Two of the books I recently completed are very representative of one of the types of books I really like to read.

Salt by Mark Kurlansky and The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame might appear to the casual observer to have absolutely nothing in common. One is a serious nonfiction history of the world and its relationship with the only rock we eat, and the other is the most whimsical and substance-free fable ever written, where the main characters are an anthropomorphic mole, rat, badger, and toad who live in houses and like roast beef with mustard.

But I wanted to read both of these books for the same reason.

Both salt and Mr. Toad are things that the average American is fairly familiar with. We eat a lot of salt, and we at least know that there was once a Disney film (it's a short, actually) featuring the characters from The Wind In The Willows. We may have even been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland (you know, the one where you go to hell), so you know he likes motorcars. But I knew there was a lot more behind these familiar cultural objects.

Salt, much like the book I read last year by the same author, Cod, describes how the world has always revolved around this one common but precious commodity. I learned, for example, how the Great Wall of China was built with funds raised through a state monopoly and tax on salt (and iron). I learned that because most of the United States saltworks were in the North in the mid-1800s, saltworks were particularly important targets in the Civil War for both sides--the Union wanted to destroy the Confederacy's saltworks, and the Confederacy wanted to capture and operate the Union's saltworks. I learned all about people as varied as Lot's wife and Joyce Morton (of Morton Salt fame).

But that was nothing compared to what I learned from The Wind In the Willows. Just going on the cultural references that exist around us, I figured that the main character of the book would be Mr. Toad. Indeed, he is a prominent character, but I would say that Mr. Mole and Mr. Rat are far more important. Mole is like our everyman hero, whereas Toad is set up as a contrast to him--an impetuous, dangerous, high-strung, conceited blowhard who needs his friends to pull him out of trouble. Mole, Rat, and Badger are the kindhearted folks who make the world a better place. There isn't really even much of a continuing story line until the last couple of chapters, when Toad gets into trouble for stealing a motorcar. Rather, the first few chapters could really come in any order--it's just about Mole and Rat living an idyllic life on the riverbank. Oh, and did I mention that Mr. Rat is a water rat? He swims, and even teaches Mole how to swim. Disneyland will never be the same.

Anyway, I like this sort of book, where I think I know something about the subject matter before I read it, but end up learning a lot more about what I thought I knew so well. This is particularly the kind of nonfiction I look for (also beautifully exemplified by the odd book So Who The Heck Was Oscar Mayer? that I'm still slogging through). And in fiction, it's more than picking up, say, The Brothers Karamazov because it's famous literature for some reason. With fiction, these principles apply when I think I actually know something about the story--probably because it's been adapted into a movie or some other cultural phenomenon--but end up learning that my conceptions were all wrong (to cite other examples I've read recently: Frankenstein, Tarzan of the Apes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

In fact, Alice presents one of my favorite moments reading a book about a topic I thought I knew. We all know the story of Alice confronting the Cheshire Cat and asking him which fork in the road to take. He asks her where she wants to go, she says "I don't know," and he says, "Then it doesn't really matter, does it?" We're told this story in church and in other inspirational settings in order to make the point that we have to know where we're going in life. Well, if you keep reading, you'll see that Alice takes the sensible step of asking the cat where each road goes, and he tells her: one to the Mad Hatter's house, and one to the March Hare's house. Alice reasons and chooses the road to the March Hare's house because it's May, not March, so he probably won't be as mad as the Hatter. But the Hatter is over at the March Hare's house, having a tea party. Yes, folks, when Alice finally figures out where she's going in life and makes a well-considered and deliberate choice at the fork in the road, she winds up at a Mad Tea Party.

And to think, if I'd never read the book, I'd still think the story was meant to be inspirational, rather than the random nonsense it is.