Welcome to (almost!) November… the greyest and gloomiest month of Autumn. The month when all the leaves have lost the will to cling those self-same tree branches from which they so recently sprung. The month when the leaves clump in damp drifts beneath the boots of countlessly many pedestrians, no longer crisp and crunching but damp and slick and putrid. The month when— but I digress! It’s time for my monthly round up of October’s reading list!

On the reading front this month I’ve clearly returned to a non-fiction spree after my rather lengthy bout with fiction. The page count for this month comes to 1369. (Yay for multiples of 3?)

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Cooked by Michael Pollan

Confession: I’d actually been reading Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation for several months (since July or August!), and while such a long reading time would seem like a bad sign for a book, the real reason it took me so long to finish is that I couldn’t get it from the library on Kindle…. This means I had to read it on my computer and as someone who already feels like most of my life is spent on a computer, it was hard to muster enthusiasm for any prolonged reading (which means I mostly read this book breakfast). So really it’s a sign of merit that I bothered to persevere all the way to the end of this one.

Which is why I’m here to tell you that you need to read Cooked if you have any interest at all in food and cooking. I’m an unabashed fan of Michael Pollan’s work generally, but independent of your feelings on his food politics, this book is a fascinating read. Couched in the guise of the four elemental transformations (fire, water, air, and earth) Pollan explores the natural history of cooking reaching back to the earliest memory of ancient civilization and exploring how and why we cook the foods we do. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it!

 

Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson

Up next on my reading list for the month was Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat, which makes an fantastic follow up to Michael Pollan’s Cooked (I was clearly on a roll with the cooking theme…). Whereas Cooked presented a history of cooking from the perspective of the natural sciences and transformations, Consider the Fork takes a look at the history of cooking from the perspective of technological innovation. Both are equally fascinating; however, Bee Wilson’s book is a much lighter and easier read than Pollan’s most recent tome. Covering changes in kitchen technology from the clay pot to the sous vide machine, Consider the Fork is a quick and entertaining read for any culinary enthusiast.

 

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World by Martha Beck

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want is Martha Beck’s most recent contribution to the sea of self-help and life-coaching books on shelves these days. In it, Beck teaches what she terms the four “technologies of magic”, Wordlessness, Oneness, Imagination, and Forming (and yes, it’s about as out there as it sounds…). But if you’re willing to look a little beyond the surface layer of “this sounds crazy!”, there’s a lot about this book that rings deeply and profoundly true. (My only real quibble is with her mystical appropriation of quantum physics in an attempt to lend credence to her beliefs in magic and miracles… As a scientist trained in these things (at least more-so than Beck) I found my skepticism hard to stomach.)

If you’ve been keeping up with me for the last couple of years you’ll know I’ve been doing some pretty serious soul-searching with regard to what I want to do with my life. And if starting this blog felt like taking the first step in the right direction, then reading Finding Your Way in a Wild New World has undoubtedly been another.

If you’re fed up with feeling trapped in a situation that sucks but don’t quite know if you’re brave enough to break free, if you’ve found yourself feeling a little lost, a little lonely, and not quite sure where you’re supposed to be heading, then I highly recommend you give Finding Your Way in a Wild New World a try!

 

The Unconquered by Scott Wallace

Last on my list for October is just about the nearest one can get to a modern day adventure story. The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes is the story of an expedition of men and indigenous tribesmen led by Brazilian official and activist Sydney Possuelo. The tale is narrated by Scott Wallace, a journalist with National Geographic who accompanied the expedition. The book narrates the trials and tribulations encountered by the explorers as they search for evidence of the well-being of the uncontacted tribe of flecheiros or “Arrow People” with the goal of leaving the tribesmen uncontacted and undisturbed.

One part adventure story, one part political treatise, and one part history of indigenous relations in the Amazon jungle, The Unconquered is a surprisingly compelling read that I’m glad I stumbled upon. My only tentative complaint is with Wallace’s apparent adoration for unnecessarily abstruse verbiage… 😉

 

Now, I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what you’re reading in the comments below.

 

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