I don’t read enough, apparently.
I don’t do a lot of things enough, according to some people. They like to judge me by their lifestyles and can’t understand why I don’t read enough, watch movies or spend every Saturday morning at a hipster market. I don’t think that I don’t read enough, I just think that I don’t read as much as they read. And that’s an altogether different thing. By the same criteria, they don’t blog enough. I’m just saying.
Anyway, maybe “I don’t read enough” because the stuff that’s out there to read isn’t very good. (I did make it through this abridged version of Grey last night though, so, you know, be proud of me.) But now, I have discovered this:
Redcliffe banged the original version out in 1949, but it was this 1985 revised impression which took the proverbial biscuit, thanks in part to the input from renowned potato scholar and Emeritus Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Birmingham, J.G. Hawkes, and – many believe – the additional chapter on INDUSTRIAL USES by W.G Burton.
This is a book filled with facts and figures:
But being of scientific bent, that’s just fine by me. Facts and figures are my bread and butter. Although, being that this magnificent tome was first published in the 40s, there is a certain dated style of language. I find it intriguing that Salaman borrowed descriptions from other crops though; the extent of cereal crops, for example, was always described as, say, the area “under wheat”. Quite how he got away with “under potatoes”, this being a subterranean crop, is rather beyond me.
It’s these sort of foibles that intrigue me and, despite the somewhat extravagant cost, I’m going to be reading all about spuds and how they’ve affected all of our lives, very shortly.