Recent reading
Sep. 5th, 2026 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI haven't written in months, but recently I started writing a short fic, just to see if I could. And lo, I can! \o/ Am also considering the Trick or Treat Exchange (it's only a 300 word minimum). Three days left to nominate...
I promised flail photos, and they are coming, though I can't say my flail is very pretty. We also now have a sickle, which is much prettier! : D I am not a communist, but I am tempted to invite people to a work day featuring grain harvesting and a building project that involves nails.
Anyway, reading! I have been reading very little during 2026, but here is what I have read so far. Reviews are mixed up with farm reports, where applicable.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (2025)
For book club; I listened to this as an audiobook. It is a low-key and community-focused apocalypse book set in an indigenous community in northern Canada. I liked it fine, but it could not really compete with my reality on the farm. I thought the
Shroud by Adrian Tschaikovsky (2025)
I listened to this back in the winter. It sure is A Tschaikovsky Book, where discovering the alien biology and culture holds more interest than the human interactions. I liked it, though I wasn't blown away by it as I was by the spider book, perhaps because that was my first Tschaikovsky.
Mathematica: a Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity by David Bessis (2025)
I linked to a blog post by this guy while ago, and went on to read his book to see if it had anything applicable to teaching math. Basically, his thesis is that the huge differences we see in math ability are neither genetically nor environmentally determined, but due to having different ways of thinking about and imagining math. He recommends thinking about mathematical concepts as though they are real objects, forming an intuition about how they act under different circumstances, and then, when your intuition is inevitably proved wrong, to see that as an opportunity to reshape your intuition to take the new information into account. This as opposed to a way of thinking about math that emphasizes purely logical deduction (which is necessary, but definitely not sufficient to be good at math). I guess that agrees pretty well with my own experience. He suggests that while our brains obviously develop differently because of getting different input throughout life, a lot of that input is generated by our own thoughts and feelings and mental habits, and that the differences caused by these can compound over time. Huh, I've never thought of it that way before.
Then I started investigating Chelsea Green's back catalog (more to come from there).
The Organic Seed Grower - John Navazio (2021)
I am a member of Sesam, the organization for seed saving and seed sharing in Sweden, and had previously read their handbook on the topic. We're also growing seeds ourselves, this year parsley, rutabaga, parsnip, salad, onion, beet, and others. It's partly to become independent of big seed companies and produce more of our own inputs, and partly because it's just fascinating to see this new side of familiar vegetables. Biannual vegetables, they bloom in the second year! This book was a good complement, though oriented towards larger-scale seed production than I will ever do. I now have the bewildering diversity of the commonly cultivated Brassica vegetables straight in my head, which is necessary for growing seed so that you know which ones will cross, being the same species, and which ones won't. B. oleracea: kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrabbi. B. rapa: turnip, rapini "broccoli", various Asian greens such as pak choi and and mizuna and Chinese cabbage, and an oilseed crop we call "rybs" in Swedish and which seems to be called "turnip rape" in English. B. napus: rutabaga, Siberian kale, and the rape that you get rapeseed oil from. The last species is the most recent, being a polyploid cross between the other two.
Small-Scale Grain Raising - Gene Logsdon
This was a bit rambling and not all applicable to my climate zone, but I did learn from it, especially about corn/maize which obviously is less a part of the culture of Sweden. For example, I learned about tools that are used in the harvesting and processing, how flour corn is stored, and that dry corn cobs are good for starting fires.
Keeping a Family Cow: The Complete Guide for Home-Scale, Holistic Dairy Producers, 3rd Edition - Joann S. Grohman (2013) and One-Cow Revolution: Achieving Food Independence with a Grass-Fed Family Cow - Shawn and Beth Dougherty (2025)
These two blur together in my mind now, being on the same topic. We are considering getting a milk cow! Pro: 1) we have land that needs to be grazed and a field that can give hay for winter, 2) we already make cheese and yoghurt and consume a fair amount of milk, 3) we would then know that the milk came from animals that were treated well, 4) it would be local, environmentally benign food that would also increase our self-sufficiency, 5) we could also get meat from the calves if we don't sell or keep them (assuming we could bring ourselves to kill them), 6) forming a relationship with cows would be a new, exciting thing to experience, 7) possibly we could try using them as draft animals, especially if we got a steer as company for the cow. Cons: 1) there's an initial investment of time in setting up fences and a shelter, 2) there's an ongoing investment of time every day in milking them, making sure they have water, processing the milk, and pasture management, 3) we'd need to get in the hay and (in winter) feed them hay every day. I went to a weekend course in August where I learned to milk a cow, practiced handling cows, learned how to handle raw milk, made butter, etc. I enjoyed it! Still, there's the time issue, which we all three need to talk over. If we do buy a cow, I think I want to shell out for a more expensive one which is already trained to hand-milking.
Err, this was supposed to be a book review. Anyway, both books are very informative about daily life with cows, especially the first one. The second is very pro holistic grazing which there does not seem to be a great evidence base for, from what I can see elsewhere. It is also very American, in that a Swedish book probably would not write "and when you are milking the cow is a great time to pray!". But yeah, I learned a lot. Also funny is that last year I read the book to which the title of the second one is alluding.
Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The origin and spread of domesticated plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin, 4th edn, by Daniel Zohary, Maria Hopf, and Ehud Weiss (2012)
This was great! I saw a popular science book on a similar topic and went, no, I actually want a proper scientific book, which will be concise and cite the evidence. Some things I learned: that some grains have been bred to be free-threshing, which means that the kernel comes loose easily from the hull and is not stuck hard to it. Otherwise they are called "hulled". It's a great advantage to grow free-threshing grains if you don't have a machine to de-hull grains. Barley and oats are generally hulled, but there are free-threshing varieties which are called "naked barley" and "naked oats", which we grow. (Our two naked oat varieties are called "Patrick" and "Robert", which always makes me imagine two naked men standing in the field.) Rice is hulled. Rye is always free-threshing (it also stands out as being cross-pollinated, a contrast to the self-pollinating wheat, barley, and oats). For wheat, the earliest species (einkorn) is hulled, and so is emmer, a different species of early wheat, but its modern descendant durum (from which pasta is made) is free-threshing. Dinkel/spelt is an early hulled version of modern bread-wheat. Oh, and also it's fascinating that oats and rye apparently started their domestication history as weeds infesting wheat and barley fields, and then went on to be domesticated in their own right. Oh, and another thing! Emmer/durum doesn't have the same gluten qualities as spelt/bread-wheat, and also emmer/durum thrives in hotter climates and doesn't tolerate cold as well as spelt/bread-wheat (this is because spelt/bread-wheat originated as a cross between the tetraploid emmer/durum and a more northern species, which donated its chromosomes to the hexaploid spelt/bread-wheat. This might explain why cultures around the equator usually have flat breads, because they use emmer/durum to bake with (also other grains, obviously), which doesn't rise as well?
Crop Genetics, ed. Walter Suza and Kendall Lamkey (2023)
A straight-forward textbook, which helped to complement the books on seed growing.
I promised flail photos, and they are coming, though I can't say my flail is very pretty. We also now have a sickle, which is much prettier! : D I am not a communist, but I am tempted to invite people to a work day featuring grain harvesting and a building project that involves nails.
Anyway, reading! I have been reading very little during 2026, but here is what I have read so far. Reviews are mixed up with farm reports, where applicable.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (2025)
For book club; I listened to this as an audiobook. It is a low-key and community-focused apocalypse book set in an indigenous community in northern Canada. I liked it fine, but it could not really compete with my reality on the farm. I thought the
suspected cannibalism was a bit unnecessary--the villain was already enough of a destabilizing problem that it felt a bit overkill to have him possibly eat corpses as well. I mean, it was already hinted that he was stealing from the food cache? Or was he in fact stealing from the food cache and the main character falsely suspects him of cannibalism? We never find out.
Shroud by Adrian Tschaikovsky (2025)
I listened to this back in the winter. It sure is A Tschaikovsky Book, where discovering the alien biology and culture holds more interest than the human interactions. I liked it, though I wasn't blown away by it as I was by the spider book, perhaps because that was my first Tschaikovsky.
Mathematica: a Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity by David Bessis (2025)
I linked to a blog post by this guy while ago, and went on to read his book to see if it had anything applicable to teaching math. Basically, his thesis is that the huge differences we see in math ability are neither genetically nor environmentally determined, but due to having different ways of thinking about and imagining math. He recommends thinking about mathematical concepts as though they are real objects, forming an intuition about how they act under different circumstances, and then, when your intuition is inevitably proved wrong, to see that as an opportunity to reshape your intuition to take the new information into account. This as opposed to a way of thinking about math that emphasizes purely logical deduction (which is necessary, but definitely not sufficient to be good at math). I guess that agrees pretty well with my own experience. He suggests that while our brains obviously develop differently because of getting different input throughout life, a lot of that input is generated by our own thoughts and feelings and mental habits, and that the differences caused by these can compound over time. Huh, I've never thought of it that way before.
Then I started investigating Chelsea Green's back catalog (more to come from there).
The Organic Seed Grower - John Navazio (2021)
I am a member of Sesam, the organization for seed saving and seed sharing in Sweden, and had previously read their handbook on the topic. We're also growing seeds ourselves, this year parsley, rutabaga, parsnip, salad, onion, beet, and others. It's partly to become independent of big seed companies and produce more of our own inputs, and partly because it's just fascinating to see this new side of familiar vegetables. Biannual vegetables, they bloom in the second year! This book was a good complement, though oriented towards larger-scale seed production than I will ever do. I now have the bewildering diversity of the commonly cultivated Brassica vegetables straight in my head, which is necessary for growing seed so that you know which ones will cross, being the same species, and which ones won't. B. oleracea: kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrabbi. B. rapa: turnip, rapini "broccoli", various Asian greens such as pak choi and and mizuna and Chinese cabbage, and an oilseed crop we call "rybs" in Swedish and which seems to be called "turnip rape" in English. B. napus: rutabaga, Siberian kale, and the rape that you get rapeseed oil from. The last species is the most recent, being a polyploid cross between the other two.
Small-Scale Grain Raising - Gene Logsdon
This was a bit rambling and not all applicable to my climate zone, but I did learn from it, especially about corn/maize which obviously is less a part of the culture of Sweden. For example, I learned about tools that are used in the harvesting and processing, how flour corn is stored, and that dry corn cobs are good for starting fires.
Keeping a Family Cow: The Complete Guide for Home-Scale, Holistic Dairy Producers, 3rd Edition - Joann S. Grohman (2013) and One-Cow Revolution: Achieving Food Independence with a Grass-Fed Family Cow - Shawn and Beth Dougherty (2025)
These two blur together in my mind now, being on the same topic. We are considering getting a milk cow! Pro: 1) we have land that needs to be grazed and a field that can give hay for winter, 2) we already make cheese and yoghurt and consume a fair amount of milk, 3) we would then know that the milk came from animals that were treated well, 4) it would be local, environmentally benign food that would also increase our self-sufficiency, 5) we could also get meat from the calves if we don't sell or keep them (assuming we could bring ourselves to kill them), 6) forming a relationship with cows would be a new, exciting thing to experience, 7) possibly we could try using them as draft animals, especially if we got a steer as company for the cow. Cons: 1) there's an initial investment of time in setting up fences and a shelter, 2) there's an ongoing investment of time every day in milking them, making sure they have water, processing the milk, and pasture management, 3) we'd need to get in the hay and (in winter) feed them hay every day. I went to a weekend course in August where I learned to milk a cow, practiced handling cows, learned how to handle raw milk, made butter, etc. I enjoyed it! Still, there's the time issue, which we all three need to talk over. If we do buy a cow, I think I want to shell out for a more expensive one which is already trained to hand-milking.
Err, this was supposed to be a book review. Anyway, both books are very informative about daily life with cows, especially the first one. The second is very pro holistic grazing which there does not seem to be a great evidence base for, from what I can see elsewhere. It is also very American, in that a Swedish book probably would not write "and when you are milking the cow is a great time to pray!". But yeah, I learned a lot. Also funny is that last year I read the book to which the title of the second one is alluding.
Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The origin and spread of domesticated plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin, 4th edn, by Daniel Zohary, Maria Hopf, and Ehud Weiss (2012)
This was great! I saw a popular science book on a similar topic and went, no, I actually want a proper scientific book, which will be concise and cite the evidence. Some things I learned: that some grains have been bred to be free-threshing, which means that the kernel comes loose easily from the hull and is not stuck hard to it. Otherwise they are called "hulled". It's a great advantage to grow free-threshing grains if you don't have a machine to de-hull grains. Barley and oats are generally hulled, but there are free-threshing varieties which are called "naked barley" and "naked oats", which we grow. (Our two naked oat varieties are called "Patrick" and "Robert", which always makes me imagine two naked men standing in the field.) Rice is hulled. Rye is always free-threshing (it also stands out as being cross-pollinated, a contrast to the self-pollinating wheat, barley, and oats). For wheat, the earliest species (einkorn) is hulled, and so is emmer, a different species of early wheat, but its modern descendant durum (from which pasta is made) is free-threshing. Dinkel/spelt is an early hulled version of modern bread-wheat. Oh, and also it's fascinating that oats and rye apparently started their domestication history as weeds infesting wheat and barley fields, and then went on to be domesticated in their own right. Oh, and another thing! Emmer/durum doesn't have the same gluten qualities as spelt/bread-wheat, and also emmer/durum thrives in hotter climates and doesn't tolerate cold as well as spelt/bread-wheat (this is because spelt/bread-wheat originated as a cross between the tetraploid emmer/durum and a more northern species, which donated its chromosomes to the hexaploid spelt/bread-wheat. This might explain why cultures around the equator usually have flat breads, because they use emmer/durum to bake with (also other grains, obviously), which doesn't rise as well?
Crop Genetics, ed. Walter Suza and Kendall Lamkey (2023)
A straight-forward textbook, which helped to complement the books on seed growing.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-05 07:48 pm (UTC)I didn't know that rutabagas were yet another kind of brassica! Truly what has that genus never done for us.
Waiting with interest for further cow developments.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 12:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-05 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 12:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 03:51 pm (UTC)(To be clear, we're out of season now, which is the reason I'm not naming it, either. In fact, I was uncomfortable when I read the book, because I--not knowing beforehand that was an element in the novel!--read the book out of season myself, and got very jumpy when I realized where the novel was going. NB: Rice and I share cultural heritage.)
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 08:49 pm (UTC)I remember someone asking Eden Robinson how she felt about the care she had to take between family-owned stories, and traditions that were either seasonal or in-culture only, and she said something like, "It must be nice to have a cultural tradition you can just write down!" Then laughed.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-07 04:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-07 04:48 am (UTC)I liked Monkey Beach a lot (though you can kind of watch her getting a handle on novelistic structure as she goes), especially for coastal people. Intensely relatable. I loved the first two Trickster books, but the pandemic killed the landing of the trilogy. Really looking forward to her new one! She needs to write that band council romance she keeps threatening.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-06 12:40 pm (UTC)For wheat, the earliest species (einkorn) is hulled, and so is emmer, a different species of early wheat, but its modern descendant durum (from which pasta is made) is free-threshing.
As a farmer you will find this unacceptably frivolous, but this always reminds me of the classic BBC April Fool's Day pasta hoax.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-09-07 11:50 am (UTC)