Banana

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Mikage takes solace in her kitchen when her grandmother dies, leaving her all alone in the world. Similarly, her schoolfellow, Yuichi Tanabe, also faces the same sorrow. Both lose their dear ones to be left alone in the world and find solace in the kitchen. The young female narrator of Hardboiled is enjoying mountain hiking when she faces weird happenings. She realizes it’s the day when her strange lover Chizuru who “could see things other people couldn’t,” committed suicide and suddenly things start to make sense. But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today's yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight -- and there's no cure in sight.

I suppose this is how schools can view reading bands so differently (I need to look up different in a thesaurus for more variety in my writing I think). Some schools move them literally on their ability to read and understand whereas many now use them alongside the National Curriculum levels more and are looking for much more in the understanding than just understanding the story.A gripping biological detective story that uncovers the myth, mystery, and endangered fate of the world's most humble fruit The book doesn't just talk about the banana in the US, it talks about its influence across the globe. In some parts of the world, people get 70% of the calories from the banana. There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern evidence from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation. Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States But my favorite genre is the history micro-history, where a single event spiders out in all directions, often with interesting unintended consequences. The most famous and best-selling of this genre is probably the history of the decades-long race to correctly determine longitude, but there are many historical events that have received a fine treatment, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the assassination of President James Garfield, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 17th-century Tulip mania, the eruption of Krakatoa, the mad bomber of 1950's Manhattan, murders too numerous to mention individually, and (my sentimental favorite) the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.

Dan Koeppel’s Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World has incredible detail on the history and science of the banana but has significant issues with fluidity and focus.

I found this book to be so interesting. It’s probably not for everyone, but one I’ll recommend to the right reader. Life is merciless and unpredictable. But it gives a chance to everyone to be happy if they stay committed to the path. The lake is the story of Chihiro, a muralist who had an unconventional childhood and had to bear the loss of her mother’s recent death. PP Wong is an author, screenwriter and editor. She was born during a very cold winter in London and her fondest memory is trudging through shoulder height snow. Tsugumi, regarded as the most powerful character of Banana, is the real focus of the novel and drives appreciation from the readers and critics. Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future