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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
I really enjoyed reading this non-fiction book about how a family grew their own food and ate locally for an entire year. I would love to do this. Barbara Kingsolver is a great writer, and this is not the first book of hers that I've enjoyed. I enjoyed almost every page and definitely took my time reading it to continue to enjoy. I wish there were no politics involved, but it was still good.
Novelist Barbara Kingsolver and her family move to their Virginia farm and decide to spend a year eating only what they can grow, raise or buy locally. A few exceptions are made for fair-trade coffee, dried fruit, flour and emergency mac-and-cheese rations. Kingsolver's young daughter launches a chicken-and-egg business, her teenager develops recipes for homegrown fruits and veggies, her husband bakes the daily bread and the author learns to make cheese and researches turkey sex. Her stories are amusing with rare departures into tweedom, and the book's journey from April to the following March makes a logical connection between eating seasonally and the rhythm of the year. Sidebars provide information about organic foods and recipes for each month.
I agree in principle with Kingsolver, and we continually revisit our food choices in this house in an effort to eat more local, fresh and seasonal food. Her entire experiment would be a tough sell in Minnesota, with our limited growing season, but she provides lots of ideas for ways in which readers can make small and large changes in the ways they think about and acquire food.
My quibbles are small--the book gets preachy at times, and I think the message gets repetitive. I am not sure this book needed to be 350 pages. I would recommend reading just a few chapters if you don't want to invest days and days, and don't skip the one with Lily and her chickens.
I agree in principle with Kingsolver, and we continually revisit our food choices in this house in an effort to eat more local, fresh and seasonal food. Her entire experiment would be a tough sell in Minnesota, with our limited growing season, but she provides lots of ideas for ways in which readers can make small and large changes in the ways they think about and acquire food.
My quibbles are small--the book gets preachy at times, and I think the message gets repetitive. I am not sure this book needed to be 350 pages. I would recommend reading just a few chapters if you don't want to invest days and days, and don't skip the one with Lily and her chickens.
This is incredibly well-written and super interesting and will totally change the way you want to eat. Let me know if you feel like going to the farmer's market with me after you read it!
Really interesting. Kingsolver and family perform an experiment that they admit is difficult and impractical (eating exclusively locally for one year), while pointing out at each step different ways normal people can go small ways toward making their food choices more sustainable. By going to the extreme, their experiment illustrates what is practical.
I particularly enjoyed reading about turkeys. Turkeys are so stupid. Always good comic relief. I enjoyed hearing how they handled the alternating bounty (or un-bounty) of their garden. I sighed in gratitude that my life isn't forced to be structured along these lines, but I also took many mental notes on things that would be worth trying in mine. I hear her preaching on the value of patronizing farmers' markets. I would like to try making my own cheese. I will never raise my own meat animals, and no thank you on giving up bananas. But again - there's a lot to think about, and she avoids making blanket recommendations that everyone ought to follow.
I'd highly recommend this to my foodie, gardening, and locavore friends.
I particularly enjoyed reading about turkeys. Turkeys are so stupid. Always good comic relief. I enjoyed hearing how they handled the alternating bounty (or un-bounty) of their garden. I sighed in gratitude that my life isn't forced to be structured along these lines, but I also took many mental notes on things that would be worth trying in mine. I hear her preaching on the value of patronizing farmers' markets. I would like to try making my own cheese. I will never raise my own meat animals, and no thank you on giving up bananas. But again - there's a lot to think about, and she avoids making blanket recommendations that everyone ought to follow.
I'd highly recommend this to my foodie, gardening, and locavore friends.
I can't quite decide if I like this book. It seems to fall somewhere between The Omnivore's Dilemma and Plenty, but is not nearly as good as either. The tone is a little hard to digest; Kingsolver's intensely personal, diary entry-like iterations of each day on the farm verge on navel-gazing. And at times she appears to write for a reader who hasn't seen the inside of a kitchen in ages. This is puzzling as it would seem that the primary audience for this book would be hardcore foodies. The book can't seem to decide if it wants to be a food manifesto or just a diary.
One of the best things about the book is Kingsolver's willingness to explore the pervasive perception that quality food is exclusive to the privileged classes. Unlike other Food Lit writers, she attempts to explain why we penny-pinch on groceries as if food is somehow less important than other consumer goods like clothing and cars. The side bars written by Kingsolver's husband do a good job of demonstrating that the real cost of mass produced food, supported by huge taxpayer subsidies, is much higher than the sticker price suggests.
One of the most annoying things about the book is that there are no footnotes. Both Kingsolver and her co-author make a lot of very strong statements about our current food production system. Although I know most of the statements to be true from some of my other readings, I still would have preferred either footnotes or more specific credits. It comes off a little bit like propaganda. (Perhaps this is what other reviewers were referring to when they called the book "preachy.")
One of the best things about the book is Kingsolver's willingness to explore the pervasive perception that quality food is exclusive to the privileged classes. Unlike other Food Lit writers, she attempts to explain why we penny-pinch on groceries as if food is somehow less important than other consumer goods like clothing and cars. The side bars written by Kingsolver's husband do a good job of demonstrating that the real cost of mass produced food, supported by huge taxpayer subsidies, is much higher than the sticker price suggests.
One of the most annoying things about the book is that there are no footnotes. Both Kingsolver and her co-author make a lot of very strong statements about our current food production system. Although I know most of the statements to be true from some of my other readings, I still would have preferred either footnotes or more specific credits. It comes off a little bit like propaganda. (Perhaps this is what other reviewers were referring to when they called the book "preachy.")
I agree with Melissa, this would be perfect except for her defense of meat eating, which I just do not get. And it also made me hungry for a midnight snack every time I sat down with it. But other than that it pretty much rocked my world and made me anxious to get to the local farmers markets as well as grow my own food. And then lo and behold there is a scare with tomatoes grown in California. Surprise, surprise. Anyway this is one book I keep pushing on people, I think everyone should read it!
I really enjoyed this book, as it was a nice mix of story with pure information about eating locally. I like that she acknowledges the difficulties - not only in her own journey but in the idea of others trying this same task. I wish that her reflection at the end could have been spread throughout the book a little more. Also, the inserts that her husband wrote were fascinating but poorly placed. I didn't like stopping in the middle of reading her chapter to read something with a completely different tone and purpose. She should've saved those until the end like she did with her daughter's inserts.
There is a lot in this book that I enjoyed learning about. I really didn't know what this book was about, so I found what she had to say about food, where it comes from, and her trial for the year interesting. However, she tended--in what I believe from over-enthusiasm--to get a bit preachy on certain topics. And some of her issues were very localized and not applicable for the country as a whole--so not all readers can relate. Also, some of her solutions were also localized, so not all readers can follow her "advice".
But I think she makes some valuable points and I'm glad she forced me to assess my own situation. We should not sacrifice everything for the sake of convenience or modernity. And there is something to be said of earning your keep.
I'm definitely NOT a country girl and having my own farm is about as likely as me camping. But perhaps starting a pot of herbs to help teach my daughter that our food actually does come from something other than boxes and plastic wrap is something I can manage. And reading labels is a responsibility that all of us should endeavor--if nothing more than knowledge is power and mindlessly stuffing our faces with whatever is in front of us is probably why we as a country are facing so many health problems.
I think this is a good book to read and if you're debating about it, I would recommend you to try it. I think Kingsolver could have edited certain parts a bit tighter, but other than that, I'm glad I read it.
But I think she makes some valuable points and I'm glad she forced me to assess my own situation. We should not sacrifice everything for the sake of convenience or modernity. And there is something to be said of earning your keep.
I'm definitely NOT a country girl and having my own farm is about as likely as me camping. But perhaps starting a pot of herbs to help teach my daughter that our food actually does come from something other than boxes and plastic wrap is something I can manage. And reading labels is a responsibility that all of us should endeavor--if nothing more than knowledge is power and mindlessly stuffing our faces with whatever is in front of us is probably why we as a country are facing so many health problems.
I think this is a good book to read and if you're debating about it, I would recommend you to try it. I think Kingsolver could have edited certain parts a bit tighter, but other than that, I'm glad I read it.
Last year my parents moved to Panama. The last time I visited I cooked with fresh chicken from a local farm, mango salsa from their trees, pepper jam from their plants, bananas with my morning cereal from their tree and lemonade from their lemons. It was the best week of food I'd ever had. It occurred to me that it was so good because it was so fresh. I don't think twice about making strawberry cake in the dead of winter. I certainly never thought about the impact my food purchases had on the local community never mind the international farming community. This book helped me think through all that and understand the challenges and lifestyle choices that come from eating locally. After Panama and reading this book, I'm committed to eating as locally as possible, despite living in a major metro area. There are two weekly farmers markets I have ready access to and I'm going to start using them smarter.
Listened to this on tape, actually. This gave me some great ideas for eating local foods and even inspired me to start making my own bread!