Kafayı Çalıştır Seti (Zor Seviye)-Kolektif itibaren Uğurböceği Yayınları içinde LIT biçim

Yuxing Sang sangyuxing — This was the first so-called "commodity history" that I've read, and I'm sorry to say it might have turned me completely off the damn things. I'm not entirely sure why this book is so popular and so widely read, since it strikes me as simply a series of stories by Mark Kurlansky that quickly settle into the same basic mantra, which is: 1) Here is this culture; 2) Like the twenty other cultures I have just introduced to you, salt was also important to this culture; 3) These are the ways they gathered salt; 4) Here is a random sprinkling of recipes involving salt. Done. Move on to next story. The different stories are not even interwoven, so that halfway through the book I still didn't really know what Kurlansky's point is, unless to underscore his initial point that all animals need salt to live. But I already knew this before I cracked open the book, and I don't think Kurlansky's additional 450 pages underscoring the subject really added anything useful to my life. Moreover, how can this guy write one book about how Cod changed the world (aptly titled Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World), and then turn right around and write another about how salt changed the world? One wonders if his gimmick isn't getting a bit old. And in any case, can't you name pretty much anything out there and weave a story about how it "changed" the world? Shoelaces, rubber, pencils, ziplock bags . . . The one thing about the book that was interesting was how it printed all these old school recipes involving salt, salting and brining. The recipes are incredible because of the sheer amount of labor and preparation that they describe. It's both fascinating and horrifying. No wonder a woman's place used to be in the kitchen, if cooking and eating took so damn long. Here is one of the simpler recipes, this one for salted cucumbers: SOLENYE OGURTSY (SALTED CUCUMBER) Dry out very clean river sand and pass it through a fine sieve. Spread a layer of this sand, the thickness of your palm, on the bottom of a barrel. Add a layer of clean black currant leaves, dill, and horseradish cut into pieces, followed by a layer of cucumbers. Cover the cucumbers with another layer of leaves, dill, and horseradish, topped with a layer of sand. Continue in this manner until the barrel is full. The last layer over the cucumbers must be currant leaves, with sand on the very top. Prepare the brine as follows: For one pail of water, use one and a half pounds of salt. Bring to a boil, cool, and cover the cucumbers completely with the brine. Replenish the brine as it evaporates. Before any kind of salting, cucumbers must be soaked for 12-15 hours in ice water. --Elena Molokhovets, A Gift to Young Housewives ============= ADDENDUM I: Okay, I am about three quarters through the book now (I was probably only about halfway through when I wrote the first portion of this review) and it's getting a lot better. Maybe it was just the very long Part II about salting cadavers and the preservation of fish that got me so down on the book before I'd even finished the damn thing. I was initially tempted to quit and put the book down, but I have done that so rarely with books that I decided to just push on, and thankfully the arc of the story shifted and started getting a lot better. ============= ADDENDUM II: Okay, the book got a lot better towards the end. It's still not a book that I would read again with any relish or recommend to anyone who is not already gung-ho about commodity histories, but I don't feel like I am wasting my eyes and mental energy with it anymore. Two stars!