The Curious Gardener's Almanac

By Niall Edworthy

"Pea and Mint Soup

Plain boiled or steamed peas are a simple and tasty accompaniment to many meat and fish dishes, but it is almost as easy to make a delicious soup from them. Boil about a pound of freshly podded peas in about a quart of vegetable or chicken stock along with a largish potato and an onion, both chopped roughly. When the ingredients have softened, whiz them in a blender and then return the mixture to the pan and stir in some cream and a small handful f chopped mint."

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

By Stieg Larsson

"I can only guess. Blomkvist believed in his story, but something happened along the way and the information turned out to be false. This in turn means that the source was someone he trusted or that someone deliberately fed him false information-which sounds improbably complicated. The alternative is that he was subjected to such a serious threat that he threw in the towel and would rather be seen as an incompetent idiot than fight back, But I'm just speculating, as I said."

Managing By Storying Around

By David M. Armstrong

"All companies go through tough times, and Armstrong, unfortunately is no exception. In 1987, for the first time since the Depression, we put a wage freeze into effect to help us get through what looked like it would be a very difficult year."

The Hobbit

By J. R. Tolkien

"It seemed quite a fair size, but not too large and mysterious. It had a dry floor and some comfortable nooks. At one end there was room for the ponies; and there they stood (mighty glad of the change) steaming, and champing in their nosebags. Oin and Gloin wanted to light a fire at the door to dry their clothes, but Gandalf would not hear of it. So they spread out their wet things on the floor, and got dry ones out of their bundles; then they made their blankets comfortable, got out their pipes and blew smoke rings, which Gandalf turned into different colours and set dancing up by the roof to amuse them. They talked and talked, and forgot about the storm, and discussed what each would do with his share of the treasure (when they got it, which at the moment did not seem so impossible); and so they dropped off to sleep one by one. And that was the last time that they used the ponies, packages, baggages, tools and paraphernalia that they had brought with them."

Quest For The Best

By Stanley Marcus

"It is reported that Renoir once said to Cezanne, "How can you wear that cravat? Can't you see it's in bad taste?" to which Cezanne replied, "If it were in bad taste, I wouldn't be wearing it"."

The Macrobiotic Path to Total Health

By Michio Kushi and Alex Jack

"The roots of macrobiotics stretch back in time. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates coined the term makrobios to refer to longevity and health. To understand why he was known as the Father of Medicine, we have to go back and look at the worldview that prevailed in that era. People commonly believed that health and sickness, life and death, fortune and misfortune, were governed by the gods. The gods and goddesses including Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Hermes, Apollo, and many other, were believed to live on Mount Olympus in northern Greece. The common view was that if you went to temple, prayed, and sacrificed, the gods would bestow upon you long life (makrobios), health, wealth, prosperity, many children, and all the blessings of life. Conversely, if you didn't go to church, light incense, burn candles, or carry out the rituals of that time, the gods would send you short life (mikrobios), sickness, accident, plague, sterility, misfortune, and disaster. Throughout the ancient world, people believed that what little influence, if any, we had on health and sickness, life and destiny, was through religious faith and practice.

Animal Farm

By George Orwell

"Nevertheless, they were both thoroughly frightened by the Rebellion on Animal Farm, and very anxious to prevent their own animals from learning too much about it. At first they pretended to laugh to scorn the idea of animals managing a farm for themselves. The whole thing would be over in a fortnight, they said. They put it about that the animals on the Manor Farm (they insisted on calling it the Manor Farm; they would not tolerate the name "Animal Farm") were perpetually fighting among themselves and were rapidly starving to death. When time passed and the animals had evidently not starved to death, Frederick and Pilkington changed their tune and began to talk of the terrible wickedness that now flourished on Animal Farm. It was given out that the animals there practiced cannibalism, tortured on another with red hot horseshoes, and had their females in common. This was what came of rebelling against the laws of Nature, Frederick and Pilkington said."

The Last Lecture

By Randy Pausch

"III
Adventures...
And Lessons Learned"

(Chapter title page)

The Time Traveler's Wife

By Audrey Niffenegger

"It's late Sunday morning. I can hear the bells ringing at St. Joes's. Dad came home late last night: I think he must have stopped at the Exchequer after the concert; he was so drunk he fell down on the stairs and I had to haul him into the apartment and put him to bed. He coughs and I hear him messing around in the kitchen."

Second Nature

By Michael Pollan

"Nowhere in the world are lawns as prized as in America. In little more than a century, we've rolled a green mantle of it across the continent, with scant thought to the local conditions or expense. America has some 50,000 square miles of lawn under cultivation, on which we spend an estimated $30 billion a year-this according to the Lawn Institute, a Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, outfit devote to publicizing the benefits of turf to Americans (surely a case of preaching to the converted). Like the interstate highway system, like fast-food chains, like television, the lawn has served to unify the American landscape; it is what makes the suburbs of Cleveland and Tucson, the streets of Eugene and Tampa, look more alike than not. According to Ann Leighton, the late historian of gardens, America has made essentially one important contribution to world garden design: the custom of "uniting the front lawns of however many houses there may be on both sides of a street to present an untroubled aspect of expansive green to the passerby." France has its formal, geometric gardens, England its picturesque parks, and America this unbounded democratic river of manicured lawn along which we array our houses."

The Savage Garden

By Peter D'Amoto

"After winter, when the last of the severe frost dangers are over, the coverings can be removed. Some plants that do not form true winter resting buds, such as the short-lived Drosera capillaris or Pinguicula lusitianica, will probably have died off. Such varieties usually return from, or cn be reintroduced by, seed from a previous season."

Under The Grammar Hammer

By Douglas Cazort

"Bad Swing: I was walking through Disneyland when I feel the pavement start shaking under my feet.

Direct Hit: I was walking through Disneyland when I felt the pavement start shaking under my feet.

In the last example, since you were walking through Disneyland sometime in the past, you also felt the pavement shaking in the past."

How To Expand Love

by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Having understood the kindness of your prime nurturer in this lifetime, extend this felt understanding gradually to other friends. Think about how when they were your mother or best of friends, they protected you with great kindness, just as your prime nurturer has done. Reflect slowly and carefully about their kindness, starting with your next slosest friend and considering, as you did above:

This person was my mother many times over the continuum of lives. even in just this lifetime, she has bestowed on me a body that supports an auspicious life through which I am able to progress spiritually. She sustained me in her womb for nine months, during which she could not behave as she wished but had to pay special attention to this burden that she carried in her body, making it heavy and difficult to move about. even though my movements would cause her pain, she would take delight in them, thinking how strong her child was, rather than becoming angry and concentrating on her pain. Her sense of closeness and dearness was great."

The Last Days Of Old Beijing

By Michael Meyer

"Old city neighborhood were not immune from Olympic plans, however. A 2005 report authored by a leading government think tank titled the Investigation of Urban Corners in Beijing said, "In order to implement the mighty philosophy of 'New Beijing, New Olympics' in citing planning, we cannot ignore and must solve the urban corner problem." The term was a euphemism for slum. The report's title page contained one photo. It wasn't of a courtyard home or hutong, but New York city's Chrysler Building."

A Prayer For Owen Meany

by John Irving

"But every time we rode the train to Sawyer Depot, my mother and I weighed the advantages of sitting on the left-hand side of the train so that we could see Mt. Chocorua - or on the right-hand side of the train, so that we could see Ossipee Lake. Chocorua was our first indication of how much snow there would be where we were going but there's more visible activity around a lake than there is on a mountian-and so we would sometimes "opt for Ossipee," as Mother and I described our decision. We also played a game that involved guessing where everyone was going to get off, and I always ate too many of those little tea sandwiches that they served on board, the kind with the crusts cut off; this overeating served to justify my inevitable trip to the lurching pit with the railroad ties going by underneath me, in a blur, and the whoosh of the rank air the blew upward on my bare bottom."