Unto salt shalt we return (as mummies)

Sprawling in its interest, Salt: A World History delivers a treasure trove of historical information, but risks losing its key thrusts amidst the cornucopia of trivia.

It’s easy to forget salt’s significance in food today, what with that wonderful invention of refrigeration, but for most of humanity’s history, salt came hand-in-hand with food — deny its access, and famine becomes a very real threat without the ability to store food; wars are lost, and regimes toppled by the rage of those unfairly taxed. Salt provides both a macro level view of the tides of civilisations, including their impact on each other through trade or war, from 2000BC to today, as well as a micro view where readers are treated to endearing recipes for various food items and personal stories of key figures in the discoveries and sale of salt.

The first part of the book focuses on the importance of salt particularly in the preservation of food in the past, along the way resulting in new wonderful types of food we still consume today, for example soy sauce, cheese, and hams. It was enchanting to read about how various foods are made — fermented beans in earthern pots required salt as otherwise they would putrefy too quickly for the emerging lactic acid, while blue cheese is milk from sheep in St Affrique curdled by powder from grated moldy bread, subsequently stored in damp caves. Up to a certain point, however, there may have been one or twenty too many recipes for the various preserved fish, given that they more or less followed the same process of being packed tightly in brine-filled barrels.

The production of salt is covered in detail, with the progressive innovations in its processing, and the ways it is done in various parts of the world at various times. Naturally, salt and its associated products featured heavily in trade and the economy, with England continuing Lent after breaking with the Catholic church in 1533, in order to sustain its fishing industry (red meat was forbidden during Lent, so salted herring sold well. Amusingly, a good source of revenue for the Church was selling permits to eat meat during Lent.)

Merchant ships that were used to trade salt could be converted into military ships, becoming the deciding factor in Venice’s victorious wars. Another military strategy was to destroy saltworks of the opposing side, one that was used by the Union against the Conferderates in the American Civil War. America would have gotten its independence from Britain earlier — if the British’s naval blockade on salt wasn’t so painful in the early 1700s, before America found their footing in salt production. Many a government filled their coffers through taxing salt; the French revolution and Gandhi’s independence movement were sparked from the people’s anger at such taxes.

In the area of science, after millennia of intuiting what salt was, electrolysis in the 19th century gave us a chemical definition: any substance caused by the reaction between an acid and a base. The separation of elements from salt, such as magnesium and chlorine, birthed entire worlds of application, from common everyday products like lightbulbs and bleach, to chemical warfare (because humans).

Kurlansky provides a comprehensive look at the myriad ways salt has shaped humanity — I admit to not having paid much attention to this humble pantry ingredient before this. There are moments of his dry wit that elicited chuckles from me. I only wish he culled repetitive sections, and all his disparate facts came together in a way that was easier to follow, especially for the first part of the book. It was hard even to draw links from one paragraph to the next at times, which was not helped by the vague chapter titles and the barrage of names (of fish, of places of which I was not familiar with, of food). Stretch goal: more geographical diagrams when describing spatial trends, because we can’t all be whizzes at geography.

Rating: 4/5

— Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky, 2003)

“Three, and they label you a serial killer.”

My Sister, the Serial Killer tells the tale of a long-suffering elder sister, Korede, pressed upon to help her sibling, who has an unfortunate proclivity to murder her boyfriends, dispose of her victims’ bodies. Good thing Korede has the requisite skills — she’s a nurse who’s skilled at disinfecting blood stains. No one else, especially not their mother, suspects the truth (even though it is a rather fishy pattern, methinks, if so many of your boyfriends end up dead): Ayoola is the darling of the family, with drop-dead (ha ha) gorgeous looks to boot, automatically making her innocent of any crime known to humanity. Burdened with a troublesome conscience, Korede would have been fine continuing to unload her heart to a comatose patient — until Ayoola sets her lovelorn sights on her long-time crush, doctor at the hospital she works at, Tade.

This was such a fun, snappy read, told in such a deadpan manner with such relevance to our Instagram times you’d be hard-pressed to put this down once you start. I particularly admire the way Braithwaite pulls off that rapid-fire pacing, with short dialogue-lined segments that zip across time and place yet manage to be sprinkled with sarcasm. It also retains that specificity to culture and place (it’s set in Lagos), what with the speech rhythms, the code-switching Korede resorts to with English in different situations, the casual brushstrokes of various customs, the food names, etc, while still obviously situated in a city carried along by the same globalized forces as the rest of the world.

But what ultimately makes this read more than your usual holiday paperback is the depiction of the sisterly dynamics between Korede and Ayoola. Despite wanting to strangle your sister and live a good and peaceful life forever after, what with her privileged status in your mother’s eyes, her despicableness in targeting your one and only crush, and all the moral justification in Nigeria backing you up, the bond between the sisters goes exasperatingly deeper than all these reasons. And so you stick with her through thick and thin (bodies). Should I be thankful my own younger sister is a law-abiding citizen? Here’s to you, sis.

Rating: 4/5

— My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite, 2018)

Playing chess with bugs

Into the Breach has won a bajillion awards, and I am pleased to confirm that they are all well-deserved. It belongs to that happy class of games where its ease in picking up belies the many wondrous strategies you can deploy to defend against the Vek (Bugs. They are all bugs. EXTERMINATE.)

It’s a turn-based strategy game, of which each round happens on a tight 8×8 grid featuring your three mechs, a multitude of buildings which also stand for your life, various terrain tiles, as well as the dreaded bugs whose forces get added to every turn. Your three mechs cover the range of attacks you’d desire: melee, a straight-line shooter, and a projectile. There is a number of turns your buildings have to endure per round; each turn, the bugs move first, and indicate where their attacks will land. Then the magic happens: you, lord and manipulator of time, can now move your mechs and use their abilities before any bug gets to spray their juice on you.

I think the killer trait of this game is that most of your mechs’ abilities both deal damage and push or pull enemies in certain directions. The most basic action when a bug threatens to take down a building — and you can’t kill them with one attack — is to force them away, so their attacks land on an empty tile. A more satisfying move is to push them into other bugs’ attack path, so they kill each other instead. Alternatively, push them onto a tile where another bug is preparing to spawn, so that new bug does not spawn, and existing bug suffers damage. As your mech abilities get more advanced, you are capable of more and more interesting moves, all in the span of one turn, such as manipulating your enemies together so you can zap lightning through their hell-fearing hearts at one go.

As far as game design goes, it’s a perfect puzzle game. There is very little chance involved, and every move counts. Every turn is a constant reevaluation of priorities: do I choose saving a building from an attack, or killing a whole bunch of bugs at once? If it’s inevitable that some buildings go down, how do I make that the fewest possible? These choices are all the more important because once your buildings are destroyed, that damage stays with you for the rest of the game — the only way to regenerate them is to complete optional objectives in other rounds, or finish an entire area and purchase them with your reputation points. I may have needed a failed playthrough before I realised this very crucial fact.

When I’m falling asleep, I play Into the Breach and perk right up. It’s probably more effective than your triple-shot espresso.

Rating: 5/5

— Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018)