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sleepyjen 's review for:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver
I wanted to love this book. There were parts of it I did love. While I couldn't do what Kingsolver did, I liked the idea of reading about how she did it. However, about 3/4 of the way in, she lost me. It wasn't the guilt--I try to eat locally, I am very environmentally conscious--but my anger with her.
Kingsolver is a bestselling author. This means that she can afford to take time off to garden; this means that she can afford her prius, that kind of thing. Periodically through the book she talked about other kinds of people with disdain, and that really turned me off.
Here's what I mean. At one point she reflects on Hurricane Katrina, and notes that it made her think about how awful it is to have congested populations reliant on outside food sources. She nearly pooh-poohs those who held the administration accountable for the destruction there.
This, in many ways, contradicts what most environmentalists think--they think cities are a good idea. Those of us who live in them can often walk or take a bus to get to wherever we need to go; we drive short distances. Sure, it'd be lovely if we could all have a huge organic farm and grow all our own food. Delightful. But even if we could all move there, we'd all have to drive our (like non-hybrid) cars into cities to work every day, creating a very different kind of problem. It would amplify current conditions in suburbia (ie, much driving) in a rural setting. This is clearly not a solution, unless we can all work, as she often does, from home. So that ticked me off.
Also ticking me off was her frequent gloom-and-doom tirades. I agree, we have a climate problem, and that we also have an agricultural problem. I, however, don't see a solution in growing my own garden alone; in fact, if I lived, let's say, in a hurricane-prone area, my garden would be pretty much wiped out by an oncoming storm.
So there are good and bad things in here; I liked learning that I could make my own mozzarella and bean sprouts with very little effort; I did not, however, agree with her implied assessment that my urban lifestyle, which requires minimal driving, is in fact part of the problem rather than the solution.
Kingsolver is a bestselling author. This means that she can afford to take time off to garden; this means that she can afford her prius, that kind of thing. Periodically through the book she talked about other kinds of people with disdain, and that really turned me off.
Here's what I mean. At one point she reflects on Hurricane Katrina, and notes that it made her think about how awful it is to have congested populations reliant on outside food sources. She nearly pooh-poohs those who held the administration accountable for the destruction there.
This, in many ways, contradicts what most environmentalists think--they think cities are a good idea. Those of us who live in them can often walk or take a bus to get to wherever we need to go; we drive short distances. Sure, it'd be lovely if we could all have a huge organic farm and grow all our own food. Delightful. But even if we could all move there, we'd all have to drive our (like non-hybrid) cars into cities to work every day, creating a very different kind of problem. It would amplify current conditions in suburbia (ie, much driving) in a rural setting. This is clearly not a solution, unless we can all work, as she often does, from home. So that ticked me off.
Also ticking me off was her frequent gloom-and-doom tirades. I agree, we have a climate problem, and that we also have an agricultural problem. I, however, don't see a solution in growing my own garden alone; in fact, if I lived, let's say, in a hurricane-prone area, my garden would be pretty much wiped out by an oncoming storm.
So there are good and bad things in here; I liked learning that I could make my own mozzarella and bean sprouts with very little effort; I did not, however, agree with her implied assessment that my urban lifestyle, which requires minimal driving, is in fact part of the problem rather than the solution.