Hello my friends. May so far has been a very busy month that has not involved much reading at all. Don’t get me wrong, I am reading every day, I just haven’t had long stretches of decadent time in which to luxuriate in books. But that is about to change.

Once the coop is done and the Dashwoods moved in this weekend, I will have one major time-sucking project done. Actually the only major time-sucking project. After that it is smooth sailing with just the usual gardening and cycling. These things keep me busy but they have some flexibility to them whereas finishing a house for animals means one cannot mess about. So after this weekend I expect a large swathe of time to be cleared in my schedule.

When I do read I have been reading Cabaret of Plants by Richard Mabey. I actually just finished this last night so a write-up of it is forthcoming. I will say it is a great book for plant geeks. I have also been reading Dark Money by Jane Mayer. I must say that looking at local and national politics through the lens of money makes for some anger-inducing reading as well as explains quite a lot. Things that just didn’t seem to make sense as reported in the press suddenly do. I feel like I am getting to peak behind the curtain into the backroom wheeling and dealing and discovering just what money in politics buys. I am almost 3/4 of the way through the book and looking forward to the end because I am not sure how much more I can take.

I had to put The Portable Veblen aside because I could not bear reading two books about money at the same time (needs more squirrels!). And since I am not yet finished with Dark Money, I have picked up Andrea Wulf’s book The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humbodlt’s New World. I had begun reading this several months ago but it is a big fat book and I had to return it to the library before I was able to finish it. Now my turn has come around again and I have picked up where I left off. With luck I will finish before I have to return it again. Once I am done with Dark Money I will get back to Thorstein Veblen.

I am also reading a book of poetry by Brenda Hillman called Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire. It is the final book in a tetralogy on earth, air, water and fire. I have not read the other three books. I very likely will eventually. I’ll let you know more about the poetry once I am done.

With all my cycling, I have been perusing books on vegan nutrition and sports performance. It turns out it is very much like regular sports nutrition only I have to get my extra protein from plant sources and vegan protein powders. If you are a vegan or even vegetarian athlete, I can highly recommend a great cookbook called Protein Ninja. It is written by one of my favorite cookbook authors, Terry Hope Romero, who came up with the recipes after she started lifting weights and had to find ways to add more protein into her diet. Lots of easy, tasty recipes!

So there it is, my reading at the moment, or lack of reading. The three-day Memorial weekend holiday is not far away and you can bet your britches that I will be spending some big chunks of time catching up on some reading!