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A book by Barbara Kingsolver
< read all 6 reviewsKingsolver captures audiences again in this well told memoir.
-
Jun 23, 2010
- by Jenniferjax
- posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More
Rating:
+5
Who knew gardening could be so exciting? Barbara Kingsolver and her family make the trek back east to live more simply and connected to the earth. Beginning with crisis-of-conscience moments at the gas station on their way out of their former desert hometown, Kingsolver takes you through the highs and lows of eating local and seasonal.
I found the excerpts from her 19 year-old daughter and husband a great way to balance the monthly tale of meal planning, pest extermination and over-all intensity of life on a farm. Camille's perspective was refreshing and hopeful. The more scientific interludes from husband Steven Hopp were just enough to make you feel like the thinking was validated without overwhelming you.
Careful planning and consideration went into this year of eating, but Kingsolver invites the reader to consider incorporating some of the easier ideas right away. Meal planning around what is in season is not only cheaper, but often more flavorful as food travels less and thus, is fresher.
More challenging items, like raising and then butchering your own poultry, are obviously not for everyone, but still make you think about where your food comes from and perhaps, broaden your mind a bit. What is most amazing is that the family does all of this in addition to their regular routine of live, work and play.
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EcoMama
August 08, 2010
Thanks for this great review Jennifer! I always dream of living someplace where I can grow my own food (wouldn't really work right now with our condo association's strict rules). I think this book would give me a reality check on just how hard it can be! You may also enjoy reading @Lynn_Harnett's review of Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers.
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More Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A ... reviews
While out of town, I had the chance to do some Actual Reading. It was delightful–staying at my folks’ place, we were all four of us staying in one big room, so there wasn’t much we could do after the kids went to sleep besides read. I guess we could do it at home too, but we for some reason just…don’t. Which is too bad… I finally read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It’s a nonfiction chronicle of her family’s … more
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I am reading this right now, and am so inspired by the endeavors of her family! This book includes scholarly essays and stories about manufactured and local food, making you think about how your values are reflected in your diet.
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Sure, I'd do this all too, if I had the money Kingsolver has. The book is inspiring- but what about those of us who can't afford to drop everything, to always buy local, etc etc.
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It might just be a matter of thinking about red cars and so suddenly seeing red cars everywhere one looks, but it seems to me that once I started researching organic foods for an article I am writing, I began to see books on sustainable farming, organic food markets, news stories about an organic food movement, and farmer's markets everywhere I looked. Something is going on, and I'm pretty sure by this point in my research that it is a very good thing. Suddenly, I am seeing garden fresh red tomatoes … more
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review by cecilbothwell.
January 01, 2009
The less you know about the food you eat, the more urgent your need to read this book. Organized around Kingsolver's family decision to eat-local for a year, the tale she tells is much larger--encompassing as it does the entire relationship between food, energy, nutrition, corporate agriculture, marketing, global climate change and the sexual habits of turkeys. The novelist brings all of her writerly experience to the task and she is at her best in barbed asides about the forces that force feed … more
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review by smsmith.
September 24, 2007
Kingsolver puts together in words what we know to be true in our minds, but we don't address it as a society: our absurd misuse of our resources. I suppose I'm not much of an economist, but it seems like stuff grown close to where you live should be fresher and cheaper that stuff grown far off; yet access to cheap fossil fuel enables us to scratch our "instant gratification itch." Buying locally is great, however super stores have squeezed out local farmers at an unbelieveble … more
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It is possible to live off the land. The Kingsolver family are proof of that. They grew their own food for a year on a farm in Virginia's Applachian mountains. It only cost 50 cents a meal to feed the Kingsolver family of four for a year, and I found that to be amazing. It is much healthier to eat organic foods which are foods produced without chemicals. This is one of the main ideas of this insightful book. I love Camille's Kingsolver's contributions in this book. She is the college age daughter … more
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About the reviewer
Jennifer (Jenniferjax)
Member Since:
Jun 23, 2010
Last Login: Jul 13, 2010 05:11 PM UTC
Last Login: Jul 13, 2010 05:11 PM UTC
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About this book
Michael Pollan is the crack investigator and graceful narrator of the ecology of local food and the toxic logic of industrial agriculture. Now he has a peer. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don't raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. Along the way, the Kingsolver family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious carnivory.This field—local food and sustainable agriculture—is crowded with books in increasingly predictable flavors: the earnest manual, diary of an epicure, the environmental battle cry, the accidental gardener.Animal, Vegetable, Miracleis all of these, and much smarter. Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level; a well-paced narrative and the apparent ease of the beautiful prose makes the pages fly. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is a moralist ("the conspicuous consumption of limited ...
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ISBN-10:
0060852569
ISBN-13:
978-0060852566
Author:
Barbara Kingsolver
Genre:
Home & Garden,
Entertainment
Publisher:
Harper Perennial
Date Published:
April 29, 2008
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