nonfiction

Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World

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Thumbs up for Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vickie Leon. History.

In clearing out a shelf of books-that-have-sat-too-long-with-bookmarkers-almost-to-the-end, I came across this. Why didn’t I finish this before? Perhaps so I’d have the pleasure of reading it now. This is a hilarious, informative and illuminating book, describing ancient Greece and Rome through the ins and outs of the jobs people had.… >> Read more

Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond (Merloyd Lawrence Books)

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Thumbs up for Made For Each Other by Meg Daley Olmert. Science/nature.

Supposedly about the man-animal bond, at times it reads more like the author’s love affair with oxytocin. No, not the stuff Rush Limbaugh was famously hooked on (that’s OxyContin), but the “feel-good” neurochemical that is activated in social interactions both between people and people, and people and animals. The book could have been trimmed from 244 pages (not including notes) to about 100 without suffering, but it reads quickly enough, and has enough of value, that skimming through the “ra-ra oxytocin is great” repetition is tolerable.… >> Read more

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Thumbs up for The Ungarnished Truth: A Cooking Contest Memoir by Ellie Mathews. Food.

This winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off ain’t your checkered-apron homemaker type. College-educated, Birkenstock-wearing, grease-phobic, logical and practical – the quintessential Northwesterner, in fact – Ellie Matthews describes herself and her experiences with a kind of refreshing humorlessness, never able to take seriously the fact that she won a prize for throwing some stuff in a pan.… >> Read more