3/4/12: Book Fare

This time of year tries my patience. Interesting books make slushy, mushy, slip-slidey days pass painlessly.

I love well-written thrillers. Joseph Garber’s 1995 bestseller, Vertical Run, absolutely blew me away. It’s about a regular guy who must cope with the unthinkable.
A businessman goes to work one morning, brews coffee, then greets his boss in the adjacent office. From that instant, nothing would ever be the same.

William Kent Krueger has written a splendid series of mysteries, beginning with Iron Lake, featuring likable Cork O’Connor and his family and friends. Eleven books, which should be read in order, kept me riveted. Wikipedia comments:

Krueger's stories always include an element of life in and around Native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor, is part Irish, part Ojibwe. When Krueger decided to set the series in northern Minnesota, he realized that a large percentage of the population of the county he had selected as a model for the fictional Tamarack County of his books was of mixed heritage. The idea of researching the Ojibwe culture and weaving the information into the stories held great appeal for him.

Henry, an elderly, wise Ojibwe, is psychic. His relationship with Cork and his family is fascinating.
These believable characters are easy to care about.

Some tomes have changed my life. Dana Carpenter wrote a best-selling book, 500 Low-Carb Recipes. Its offerings are simple and delicious. And her little pocket book, Dana Carpenter’s Carb Gram Counter, has a succinct, informative introduction. Here’s a snippet.

There is no such thing as good sugar. Obviously sugar, brown sugar and corn syrup are all bad for you. However, so are the ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’ alternatives like honey, concentrated fruit juice, Sucanat, dried sugar, cane sugar, malt syrup, rice syrup, turbinado, fructose, dextrose, maltose or anything else ending in ‘ose.’ All of it is sugar and all of it will cause an insulin release.

Eliminating most carb-listed foods made it possible for me to dump unwanted weight. Thirteen years ago I’d get ‘the trembles’ about three hours after eating a ‘healthy,’ carb-crammed breakfast of juice, whole grain cereal, fruit, milk and toast. (Insulin levels naturally rise with the carb load, and three hours later they’re still up, driving blood sugar down. You have to eat again, usually more carbs, so the whole cycle starts over. In its simplest form this is the natural physiology of carbohydrates.)

I evaluated my typical food intake per day and found I was sometimes eating over 500 carbs, far more than the human body can effectively manage. (Carbs are calorie-glue, stored away as fat.) I learned that keeping to 25-50 carbs a day ended hunger-shakes and the desperate need to eat. And, it was simply amazing how quickly the pounds disappeared. And stayed gone. I’ve felt wonderful ever since.
Bonus: my migraine headaches vanished.

Focusing on meat, fish and vegetables is a more natural way of eating, recently rediscovered as the ‘Paleolithic diet.’

A fascinating, slim tome titled The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D. (pub. 2005) has helped me understand these baffling people.
Sociopaths are born without consciences, and therefore don’t experience guilt. They “have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals.” Most sociopaths learn to abide by societal rules, but sometimes they’re ruthless, and emotionally and/or physically injure living things, often out of curiosity. (I speak from experience.) By some estimates, one in twenty-five humans is sociopathic. Dr. Stout explains how to identify and cope with these people, and reclaim one’s life. It was a revelation.

Finally, there’s Kitty Ferguson’s book, Stephen Hawking-An Unfettered Mind (pub. 2012). Stricken with ALS in college, Hawking has lived his entire adult life trapped in a destroyed body. All he can do, literally, is blink, and think.
But oh, what a mind! He has transformed theoretical physics with his astounding, intuitive leaps.
Ferguson has movingly written of this man’s life and work.

If you have some time, click on
this link to experience the enormity of what Hawking thinks about, and what we humans are part of.
It’s a breathtaking experience.


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