Cultivating longtime interests

Now I’m focused on books by Michael Pollan and reading on the food movement, which relates to my job.

What’s the Michael Pollan book you are reading? I’m just finishing up “The Botany of Desire.” I have “In Defense of Food,” which I will jump into next. I like his style and his humor.

One of the books I read as I was considering this position was the society’s history by Robert Benning written in 1829. It was a great book. I was able to get it from the Lexington library. What was really fun about it was that the book was donated by the Lexington Garden Club, the first gardening club in the US.

Was the book in good shape? It was a little bit falling apart. I was careful to put it in a Ziploc bag when I returned it. I like old books. I have a small collection of mostly falling apart, old leather-bound books. I like seeing what’s written in the margins, where a book has come from.

What kind of old books do you own? Lots of Shakespeare. I’ve got one whole set of Shakespeare, little leather-bound editions. Those aren’t that old, probably 1912. I have another leather-bound Shakespeare published in London. It doesn’t have a date in it but looks really, really old.

Do you read gardening books? I’m reading more gardening books now. I’ve always been a gardener so I have classics like “Making Things Grow” by Thalassa Cruso, certainly some Jim Crockett and “Onward and Upward in the Garden” by Katharine White.

Does gardening cut into your reading? I have a garden in a community garden, and I have perennial borders around my house. I have nothing at my Cape house. That’s where I can get reading done because there is no yard work.

Do you come from a family of readers? My mother, who just passed away, was a second-grade reading teacher. In her retirement she read about 12 books a week.

Our Cape house was my parent’s summer cottage, which they rented out to friends. We have a great lending library there. Every time my mother read a book she signed the book and the date she read it. People who stayed at the cottage would read the books and do the same thing.

What are you reading next? I’ve got quite a few plant books to get through. One that has been recommended is “Stalking the Wild Amaranth” by Janet Marinelli, which is about plants becoming extinct. Now that I have a librarian, I have lots of good recommendations.

How big is the library at Mass. Hort? I don’t know but often when you read something about plants our library is mentioned. I think it was on page 20 in “Botany of Desire,” Michael Pollan quotes from one of our books.

Are you going to ask the librarian to tell you when Michael Pollan is in next?

Yeah, that would be nice. I’d like to have him do a reading with us.

AMY SUTHERLAND

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