Wickedness! Halloween read: WICKED BUGS and WICKED PLANTS, Posted 30 October 2013

WICKED PLANTS: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
Amy Stewart
Workman Books
$18.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. In Wicked Plants, Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature s most appalling creations. It s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. You ll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs), which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother).

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

My Review: Bite-sized reports of the horrible horrible scary itchy deadly horrible doings of the Kingdom Plantae. Illustrated with beautiful woodcuts by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, that are, by themselves, worth the price of the book.

I swear I have never bathed so often as when I read this book. Hibiclens, pHisoHex, witch hazel, lavender water...every cleansing agent I possess...applied to every inch of my quite sizable person, at least three or four times for every plant I read about. Even my shoulder hair is falling out from over-washing. (There go the last long, wavy locks I'll ever have....)

*Most* satisfyingly, the horrid, nasty, icky-ptoo-ptoo nonfood CORN is included in the book! (Yes it is too: pp38-39...comes in for harsh treatment because the body *can't use it* in kernel form! Take THAT corn-on-the-cobbers! Horrible stuff, corn on the cob. Oughta be banned.)

So many awful horrible, itch-inducing theings described in one small place would normally mean stay the heck away from it, but Stewart really does a fine job of making her villains fascinating, if not sympathetic. Hope she writes a novel one day soon.

WICKED BUGS: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects
Amy Stewart
Workman Books
$18.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: too busy scratching to give it one.

The Publisher Says: Amy Stewart, perpetratrix of Flower Confidential (a book I loathed), has given us bite-sized bios of horrible, horrible, horrible little creepy/crawly or fly-y/stingy horrible things with lots of horrible legs and horrible, horrible ways of mating and reproducing in general. Most of the worst ones are female. Just like in life.

My Review: I've finished it, and so far I've determined that I suffer from:

--scabies
--Guinea worm disease
--tapeworm
--Lyme disease
--elephantiasis
--bilharzia
--sand-fly infestation under my itchy toenail

I've taken eleven showers with surgical scrub so far. I expect that, when I go outside next (after the haz-mat suit is delivered), I shall be ridiculed...but I *won't* be a feast for the horrible disgusting vile scary critters this book is about!