SFist Reads
"I like talking about books" seems like the kind of thing you put into your personal ad, somewhere before "I'm spiritual, but not religious" and after you crop your ex out of your ad's head shot. But it's true (not the spiritual part) -- we like to talk about books, and, even more than that, we like the conversations that books inspire. We've had strangers ask us about library books we were reading, or where we got other books we owned copies of. Reading is a solitatry pursuit, but books bring people together. That's pretty nice.
Case in point: SFist Derrick let us know that he is reading Ron Engeland's Growing Great Garlic as research for an article (you'll never guess the topic). It's all about the specialty garlic that's sprouted up (ha!) over the last few years and how garlic develops good flavor. It's interesting, and he's taking plenty of notes.
Sfist Matt piped up
Ooh hey: When you include Derrick's words about Growing Great Garlic, maybe you could throw in a sentence about how Gilroy, about an hour south of SF on 101, is one of the garlic capitals of the world. The smell of garlic covers everything in town, and there's tons of roadside stands selling garlic-themed variants of anything you can imagine (the garlic-pickles are my favorite). It's a great place.
To which Derrick responded
Though of course Gilroy pretty much just grows softneck garlic, which has commercial advantages over the more flavorful hardneck garlic. (Curiously, did you know that roughly 2/3 of the garlic we get in this country was actually grown in China? Much lower labor costs, since garlic is a total pain in the ass to grow)
At that point, our involvment in the conversation ceased -- we can only assume that they went off in a corner somewhere for more stinky conversation. But there you have it! Books bringing people together -- and we all learned something in the process.
SFist Jer just finished the New Yorker's food issue (Sept. 5 cover date). Great issue all around -- he found a feature about Silicon Valley food firm Mattson to be particularly fascinating ("The Bakeoff," written by Malcolm Gladwell).
SFist Rita just finished Bitten: True Medical Stories About Bites and Stings by Dr. Pamela Nagami, which (as the title suggests) goes through the various ways you can be injured by various types of bites and stings. It's mostly just medical anecdotes, but they're all very interesting! Ants, tsetse flies, rabies, jellyfish, Komodo dragons, and, of course, humans, among many others, are all covered.