Bibliophilia: The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks – Amy Stewart

​​The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks – Amy Stewart

Very enjoyable, like her other books, and very educational, like her other books.

Admittedly, I’m not much of a drinker, and I have never and likely will never drink many of the concoctions listed, but I really enjoyed learning more about the many and varied plants humanity has turned into booze. The whole way through I found myself saying “Huh! I didn’t know that.” or “Well, I’ll be.”

One of the sections was of course on rum. Like most every other liquor, it is aged in oak barrels. Since most of it is produced in the Caribbean, the heat there causes a fair bit of the alcohol to evaporate from the barrels, but the upside is that the heat causes the stuff to age more quickly. Which led me to wonder: Is there any advantage to aging scotch in a warm climate? Has anyone ever experimented with a few barrels of scotch down in Panama. Would the desired aging effect be achieved in 4 years rather than 12? What would leaving a barrel to sit for 12 years there do? Or would the ambient warmth give a whole different effect and flavour? Is the climate in a place like Scotland really required? Does that cold(er) temp contribute to the desired flavour?

I get the idea that the whole prospect is down right blasphemous, eliciting an “ahm gonna keel yoo!” response from Scottish diehards.

Bibliophilia: Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Diabolical Insects – Amy Stewart

Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Diabolical Insects – Amy Stewart

I read her other book Wicked plants: the weed that killed Lincoln’s mother and other botanical atrocities, and I liked the style of it, and enjoyed this one as much. Very entertaining – well, as entertaining as foot long centipedes that hang from the ceilings of caves and snatch bats out of the air, disease carrying ticks and mosquitos, forest felling borers, biblical swarms of locusts, ants that have a bite so painful it feels like getting shot, flies that lay eggs under the skin, fleas that burrow under toenails and lay a bean sized egg sac, and termites that do more damage to New Orleans than Hurricane Katrina did – can be. There are 10 quintillion insects on the planet – 200 million for every person. Humans! You do not rule the earth.

Until reading this book, I was not aware of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.

Bibliophilia: Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities – Amy Stewart

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities – Amy Stewart

I actually got this out of the library to show to a friend who mentioned wanting a garden full of poisonous and toxic plants, but ended up reading it myself and finding it very informative.