How to Make Tea: The Science Behind the Leaf - Brian Keating & Kim Long

 This is a fantastic review paper for all things tea, covering all the basics. It was super useful, however not terribly exciting to read.  Nonetheless, I would recommend it as an excellent primer for anyone who would like to get into tea, but doesn't have any background and doesn't know what to buy or where to start entering the world of tea.  I know a reasonable amount about tea, and I still learned a few new useful things like water that just reached boiling point is not the same as water that has been boiling for a while.  I have observed the difference but didn't know what the pattern was.  I was amused to learn that when the leaves unfurl in the hot water it is called "the agony of the leaves".  Very dramatic!  Oh, and smelling the tea is absolutely part of the experience and even has some likely health properties as well, so hold that hot tea under your nose and breathe it in.  You'll feel better and it's not all in your head!

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook - Anthony Bourdain

 The first 2/3 of this book about great food and where to find it, bad food and where to find it, and the general ridiculousness one can find in such a general, world-wide topic were great.  I enjoyed the food porn about pho and the rants of how to separate rich people from their money with dry chicken.  It is beautifully written in all the wrong ways.  The last 1/3 of the book was speaking about various famous chef and food-related people, many of which I did not know, and therefore did not care about in any way.  That part of the book was not entertaining for me because I just didn't care.  So read up until you reach the people part, then ditch it, unless you know those people.  

Small Favor - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 10)

 I haven't read a Dresden book for quite a while.  The last one was good, but I'd still had a bad taste in my mouth from one several years back.  This book, however, cleared that up.  This book was lots of fun and engaging without the waffling inconsistencies of other books.  It was a read solid book and I don't plan to wait as long to read the next one.  

Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just about Everything Book - Randi Hutter Epstein

 Everyone should read this book. It's a pretty wild ride from our first observations that nerves don't do all the communicating in the body through folly and happy accidents to controversies of modern hormonal medicines.  It is intense, but fascinating from beginning to end.  This book not only has the factual, and frankly amazing, timeline of the human understanding of hormones but keeps intact the sexism, racism and hubris rife in the medical community.  

This book is a journey that begins with doctors and surgeons unanimously declaring they had solved all anatomy problems by discovering the nerves and the rest was only minor details, thorough rooster castration and reinstallation of testes elsewhere in the body to the brown dog affair (spoiler alert: they used to dissect dogs alive to show how the nerves work because, despite knowing the nerves transmitted pain, somehow never dawned on people that these dogs were in excruciating pain being fileted alive).  Then the book travels through a few of the major players and their lives like Dr. Harvey Cushing and his brain collection to Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow and her unwillingness to quit due to pregnancy leading to her jokes about having a 8.5 pound 5-month-old fetus. Starting with the horror of brain spongiform disease acquired from pituitary gland injections to make short children taller to political arguments about using hormone blockers at the onset of puberty for trans children.  This book brings to life a seemingly boring topic in a way I've rarely seen before and I highly recommend it for anyone with a curious mind.