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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
Very inspiring with good, practical advice. I've also used several of the recipes - they're good!
Great companion book to Michael Pollan's "Omnivores Dilemma". Pollan's book tells the 'why'; Kingsolver's the 'how'
I loved this book. In addition to enjoy in the beautifully descriptive prose and drooling over the recipes, some of which I made, it inspired me to plant a garden.
Honestly I finally gave up about 3/4 of the way through. It’s a great idea for a book but it’s just incredibly boring in execution. Been trying to read it for a year and decided it wasn’t worth going on.
This was very informative! While the author and her family are an extreme case study in growing, raising and slaughtering your own food, there are lots of helpful tips for how to incorporate more local, sustainable, and seasonal food into your life. Most of us do not have the ability to have a fully operational family farm, which the author does recognize, but we can think about how we’re purchasing food and sticking with things in season. I, for one, am done with attempting to eat over priced and out of season blueberries so I am an easy convert there if no where else.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
slow-paced
I enjoyed this book because the author takes extreme action that isn’t accessible to all of us, based on her values and her issues with the larger system around her. She reconstructs her life to resistance. This book came out in the early 00’s, when I would have been the same age as Kingsolvers young daughter in the book. It’s hard reading this in 2025, when so many of the issues - like global trade, natural disasters, climate change, and ways consumption (Amazon) have worsened. Reading this in 2025 was almost a challenge because I had to suspend my disbelief a little when she was talking about the price of food (esp eggs), and I struggled to understand where she found her sense of deep optimism. Making this memoir almost like historical fiction in a way, since there have been just huge societal changes. Many of the government organizations she talks about have come under fire since the inauguration, and we don’t know how things will go. I really admire the lengths Kingsolvers went to to find her people, and stand her ground on important issues. Only con was I didn’t understand some of the choices she made, like buying coffee for herself and husband but no bananas for the girls? I do feel like this book could have benefited from a little more direction at the end aimed at city dwellers, like a take-away-city-slicker list because so much of what she accomplishes is challenging for those in urban areas. She takes an all or nothing stance, but in reality most of us are in a position where we have to take an incremental approach.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood
If this book did nothing else, it made me want to garden. Out in the sun, getting my hands dirty...however, as I was reading it in December, alas, it wasn't to be.
...anyway...
I really enjoyed this book. It had good flow and the writing style was really enjoyable. And if you're interested in farming, gardening or local food (for me - checks on the last two), this book is for you.
...I will admit, the tone could lead a little toward preachy - it's a little hard to write a book about eating only local food without being at least a little preachy, I suppose - and sometimes their family life does seem a little too perfect and squabble free. I really didn't find that it detracted from the book much, though.
On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful I'd give it a Quite Awesome. Check it out if you need a push towards putting in a few tomato plants this summer, or just like reading about other people growing food.
...anyway...
I really enjoyed this book. It had good flow and the writing style was really enjoyable. And if you're interested in farming, gardening or local food (for me - checks on the last two), this book is for you.
...I will admit, the tone could lead a little toward preachy - it's a little hard to write a book about eating only local food without being at least a little preachy, I suppose - and sometimes their family life does seem a little too perfect and squabble free. I really didn't find that it detracted from the book much, though.
On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful I'd give it a Quite Awesome. Check it out if you need a push towards putting in a few tomato plants this summer, or just like reading about other people growing food.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. It's gimmicky at its core, and the relentless locavore diatribes cangrow tiresome and repetitive, maybe because there's not much new especially if you're already familiar with the genre. At times she comes across as even more sanctimonious than the most irritating of "food culture" evangelists like Michael Pollan.
At the same time, she is an excellent writer, and when she is writing about rural living or the joys of gardening or farm families, it can be really captivating. And the world needs more women writing in the food movement. She is at least willing to talk about where food culture nostalgia and women's lib meet and clash, where most of her male colleagues seem like they'd prefer to pretend the latter never really existed or that feminism is at all relevant to their utopian visions.
At the same time, she is an excellent writer, and when she is writing about rural living or the joys of gardening or farm families, it can be really captivating. And the world needs more women writing in the food movement. She is at least willing to talk about where food culture nostalgia and women's lib meet and clash, where most of her male colleagues seem like they'd prefer to pretend the latter never really existed or that feminism is at all relevant to their utopian visions.