October 2005
Brain Food
Three thought-provoking books
HONEY AND DUST: TRAVELS IN SEARCH OF SWEETNESS ****
By Piers Moore Ede
Bloomsbury, 2005
Travel writing is a booming business, from factual guides to fictional literature, and a wealth of books somewhere in between. In fact, there’s so much on offer that it sometimes feels like
everything has been done before. We’ve read books by backpackers in Southeast Asia who experience dodgy stomachs and spiders the size of their head. We’ve read books by weary fifty-somethings who pack up their city life for a new start in a crumbling farmhouse in Andalusia. So, it is refreshing to find a unique travel tale like
Honey and Dust.
As a young man, Ede was left in a coma after a hit-and-run accident. In the prologue, he describes the accident and the immediate impact it had on his life. It’s an amazing piece of writing, which gets the book off to a fine start—spare in prose and detail, undramatic, but conveying the full horror of the situation: “If I knew pain in the days to come, it was primarily in the faces of those who visited me.” To aid his mental and physical recovery, Ede went to work on an organic farm in Italy, owned by Gunther, a German beekeeper. Gunther introduces the still fragile and haunted Ede to the wonders of beekeeping and plants an idea in his head—to embark on a journey in search of honey. Ede’s method of healing is to look to nature, and the sweetness at its heart.
Ede’s search for honey takes him to the Middle East, New York, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India, where he meets friends along the way, and acquires knowledge and strength. He searches for stories within each jar of honey—the histories, geography and legends. It’s fascinating to read about different cultures and their methods of honey hunting, particularly that of the Gurung tribe in Nepal. There, they still pursue the old and extremely dangerous method of dismantling massive honeycombs built by wild bees on the underside of high mountain cliffs. The chief honey hunter risks his life when he descends the rockface on a homemade bamboo ladder, surrounded by aggressive bees. From the terracotta bee jars in Lebanon and the clay cylinders in Syria to the Veddah tribesmen in Sri Lanka, the book covers honey from just about every angle—as a holy substance, food, medicine, aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic. Honey-lovers will be pleased to know that there are also delicious recipes throughout the book.
Despite his physical healing, it becomes apparent that Ede is battling with depression since his accident. This makes the book not only an account of a physical journey, but also a spiritual one. Honey and Dust is a beautifully written, informative and engaging book.
AN IRISH HISTORY
OF CIVILIZATION:
VOLUME ONE ***
By Don Akenson
Granta Books, 2005
Before you have a panic attack about the sheer size and weight of this monster, it is worth knowing that it actually comprises two books—
Downpatrick is the Butterfly Capital of the Universe and
Kings of the Wild Frontiers?—which makes the 828-page volume marginally less daunting. Volume Two, which includes
Half the Globe’s Our Home and America’s Century, will be published by Granta Books in 2006.
Akenson is the world’s leading scholar of the Irish diaspora and a natural storyteller. In this book he combines history and fiction to create a colorful narrative about the Irish and their influence around the world. The lines between history and fiction are at times blurred, not helped by the fact that, in the preface, Akenson writes: “some of the stories are accurate; all of them are true.” He examines Irish civilization from its Semitic roots in early Christianity, Gaelic Ireland and St. Patrick, early Irish conquests in Europe and several New Worlds, and the emergence of Irish Catholics as energetic imperializers within the First and Second British Empires. St. Patrick, Woody Guthrie, Constantine and John F. Kennedy all make an appearance. Don’t be put off by its size—
An Irish History of Civilization is a light-hearted and entertaining book, overflowing with energy, although it might not be every historian’s cup of tea.
MEDIATED: HOW THE MEDIA SHAPE YOUR WORLD ***
By Thomas
de Zengotita
Bloomsbury, 2005
Many books written by academics leave the average reader flummoxed. But in Mediated, American academic Thomas de Zengotita is not only passionate about his subject, he also has a way of making readers understand postmodernism. The only problem is his language. On page 20, for example, there is one sentence containing all of the following words: innumerable, vibrations, myriad, capillaries, individuated, mediational, transactions, and engulfing. Yes, his choice of words takes some getting used to, but it can be done!
Mediated covers every aspect of our media-saturated society, from oral sex in the Oval Office to hip-hop nation, from climbing Mount Everest to the death of Princess Diana and the cult of celebrity. De Zengotita explains that we construct our own identities and personalities like method actors performing in a drama of our own devising. When you read how many excitable theories, ideas and opinions de Zengotita has, it is a wonder that he was able to cram them all onto 291 pages. The result is a lively, enjoyable, thought-provoking book bursting with ideas.
