Rating: 2.5* of fiveI don't like flowers. I know most of you will think of that as an admission, but I think of it as a statement of character. Flowers are the female porn stars of the plant world: Look! Look!! These are my genitals, all splayed out and unnaturally manipulated to get you big, drooling apes to do what I want you to!So I approached this book as a source of ammunition for my entrenched dislike of its subject. I was not disappointed.Flowers are completely useless. We can't eat most of them, and are seldom hungry enough to eat the ones that won't make us ill. They serve little purpose in the insect world, at least the ones that a) don't eventually turn into fruits or b) have convinced the big drooling apes to do their reproducing and colonizing for them based on their sex organs' perceived attractiveness.It's instructive to read this book as one who is immune to the "charms" of the flowers. The unacknowledged root (snort) of the whole enterprise of developing, growing, and selling the stupid things is never even questioned. Of course, the (female) author seems to say, of course you'll want to see these genitalia up close and personal all day and in your own home (why is that a given?)...she even says, at the end of the book, "Every day Americans go out and buy about ten million cut flowers...That's just over one flower a month {per person}. How can anybody get by on one flower a month?" (p269, hardcover ed.)A better question is, "How DARE anybody spend actual money on these useless, frivolous things when there are hungry, homeless, and sick people right here in the richest country on Earth and in its history?!" And spare me the argument of all the jobs lost if we suddenly stop buyiing flowers...1) we won't and 2) they should go get useful jobs in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, free clinics and other places that do something worthwhile.Writing's adequate, I suppose, nothing wrong with it; some moments of humor; but I can't recommend it to anyone, since if you're a flower person you don't need it and if you're not, you don't want it.
