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| photo: Shelby Temple | |
Nicola Temple is a Canadian science writer living in the U.K. Her writing has taken her from the precipices of volcanoes in Ethiopia to the banks of salmon streams in Canada's temperate rain forest. Her first book, Sorting the Beef from the Bull (Bloomsbury Sigma, April 26, 2016), co-authored with biogeochemistry professor Richard Evershed, collects scandalous stories of food fraud from around the globe, which the authors use to demonstrate the role of science in uncovering some of the century's biggest food scams.
On your nightstand now:
I can barely find my nightstand for books! I'm in the middle of Swallow This by Joanna Blythman. I think Joanna's incredibly brave in her investigative endeavors, and I feel like I'm right there with her when I read her work.
However, I can't read it right before bed as it gets me too riled up. So I'm also reading Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott, a winning combination of great writing, history and a complex female character. I also just absorbed Andy Weir's The Martian, devouring it over a couple of nights.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I would like to tell you that it was some classic piece of literature, but I was a true comic book fiend. I loved them, particularly superhero comics. I suppose that the first novel I remember reading that I adored was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It had fantasy, action and regular children who inevitably find their own inner superhero. I think I've always loved reading fantasy, despite trying to deny it for many decades as an adult. For me, it is a true escape and a stark contrast to my day job of turning very complicated science into something accessible.
Your top five authors:
Jane Austen (despite my just saying how much I love fantasy) is someone I read over and over simply because it gives me great joy to read her writing. Ken Follett and Diana Gabaldon for their ability to tell a fantastic story and weave in the perfect amount of detail and fact into that story. Stuart McLean because he can make you laugh (or cry) in so few pages. And finally John Irving, because he's brilliant and writes characters like nobody else.
Book you've faked reading:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My best friend in elementary school was reading them for the third time, and I thought I should put down my comic books and give them a go. I wasn't ready for them and ended up watching the 1978 animated film so we could talk about it. She probably knew (sorry, Sarah). 
Book you're an evangelist for:
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I've bought about a dozen copies, and I give it to friends who start moaning about being too old to run (in their 30s and 40s!). It's got some well-researched evidence about our own evolution as runners.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I bought Edward the Emu by Sheena Knowles for my newborn. A stark white cover with a forlorn emu lying across the bottom. It was probably reflective of my own state of mind at the time as a new mom who had just moved to Australia away from all my family.
Book you hid from your parents:
I can't remember ever hiding a book from my parents--they supported me reading anything.
Book that changed your life:
It's hard to choose just one. However, I suppose I would have to say The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada's Forgotten Coast by Ian and Karen McAllister. I read it. I fell in love with the place, and I ended up being a conservation biologist with Raincoast Conservation for a number of years, which was a life-changing experience.
Favorite line from a book:
"By it and with it and on it and in it." --Rat's response when Mole asks whether he really lives by the river in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. It speaks to me about our connection (or lack of) with our local community--being truly part of something rather than just using it as a landmark to describe a location.
Five books you'll never part with:
I've carried boxes of books with me from Canada to Australia to the U.K., so there's lots I haven't parted with. However, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller will always be in my collection because I read them every few years, and I'm determined to one day be able to read the latter and not bawl my eyes out. Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, because it's my go-to recipe book. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, because I'm secretly hoping James Fraser will one day walk out of those pages.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien because although it's a children's book, I think I would have appreciated its greater depth if I read it for the first time as an adult.