THIS month offers either unashamed fun, or the virtue rating of a couple of worthy-but-dull ecobooks.
Nick Arnold鈥檚 The Body Owner鈥檚 Handbook (Scholastic, 拢3.99) gets you off to a frivolous start. Full of the 鈥淗orrible Science鈥� series hallmarks鈥攑uns, disgusting detail stirred up with the facts鈥攊t will amuse any child preoccupied with pus, vomit, snot and spots. Enterprising parents might prefer to keep it themselves and parcel out the odd juicy bit to the kids. Warts? Go to church and get them licked.
Highly enjoyable, too, is Stuart Walton鈥檚 Out of It (Penguin, 拢6.99), an account of the ways and means people have used to get intoxicated. The only societies that haven鈥檛 smoked, snorted or swallowed something to lift their spirits seem to have been those that didn鈥檛 grow anything anyway because they lived in the Arctic. Given the universal use of intoxicating drugs, trying to 鈥渦nscramble the egg鈥� by prohibition seems a lost cause.
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A different kind of trip takes you to a cold, dark, wet place of skull-busting pressure in the company of marine geologist Robert Ballard. Reviewer Paul Tyler enjoyed his visit to The Eternal Darkness (Princeton, 拢10.95). Written with Will Hively, it offers vicarious adventuring as you explore with Ballard Black Sea wrecks and sea-floor ridges.
Back on land, David Wolfe scatters facts and stories with a liberal hand in his Tales from the Underground (Perseus, $18). Last year鈥檚 reviewer applauded the breadth of Wolfe鈥檚 vision which ranges from soil microbes and fungi to cuddly prairie dogs. He pointed out that Wolfe 鈥渟ounds a cautionary note: every agricultural nation is depleting its fragile reserves of topsoil鈥�.
So at last to those books of blinding virtue. Janis Birkeland鈥檚 Design for Sustainability (Earthscan, 拢20) has a swathe of solutions to pollution, waste and other ills. Rosaleen Duffy will blight your next holiday with her A Trip Too Far (Earthscan, 拢15.95), a study of the world鈥檚 largest industry, tourism, and its kindlier cousin, ecotourism. She has important points to make, but the style of both books is far from reader friendly.