FF: Plants and Unicorns
Mei-Ling Reads!
Being a gardener, I started by reading the portion of Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province in the section about specific types of plants. I skipped trees. This week, I went back and started from the beginning and finished off with the trees. Side bonus: I learned something about the various ways hides can be tanned.
For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week. Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines. The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list. If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.
Once again, this is not a book review column. It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.
Recently Completed:
Song of the Wanderer by Bruce Coville. Second book in the Unicorn Chronicles. Audiobook. An actual song is key to this story and Full Cast Audio’s cast included several people who could sing, so this was an audiobook that was more than simply narrated. If you listen to it, make sure you go to the end, because the entire song is performed there.
A Place at Mother Earth’s Table: Edible Wild Plants of the Rio Grande Region by Lisa W. Huckell. This slim book—probably technically a booklet—was so well written that I read all of it and in the process identified one of the plants in our yard as “Green Thread” aka “Indian Tea” or “Navajo Tea.” We’d just been calling it “that pretty plant w/the yellow pom-poms.” I now have some drying to try. And the bibliography led me to read…
Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province: Exploring Ancient and Enduring Uses by William W. Dunmire and Gail D. Tierney. Centered around four parks in New Mexico, this books looks at various plants and how they were used by a wide variety of indigenous peoples. Since one of the parks—Petroglyph National Monument—is very close to my house, I also ended up identifying several more of the plants in our yard, including scorpion weed, which is a far easier name to use than “that annoying plant that, although it has pretty purple flowers in the spring, gets all prickly and, worse, sticky, so let’s pull it.” I started with the chapter on types of plants, but found the book so well-written, I’m reading the whole thing.
In Progress:
Dark Whisper by Bruce Coville. Third book in the Unicorn Chronicles. Audiobook. As with any good series, solving one set of problems created new ones.
DreamForge Magazine, issue six. My copy arrived and is part of my relaxation reading.
Also:
Jim is reading my manuscript of SK4 (fourth book in the Star Kingdom series I am collaborating on with David Weber).
