Monday, October 26, 2009

Friday, October 23, 2009

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Fruit Hunters


"The Fruit Hunters," written by Adam Leigh Gollnar is a first-person account of his travels around the world in search of different exotic fruits. He meets up with different fruitarians and travels deep into jungles and different islands to discover new fruits. He pulls up interesting facts throughout the book of how fruits were incorporated into world history. For example he says that "the discovery of the New World itself was precipitated by a desire to find a faster route to the Orient for a dried being (fruit) that was worth its weight in gold." Gollner pulls up interesting statistics, saying that humans have not yet discovered even one quarter of the world's fruits. Throughout his journey, he kept a detailed account of who he talked to, and where he went... Which turned out being what this book is.

The book is split up into four different parts, each dealing with it's own things: Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession. The book was mostly a hard read because it is not meant to be entertaining, but rather informing. However, I found many parts of fruits that he incorporated into world history to be extremely amusing. I even did some of my own research. The Commerce section of the book was boring and had nothing to do with history, but more of the business of selling them.

If you were to open the book right now, you would be taken aback because the first few pages are about fruit-obsessed people who have intercourse with their fruits, but that part goes away quickly...

All in all, I recommend this book to people who are interested in finding out interesting facts about the worlds hidden fruits and facts about them that are not common knowledge. Overall, I enjoyed my time with it and feel as if I came out knowing a lot more.

~Benjamin Franklin