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Like all of the Corbett novels, I loved this. My reading of the novels is spread out over time, so I struggle at times to place specific incidents into specific novels, so I wish it was easier to figure out when each story takes place in relation to the novels. Even with the month and year given for each story, I’ve struggled with this.

For the most part each story focuses on one or two characters, giving some much appreciated insight into some of the support characters. My favorites are “The Scorpion’s Eye,” “Skeleton Crew,” “The Pale Pipe Smoker,” and “The Incident on the Lady Barbara” because they focus on the women, who are frequently background characters that wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test if the novels were movies.

“Wandering Mary” is a solo Matthew story. It takes him to a town just outside of Boston to act as an outside observer in the determination of the sanity for a patriarch who is seeing his dead wife. This one felt like a real mystery, and it is the longest of all of the stories, more of a novella than a short story, IMHO.

I also loved the supernatural elements of “Night Ride.” I wonder if I reread “Wolf’s Hour” and the other connected novels if I’d find a connection.

These details are taken from the website MatthewCorbettsWorld.com: “The Four Lamplighters”: Matthew and Hudson sign on as bodyguards to a band of traveling musicians and wind up with mud on their faces. “Night Ride”: Matthew finds himself in the middle of an age-old war. “‘The House At The Edge Of The World”: Hudson learns that a cyclops is not only a creature of mythology. “The Scorpion’s Eye”: Minx is on the hunt for a stolen jewel with a fantastic and deadly power. “The Pale Pipesmoker”: Katherine and Minx come to the aid of a man who’s been challenged to a duel by a cunning killer. “Skeleton Crew”: Katherine helps an ex-slave being tormented by a band of marauding skeletons on horseback. “Wandering Mary”: A ghost trying to lure a wealthy man to his death takes Matthew to a haunted castle. “Incident On The Lady Barbara”: A disappearance at sea puts Berry in the position of being a problem-solver.”

Van Tulleken’s work here is an outstanding compilation and explanation of dozens of research studies, historical events, and personal observations tying the state of the current obesity epidemic to the growth of the ultra-processed food industry.

His conclusions are well supported with research making his commentary poignant and powerful. Unfortunately, while he tries to provide some hope with a few methods for change, the reality of our world, our government, and capitalism make it clear that we’ll likely never have any systemic change, so any change to how we eat must be ultimately personal.

Van Tulleken puts UPF on a spectrum. While avoiding all UPF is desirable, some are worse than others simply based on the quantity of non-kitchen ingredients. And, identifying UPF is difficult. Trying to follow the simple rule that an ingredient one would not find in a normal household kitchen denotes UPF is a nice start, but it isn’t always that simple.

I really like his stance, that we shouldn’t judge people for what they eat, and we should just do our best to eat real food. And, don’t nag.

At the beginning of chapter 18, Van Tulleken summarizes the findings outlined previously in the book before moving into the ideas for moving forward. I’ve tried to record those conclusions below.

Summary from Chapter 18 -- The processing makes UPF soft, which means it is eaten quickly and a person consumes more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after finished. ---- Can reduce facial bone size and bone density, which can lead to dental issues. -- UPF typically has a very high calorie density because it is dry and high in fat and sugar, providing more calories per mouthful. -- UPF displaces diverse whole foods from the diet, especially among low income groups. ---- UPF is often micro-nutrient deficient, which also contributes to excess consumption -- Mismatches between taste signals in the mouth and the nutrition content arriving in the gut alters metabolism and alters appetite in ways we are just beginning to understand, but seem to drive excess consumption. -- Ultra-processed food is addictive, meaning for some people binges are unavoidable. -- The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage our microbiomes, allowing inflammatory bacteria to flourish and causing our guts to leak. -- The convenience, marketing, and price of UPF urges us to eat constantly and without thought. -- The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system, and other additives may affect brain and endocrine functions, and plastic from the packaging might affect fertility. -- Production methods used to make UPF require expensive subsidies and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions, and plastic pollution, which harms us all.

After reading The Mote in God’s Eye, I realized that Garrit Franke, a fellow Fosstodon member, finished reading this book, so I decided to give it a try too.

I have to admit that at first I was a little bit hesitant about this book, because it is a written in first person, and it also starts out with ammnesia and also flashbacks. But after that I got used to the writing style pretty quickly and started to really get into the main story and the mystery behind everything happening around our protagonist.

The story follows a lone astronaut that finds himself facing impossible odds every step of the way. The way the plot is revealed and how it moves forward every chapter is great. The scientific elements are pretty accurate and that was something I found really interesting. It reminded me a lot of Jules Verne’s novels that usually felt like something that could be possible to do.

In this case of course the protagonist uses his scientific knowledge (as well as his memory slowly coming back) to figure out how handle his mission, which is pretty much to save the planet from certain demise.

I liked the setting and the characters that show up, there’s quite a bit of science tidbits I learned through this, and the moments of action and uncertainty are quite great. I could not stop reading many times because I just wanted to know what in the world would our protagonist do even just to stay alive to live another day.

I didn’t feel like the book was as long as it was, honestly. It was definitely worth it. I do think that it feels a little like a movie waiting to happen, the prose wasn’t as interesting and the plot ended up kind of predictable, and there’s a very wholesome twist at the end which is nice. Just a very fun read.

As I listened to this on my morning walks, I was caught cackling with laughter several times by my fellow neighborhood walkers. I’m pretty sure they wonder about me now. My sister and I also exchanged texts with some of the funniest lines.

Chapter four is the funniest funeral ever. Anyone receiving flowers and a vase with “Suck MFer,” can’t be all bad… right?!?!

Then there are the dolphins. Totally hard core, and death by “mass dolphin gender identification,” sounds pretty horrible.

The Pitch and Pitch, was also super fun. “Tetsticles as a service.” Bwahahaha!

The book didn’t end the way I expected. I kind of wanted an ending with a “to be continued…” motif, but one-shot books are great too. No worries about setting up another plot, so the ending is clean.

Charlie and Matti are great. I was pleased with how that relationship went. I was worried for a while that it would become a cliche. I also like that as a former business reporter, Charlie has some chops in dealing with the other villains. Then there is Hera. She might be my favorite: “Dogs are the worst. They’ll sell you out for a treat and a head pat.” She is not wrong.