★★★☆☆ What is Silk?

Silk: A World History

Aarathi Prasad

I have mixed feelings about Aarathi Prasad's Silk: A World History. It belongs to a nonfiction genre I call "history of substances". Notable books in that genre are Amy Butler Greenfield's A Perfect Red, which is about cochineal, the red dye that comes from the cochineal bug, and Sophie D. Coe's The True History of Chocolate.

I loved both of those books -- they were as fascinating as novels. I am sorry to say, though, that Silk was less gripping. By the time I reached the end, I was eager to get there. There was one specific problem and some more general ones.

Cochineal is a very specific thing -- it comes from the cochineal bug and no other source. That made Greenfield's job in A Perfect Red circumscribed. Coe likewise had a well-defined job in describing the history of chocolate -- it's a product of the cocoa tree Theobroma cacao.

Silk is NOT just one thing. Most of the silk you have ever seen is the product of the silkworm moth Bombyx mori. However, other moths and butterflies make silk for their cocoons. For instance, there are wild moths in India whose silk has been collected and woven into fabric by Indian women, including members of Prasad's own family. Thus we hear a lot about these wild silks. Spiders also spin fibers that are called silk, several different kinds, for egg cases and webs. Prasad even claims that the fan mussel Pinna nobilis makes silk. Other animals make fibers, too -- everyone knows about hair, which we call wool when it's woven into fabric. But no one on Earth thinks that wool is a form of silk.

Nowhere in Silk will you find a definition of the word "silk". At about 50% of Silk I looked at the Wikipedia page for silk, hoping to find a definition. I found nothing very useful down that rabbit hole. Silk fibers are made of a protein called fibroin (spidroins in the case of spider silks), but as far as I can figure "fibroin" is basically just defined as the protein of which silk fibers are made. Prasad makes it clear that there is no single chemical description of silk, nor a single evolutionary origin. I'm not saying I doubt that the fibers of the fan mussel are silk, but I do wish that Prasad had clarified her reasons for including it.

Besides this Prasad writes in a flowery style that sacrifices brevity and sometimes clarity. And she often digresses to tell stories about the personal lives of men and women who investigated silk, and about their political environments. Some readers will undoubtedly find all this as fascinating as Prasad herself does.

I know a great deal more about silk now than I did before I read Silk, and that is a good thing. I do not, however, know what exactly silk is, or what Prasad uses the word to mean.

I thank Edelweiss and HarperCollins for an advance reader copy of Silk: A World History. This review expresses my honest opinion.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★☆☆ I skimmed the "sexy bits"

A Power Unbound Freya Marske I picked up Freya Marske 's Last Binding trilogy because it was nominated for a Best Series Hugo in 2024. It would not get my vote. I am not a big fan of romance, and am even less a fan of erotica. A Marvellous Light contains this acknowledgement And a special shout-out to my mother, who was the first person to tell me that she couldn’t put this book down, and who forgave me for making her read the sexy bits. There are indeed sexy bits in all three novels, and they are explicit and LONG. That was even more true in this, the final novel, because the erotica plays a part in the plot. One of the romantic partners, Alan Ross, is a writer of erotica (although he scorns such euphemism -- he just calls it "pornography"), and the other, Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, is one of his readers. I have nothing against erotica in principle, but it is just not what I'm looking for in my reading. I feel about it much the way I imagine Marske 's moth

★★★★☆ The First Law of Quantum Communication

Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe Sean Carroll The First Law of Quantum Communication is that all explanations of Quantum Mechanics for general audiences are really, really bad*. Sean Carroll 's Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is very different from every previous pop quantum mechanics explanation I have ever read. The question before us is whether it is an exception to the First Law, or a uniquely creative new example. Where I'm coming from: I am a retired neuroscientist and mathematician. I am familiar with and comfortable with quantum mechanics. I have also, to my sorrow, read dozens of pop physics explanations of quantum mechanics, because every pop physics book begins with the same tiresome six chapters intended to bring the presumed ignorant reader up to speed on relativity and quantum mechanics. And they are almost uniformly TERRIBLE. They are terrible for multiple reasons, but most of these come down to a determination on the p

★★★☆☆ Moon gods, metaphysics, and sneers

Tidal Creatures Seanan McGuire Tidal Creatures is the third novel in Seanan McGuire 's Alchemical Journeys series, or the seventh if you include the Up and Under books. The unifying principle behind the series is the personification of things that are not persons, objectively or scientifically speaking, such as the Doctrine of Ethos ( Middlegame ), Winter and Summer ( Seasonal Fears ), and now the Moon. Five of the main characters are Moon goddesses (Aske, Change'e, Artemis, Diana) and a Moon god (Máni). We also meet Kelpie, who is not in fact a Kelpie, but a personification of Artemis's Hind. Each of the gods/goddesses is in fact two persons -- a god/dess and an ordinary human whose body the two share. McGuire explains the relationship at length. Roger Zelazny began his career by writing about thirty stories, which he sent to all the Science Fiction magazines, for which purpose he had made a comprehensive list. In this way he collected 150 rejections and no accept

★★★★★ Twenty-five years of recreational mathematics

Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions Martin Gardner In 1967 my Aunt Althea, the very best of all possible aunts, gave me a subscription to Scientific American for my twelfth birthday. I remined a subscriber until the 1990s. Among the best features of SA were the monthly columns "The Amateur Scientist", where you could learn how to build a laser in your garage -- you think I'm joking, but I'm serious -- and Martin Gardner 's Recreational Mathematics column "Mathematical Games". Yes, I know that to many of you the phrase "recreational mathematics" makes about as much sense as "recreational colonoscopy", but there are enough people who were willing to entertain the idea that math could be fun to sustain Gardner 's column for 26 years. I was one, and Gardner was brilliant. These columns were collected and published in fifteen books by SA . The best way to get them now is in electronic form. There is a searchable CD

★★★☆☆ Not this

Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson For me the essential experience of poetry is the “Yes, THAT!” moment, when you read a verse, and you know EXACTLY what it means. A moment was captured, a feeling, a thought. Now, I do not claim that this is the only way to experience poetry, or the right way, or the best way. It is only my way. This works if the mind of the poet and the mind of the reader meet. That makes the experience of poetry very personal. And, I am sorry to say, Emily Dickinson ’s mind and mine didn’t often meet. It was not a complete loss. For instance, this landed The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth,— The sweeping up the heart, And putting love away We shall not want to use again Until eternity. But it was one of perhaps three poems in this collection that did. Even the famous “Because I could not stop for Death” didn’t do much for me. Part of the problem for me was that Dickinson

★★★★★ A little more conventional than Inkheart

Inkspell Cornelia Funke, Brendan Fraser (narrator) I joined audible.com and began listening to audiobooks in 2004. Among the first were Cornelia Funke 's Inkworld trilogy. They were very good -- good books, but also very well read. And since the series is about the magic of reading aloud, this is appropriate. Recently, however, I learned that Inkworld is no longer a trilogy. A fourth novel, Die Farbe der Rache ( The Color/Ink/Dye of Revenge -- the German title is a pun that doesn't translate) has recently been published. Wanting to read it, I decided I would first go back and re-listen to the first three books. Inkspell is, in my opinion, both better than Inkheart and not quite as good. It is better in that the Inkspell narrator, Brendan Fraser , is in my opinion more versatile than Inkheart narrator Lynn Redgrave . Don't get me wrong: Redgrave is very good -- I would have no criticism of her, had I not heard Fraser 's narration. On listening to Ink

★★★☆☆ Velveteen vs ALL THE BOOKS!

Velveteen vs the Junior Super Patriots Seanan McGuire When I picked up Laughter at the Academy , I thought that my project of reading everything Seanan McGuire has published was about to come to its end. Alas, the introduction of Laughter at the Academy mentioned McGuire 's Velveteen stories, which I had never heard of. What are they? Well, here's the description from McGuire's website , The Velveteen stories began in 2008 as an open-ended series about a superhero universe where cosmic powers not only came with great responsibility, they came with great legislation, merchandising, and focus group oversight. Many young heroes were effectively "adopted" by a corporate entity known as The Super Patriots, Inc., which promised to teach them how to best control their amazing gifts. Some of those junior heroes wanted out. Few of them got it. Velma "Velveteen" Martinez was one of the young heroes "adopted" by The Super Patriots, Inc. Sweet, smar

★☆☆☆☆ There is such a thing as artistic merit...

The Prophet Khalil Gibran ...and this ain't it. The characters of Herman Wouk 's Inside, Outside have opinions about The Prophet “He’s so mature, so thoughtful, so wise, Izzy, and he gets all his philosophy from this one book.”... “What book, Bobbie?” “The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran,” she said. “It’s so deep, and he reads it aloud so beautifully.” I had never heard of The Prophet or Gibran, but said I would get hold of it. “Oh, do, Izzy. You’ll learn so much. You need that book... Next day I asked Peter Quat about Kahlil Gibran. Oh yes, he said, his doormat mistress had treasured The Prophet, and could reel off whole pages by heart. “What’s it all about?” “It’s utter horsepoop*,” Peter snapped... So I hunted up a copy and read it, and Peter was right on the mark. I first encountered The Prophet as a high-school student. We did a unit on poetry, and a few of Gibran 's effusions were presented as "Prose Poems". I immediately decided it was utter horsepoop. My

★★★☆☆ A LOT of novel

Myriad Joshua David Bellin Once when I was a postdoc at MIT, I heard physicist Alan Guth speak in the Physics Colloquium. Guth was known for having invented the idea of Cosmic Inflation , that the universe exploded in size just BEFORE the Big Bang, setting the initial conditions for the Big Bang. (Versions of this idea are now mainstream physics.) In his Colloquium, he discussed the possibility that inflation could start anytime, anywhere, from quantum fluctuations. This, he showed us, would lead to the creation of a new universe. He then asked how we might see this. And he showed us that since the new universe would be entirely unattached to the one in which it began, there would be no observable consequence in the universe in which it originated. I was bemused. It felt to me as if he had walked down to the front of the room, pulled his hand out of his pocket and there unfolded an entire new universe. He then folded the new universe back up in his hand and put it back in his pock

★★★★★ Faery Cosmology

Be the Serpent Seanan McGuire Regarding spoilers: I wrote most of this review before reading Be the Serpent , based on what I thought was coming. (Thus, it is not, strictly speaking, a review, but a preview, or perhaps a precognition 😀) I then read the book, and it turned out I needed to fix almost nothing. So, there are no spoilers here: nothing that could not be foreseen, except for one small one, which will be evident. Be the Serpent is one of the best October Daye novels to date. The best was The Winter Long . In The Winter Long Seanan McGuire did what I have come to see as the characteristic McGuire move: she rewrote the past. You may have thought you knew what was going on when you read Rosemary and Rue , but you did not. The Winter Long shows you that what actually happened in Rosemary and Rue was entirely different from the story Toby told in that book. The Winter Long completely reshaped the world we thought we were in. The Winter Long wasn't the only bo

Search This Blog