Books read February 2015

18.15, Friday 27 Feb 2015

By date finished…

Somewhere in Bee (originally published 1937) I finally twigged that, for thousands upon thousands of years in the west, bees were the source of sweetness (no beet or sugar cane in Europe); booze because mead is made from honey and was invented before beer; and, using wax, candles.

Bees: Tasty food, entertainment, artificial light. That’s quite a technology.

In German, animals “devour” (fressen) food, and they “perish” (crepien). Except for humans and bees, who instead eat (essen) and die (sterben).

And this: [the bee] is the only creature that has come to us unchanged from Paradise.