A four fisted book review post in which I review four books I read recently

Amal Naj's book on peppers is one of the most exhaustive books on a single food item that I have ever read. He packs a lot in to this slim book. And trust me, you'll learn more about peppers than you ever knew before if you read it. Parts of it dragged a bit but overall I enjoyed it.

Somehow I missed this book when it came out in hardback but thank goodness I found it in paperback. I picked it up while at the beach and I just finished it last night. It's one heck of a wild ride through food the history of food, the history of many different cultures in relation to food, and it shows once again just how idiotic all those bronze age religions are, especially when they relate to food.

Mr. Allen gives you just enough interesting tidbits about his food topics to keep you interested but not overwhelmed. His best work is done in the sections where he writes about how religions have impacted our diets. And he spares no religions, he shows them all to be hypocritical when it comes to what their adherents are supposed to eat or not eat.

Some parts of this book were hard to stomach, har-dee-har-har, especially the ones about the cultures where dog is eaten and some of the more bizarre foods that are eaten in the world. All in all however, I loved this book to death. I highly recommend it.

Okay, I finally finished my first Terry Prachett novel. And my verdict on it is it was a fun read and I'll give another of his books a try. Some of my readers are nuts for Pratchett and some are lukewarm at best on his works. This is the second one I tried, the first I put down after getting only 20 pages into it because I did not like it but this one had me from the get go. How could a novel where the main character is named Moist Von Lipwig not be hold my attention?

What I really liked about this novel is that it is a thinly veiled attack on big corporations. The once vibrant postal system in Ankh Morpork is now moribund so con man Moist Von Lipwig is chosen to bring it back to life so that it can compete with the big corporate message service in the city. The corporate pigs complain about the government competition and they do their best to shut it down and the plot revolves around the battle between the private message company and the public post office.

It's a fun read and you don't have to have read any or all of the previous Discworld books by Pratchett to enjoy it. I recommend this one as well, especially if you like golems.

Drink is a fine information packed big ol' history of alcohol. It's a big book, it's well over 600 pages but when you consider that it covers the cultural history of drinking from the dawn of man to the present day, it has to be a big ass book. Thanks goodness Mr. Gately wrote it for the general populace and not scholars. Even though it's a big book it's very accessible and very well written.

I began it about two weeks before we left for the beach and I got through about a third of it before I took it back to the library. The parts I read covered the early years of drinking in the Greek and Roman empires, the rise of drinking in Europe, Asia, the pacific, and the Americas. I got to the part where rum had just been invented before I stopped reading it. One day I'll finish it and I'll be damn glad I did.

I recommend this one as well, even though the physical size of the book can be a bit daunting.