside desperate housewife meets dangerous stranger and they get down in a cabana. (It’s much more intriguing than it sounds–don’t judge me!)
• Equinox by Samuel R. Delany- Bisexual pirate love! Need I say more?
• Baubo’s Kiss by Lucy Taylor- A vacationing lesbian stumbles upon a mythical goddess and magic ensues.
• The Age of Desire by Clive Barker- A secret lab experiment goes horribly awry and an insane man with an insatiable sexual appetite is unleashed. Loved this one.
• L’Enfer by Alice Joanou- A kept man and his mistress visit a hidden erotic club and things turn violent. Very Jack the Ripper-esque.

So, I guess seeing as how 11 out of 30 stories were very well-written or entertaining, 1/3 of this HUGE book was really good. These were all worth reading. The rest were either boring or rambling. Don’t expect arousal though, because these aren’t smut. They’re graphic, but they’re more erotically-themed short stories than out and out raunchy porn.

4 virtual video vixens of 5

(I think I’m just going to work “virtual video vixen” into as many conversations as possible from now on…)

The Book of Other People edt. by Zadie Smith

I was really really disappointed with this book. It was like that 2008 movie Jumper–amazing concept, terrible execution. Zadie Smith gathered a couple dozen well-known writers to do short stories/character sketches but they really fell short of the mark. I mean, I know that they weren’t supposed to be stories that focused on the plot–character development was the whole point–but even as such they were boring and pretentious. 

I only found a few stories that were worth my time:

• The Liar by Aleksander Hemon-a brief retelling of Jesus’ crucifixion. 
• The Monster by Toby Litt-about a creature who can’t see himself and all he knows of his appearance is based on touch.
• Soleil by Vendela Vida-one of the better-developed sketches that actually made me interested in learning more about the wild-child “aunt” Soleil.
• Theo by Dave Eggers-a lonely and jilted giant seeks solace in the beautiful mountains.

The rest you could totally skip and save yourself the yawning. I just felt like so many of the stories were written to sound extremely pompous and egotistical. I don’t like associating with snobby socialites, so I’m not interested in reading about them either. I don’t care about your Upper-East-Side-bagels-and-lox-can’t-find-a-good-nanny-problems. I want to read about someone real. Real problems and real courage.

It reminded me too much of A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff, which I hated.

Maybe I’m shallow. Maybe I haven’t started crying into my gin and tonic at 10am and I just don’t understand. Who knows?

All I know is that I won’t be reading this ever again.

2 vagina-faced monsters of 5

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person via Cracked.com

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person via Cracked.com

I absolutely love the writers of Cracked.com. Not only are they HILARIOUS, but they’re also extremely smart. You need to read this. It inspired me today, maybe it will inspire you too…

Robin Hood and His Merry Men by Arthur Malcolm

Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest, OODALALEE OODALALEE GOLLY WHAT A DAY!

Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. I recently stumbled across the 1950’s Arthur Malcolm version of Robin Hood and His Merry Men. It was hiding amongst the hideous beautiful messy pile of books that is now covering the office of our new home. After taking a gloriously long sniff between the pages (you can’t beat the old book smell, seriously) I decided to give it a go.

Sometimes I really like the simplicity of old stories. You kind of know what to expect from the plot and the characters are like familiar old friends. The prose that authors used in the 50’s was so much more straightforward and to the point. There are no long dramatic sentences or chapters ending in heart-pounding cliff-hangers. Just a nice story without a lot of fuss, easy and entertaining. A story you could read to a small child before bed time.

That’s what Robin Hood was to me.

The novel was really more of a series of short chapters, with each division being a different anecdote about Robin that meshed into the greater scheme of things. You know how it goes: outlaw, Maid Marion, (not so) Little John, Friar Tuck, the evil Sheriff, etc… This time we got a little more backstory on Robin Hood–like how he got his name and why he got started on the “criminal” path. Haha.

I think Robin Hood may have been the first fictional character (at least that I’m aware of) that demonstrated that just because something was the law didn’t make it right. And just because you broke that law didn’t make you a bad person. In the story it was illegal to shoot the king’s deer. So it was either watch your family starve or break the law.

What would you do?

3 farthings of 5

(By the way, I totally pictured the animal characters from Disney’s cartoon Robin Hood the entire time. I couldn’t help it. The book made multiple allusions to Robin being “wily as a fox”–so I’m guessing that explains his animal form…)

Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere–Alive by Les Stroud

I was a little trepidatious to start Survive! simply because I’d read 98.6: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive by Cody Lundin not too long ago and I hated it.  It was longer than necessary and super boring, and I all really learned from it was to bring a bunch of survival objects with me, cover them all in neon tape, and DON’T GO OFF ALONE IN NATURE, STUPID. A long pamphlet would’ve sufficed. 

So it was a pleasant surprise when Les Stroud’s book was written in a much smoother format and he actually told me things that would help me survive.

Uh… Isn’t that the point? 

I actually learned things while reading Survive! and on a recent trip to the camping section I recognized several things he’d mentioned in his book–and I knew how they could be used. (This is no mean feat for me because I HATE camping, tools, and fixing anything).

I liked the fact that he included real life anecdotes about people that had used his techniques to survive–like the couple whom, when stranded in their truck in a blizzard, ripped up the seat cushions and fashioned snow shoes out of them. They then used the shoes to walk many miles to safety (and didn’t lose any toes to frostbite!)

He also mentioned some things that I would’ve never thought of until my “survival moment” happened. Like don’t get all emotional about destroying the environment if it will help you live. I could totally see myself not wanting to rip down saplings to build a shelter or feeling horrendously guilty about burning rubber to generate a signal fire. He makes the point that you can use your bleeding heart for nature’s benefit at a later date, right now you are trying to live to see said later date.

Good point.

Stroud reiterated several important pieces of advice throughout the book, including staying hydrated and being extremely careful about eating any unknown plant matter. He said that many people will die of thirst rather than drink from an untreated water source, but really, when it comes down to it, shouldn’t you be willing to take that chance if it’d save your life? He stated that someone’s irrational fear of stomach upset/diarrhea/parasites outweighs the much more realistic fear of dehydration. He argues that if you make it out of your situation alive, you’ll be able to get treated for parasites later. But you’ll never get treated for anything if you weaken and die because you were unwilling to drink from the puddle beside you.

He also said that many people fear starving to death above anything else. They are convinced that by not getting three regular meals a day they are on their way out. This leads them to make stupid decisions about eating native flora and that in and of itself has caused a number of deaths. You can survive for a LONG time without eating, but not very long without drinking. This means don’t go eating that pretty mushroom or strangely-shaped leaf because your stomach is growling. Be smart about it.

This is a must read for everyone, because you never know when you may need some survival skills!

4 stagnant ponds of 5

Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and that is the beginning of everything.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald