So this year I've challenged myself to read from as many different genres as possible. Not necessarily a daunting feat, but certainly out of my range as I tend to stay pretty close to the novel/kids book realm. It's an exercise in information gathering and "doing what I thought I should have long ago." When I was in highschool and college classes always required you to read classics like Moby Dick or Lord of the Flies or one of the many Dickens novels. This was forced for me since I was rolling headlong through my spy novel excitement and had to tear my eyes away from the latest Clive Cussler novel so I could read a few sentences and make up some meaningless thesis about why Moby Dick is a treatis on Mid-Eastern spirituality. Needless to say, I trudged through some of the world's finest literature so that I could engulf myself in pulp fiction. Oh well. Now I get to sound and feel intellectual as I sit down with Treasure Island or The Watchmen. There are certainly genres that I'm not excited about tackling. Dickens for example. Though they are classics of literature and "everyone" should read them.... I don't have much excitement for poverty stricken Europe in the ol' days. It's just not that interesting. Plus, death, abandonment, and orphans are not high on my happy list. However, I will be reading one of them later on in the year. Maybe A Christmas Carol. I'll post soon what I have read and what genres I'm fitting them into, but currently I'm halfway into my "food" book. It's called How To Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons and it's fantastic. The subtitle is The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table and is an explanitory book on what certain kinds of fruits and vegetables are, how they are grown, where, why, why we like them, etc. It tosses in a few sections on the different kinds of farming and the trouble with mass market farming, as well as some recipes and a focus on taste rather than whether it's organic or not. It's a fascinating book and since I'm sort of into cooking right now, Parsons is convincing me to try some vegetables and fruits I would normally stay away from: eggplant, persimmons, fava beans, artichokes.I'm always looking for book suggestions, so if anyone has an interesting addition to my list, shoot me a comment with the book title and genre and I'll debate it. I have quite a few picked out, but who knows, maybe next year I'll do it again. Though I already have an idea for what next year will be all about.
