Alison Reads

Similar to The Omnivore’s Dilemma but predating it by 20 years, this book examines the ingredients of a simple dinner: corn, salt, butter, chicken, rice, lettuce, olive oil, lemon juice, and ice cream. The author explores the biology and social history of each food. I learned a lot about olive and lemon cultivation and harvest […]

The fifth in the Thursday Next series, and just as inventive as the first four. Thursday has only a few days to convince her son Friday to join the ChronoGuard and invent time travel, or time as we know it will cease to exist. Meanwhile, she is having trouble with two of her bookland alter […]

The last in a series of five books about 12-year-old Gregor’s adventures in the Underland below New York City. Not for the squeamish, this book contains graphic descriptions of battles and death, but it also addresses moral questions about right and wrong and standing up for one’s own values. Each child in the Underworld, no […]

A Richard Jury mystery. Jury goes into a bar and is told a fantastic story by a stranger about a missing woman and her son. Jury is caught up in the story and investigates it, only to discover that it is much more complex than he at first thought. It helps to have read the […]

Ten-year-old Zoe hears Vladimir Horowitz on the radio and wants to learn to play the piano; in fact, she wants to be a child prodigy. She begs her parents to buy her a piano and instead she is presented with a wheezy organ. Zoe perseveres, however, and with the support of her parents and a […]

I picked up this book because books by Kidder are always worth reading. Among Schoolchildren, a year in the life of a fourth-grade teacher, is his best-known book, but he has written several others on diverse subjects and they are all excellent. Mountains Beyond Mountains is a profile of Paul Farmer, a Harvard-trained doctor who […]

I inhaled this book over the Labor Day weekend. It’s a fascinating book (by a woman, by the way) about a married woman who is tempted to kiss a man she meets one night. Alternating chapters cover the next five years of her life. In one reality she gives in to the kiss and leaves […]

The third in an unconventional vampire series, this book finds Bella torn between her love for Edward the vampire and her friendship with Jacob the werewolf, since the two species are bitter enemies. They band together, however, to face a horde of vampire zombies from Seattle. Not as silly as I’ve made it sound, this […]

I expected to like this book, but I didn’t. It’s a creepy book about a strange young forensic pathologist who is convinced that she was cared for by gorillas as an infant. She investigates a series of suspicious crib deaths and ends up learning more about her past. I didn’t like the character or the […]

The subtitle of this book is “the accelerating pace of human evolution”. The author discusses forms of natural selection and evolution in humans and proto-humans and chimpanzees and gorillas. He argues that natural selection is still going on today, at an accelerated rate because of the accelerated rate of change in our environment. An interesting […]