Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
I loved it. I think that everyone should read this book and learn what it is like to run your family and control your food. I love love love it.
I love Barbara Kingsolver. I read Animal Dreams like a lifetime ago and it was one of my favorite books, but then for some reason, never read anything else she wrote. This was nonfiction, but I still love her style. Lots of practical info like recipes and research, but mostly I liked the way she told her stories. Humorous and straight from the heart. The heart-sick turkey will always give me something to talk about at Thanksgiving.
I love her description of how we can all make the world better without necessarily living her lifestyle: "It doesn’t cost a fortune, in other words. Nor does it require a pickup truck, or a calico bonnet. Just the unique belief that summer is the right time to go to the fresh market with cash in hand and say to some vendors: I’ll take all you have."
I love her description of how we can all make the world better without necessarily living her lifestyle: "It doesn’t cost a fortune, in other words. Nor does it require a pickup truck, or a calico bonnet. Just the unique belief that summer is the right time to go to the fresh market with cash in hand and say to some vendors: I’ll take all you have."
I was really inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's quest to eat local for a year - not enough to plant my own garden, but enough to rethink how I do my grocery shopping. Includes seasonal recipes, and may produce nostalgia for "the good old days" of victory gardens and pantries stocked with canned and pickled vegetables.
First I should say I whole-heartedly agree with her premise that we should aim to eat local as much as possible. I believe it was my agreement with her general premise that made her preaching at all bearable. Her daughter Camille's sections were especially painful in my opinion.
What disappointed me most about this book is that it doesn't recognize the difficulties: high cost, need to have free time to grow a garden or travel to farmer's markets, lack of adequate education about the reasons it's even important.
There were great parts, too. A lot of the description was very well done.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I think it's about an important topic. However, I know at least one of my friends was so turned off by the preachy tone of this book that she's now discounted the importance of eating local at all.
What disappointed me most about this book is that it doesn't recognize the difficulties: high cost, need to have free time to grow a garden or travel to farmer's markets, lack of adequate education about the reasons it's even important.
There were great parts, too. A lot of the description was very well done.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I think it's about an important topic. However, I know at least one of my friends was so turned off by the preachy tone of this book that she's now discounted the importance of eating local at all.
Great book - I was late to hop on the bandwagon for this one, but it was worth the leap. Barbara Kingsolver (famed writer) and her family decide ot spend a year eating locally after moving to the mountains of Virginia. This book is the story of that year - told by her mostly but including policy snippets from her husband, and essays on recipes and nutrition from her eldest daughter. The book is divided by month and is a compelling walk through the activities they worked on throughout the year to feed themselves, the choices they made, and really gives the reader a pretty good idea of where on the calendar food belongs (ie - basil doesn't usually grow in most areas in december!). I'd recommend this to everyone really - worth the read. :)
I fantasize about doing this very thing, but as an educational farm, where people can come and stay and learn how it all works.
Very interesting- I agree with her philosophy of eating locally as much as possible. It bugged me that she didn't go all the way- do away with olive oil, coffee, and for gods sake Mac-n-cheese(?!?!) for one year. I kind of wanted them to do a modern day pioneer thing, where there is hardship and want and going without and figuring out how to do things on your own and figuring out creative substitutes, etc, but she really just described a year in the life of a yuppie hobby farmer.
I did not like the segments written by her husband or daughter, and she is just a complete snob toward American culture and cuisine. She gives zero credit to it, while fawning all over Italian culture.
Her attitude just completely bugged me the whole time, even though I agreed with most of her philosophy. She bugs me like that awful woman on Democracy Now and also like the whole tone of Mothering Magazine. Ick! And I am absolutely in line politically with both of those too. Anyway, content is good, but delivery leaves something to be desired.
Side note- when I told my father (a cattleman) I was reading her book, he dismissed her as an elitist, even though he had not read her book. Apparently, the National Cattleman's Association had labeled her as such, so he hadn't bothered forming his own opinion (though he is a free thinker and a highly intelligent man). But Kingsolver devotes an entire chapter to the defense of eating meat in this book and I did a double take while reading it, because I had heard almost the entire contents of that chapter already from my own father's mouth over my lifetime. So I think the Cattlemans association (and my father) might do a more careful reading of it. It does decry the big industrialized beef system (somewhat justifiably) and her daughter whines about the poor cattle in a stinky feedlot she drove by once. But otherwise, Kingsolver makes a highly rational argument for meat consumption.
funny
informative
inspiring