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A review by letitbrie
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin
2.0
Hooo boy. Where to even begin? At first, I put this as a 3. But then, as I wrote this, I changed it to a 2. Between the writing style and wading through bull, it just couldn't warrant the 3.
The amount of fundamentalist Christian bullshit in here was nauseating. A lot of the libertarian notions he said were naive at best, heartless at worst. All that being said, he did have some good points, if you look past the xenophobic, paranoid, egotistical, my-way-or-the-highway thinking. And while I found myself raging at several points (especially when he went on a couple anti-choice tirades - seriously, in a farming/food book?!), I also found myself modifying some of my views, and learning quite a bit.
I didn't like his writing style. With some basic editing, this book could have been probably 100 pages shorter. He repeats himself endlessly, has whole paragraphs interjected prepping up the topic that he's in the middle of, (e.g. Oh, wait for this. It gets better. Just get this. You won't believe this. I can't make this up, folks. Righteous, evil. They hate freedom! They are evil and are against righteousness.), goes on PAGES LONG rants completely off-topic. At one point, he makes an almost page-long list of miscellaneous political beliefs, so we "get where he's coming from." Sorry not sorry, your opinion on abortion or immigration or taxes has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the realities of the farming world. This book felt less like his intended purpose of getting information out there and more of a toddler temper tantrum thinking his opinion is the word of god (with the amount he quotes scripture and god-given rights and god-given creation and god-given blah blah blah, he may just well think he's the word of god) and everybody should listen to his opinion on everything. Plus, the amount of judgement in here is unbelievable. A long-time vegetarian doesn't know how to make a hamburger? Unbelievable. A person says one thing, so obviously he votes republican and thinks this and that and the other. And this person dresses this way or eats this food so obviously she's a tree-hugging hippie and doesn't understand anything about food and is passing anti-farmer legislation because she's just dumb.
Ultimately, this was a good book to get some good information, but there was more muck to wade through than good information.
The amount of fundamentalist Christian bullshit in here was nauseating. A lot of the libertarian notions he said were naive at best, heartless at worst. All that being said, he did have some good points, if you look past the xenophobic, paranoid, egotistical, my-way-or-the-highway thinking. And while I found myself raging at several points (especially when he went on a couple anti-choice tirades - seriously, in a farming/food book?!), I also found myself modifying some of my views, and learning quite a bit.
I didn't like his writing style. With some basic editing, this book could have been probably 100 pages shorter. He repeats himself endlessly, has whole paragraphs interjected prepping up the topic that he's in the middle of, (e.g. Oh, wait for this. It gets better. Just get this. You won't believe this. I can't make this up, folks. Righteous, evil. They hate freedom! They are evil and are against righteousness.), goes on PAGES LONG rants completely off-topic. At one point, he makes an almost page-long list of miscellaneous political beliefs, so we "get where he's coming from." Sorry not sorry, your opinion on abortion or immigration or taxes has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the realities of the farming world. This book felt less like his intended purpose of getting information out there and more of a toddler temper tantrum thinking his opinion is the word of god (with the amount he quotes scripture and god-given rights and god-given creation and god-given blah blah blah, he may just well think he's the word of god) and everybody should listen to his opinion on everything. Plus, the amount of judgement in here is unbelievable. A long-time vegetarian doesn't know how to make a hamburger? Unbelievable. A person says one thing, so obviously he votes republican and thinks this and that and the other. And this person dresses this way or eats this food so obviously she's a tree-hugging hippie and doesn't understand anything about food and is passing anti-farmer legislation because she's just dumb.
Ultimately, this was a good book to get some good information, but there was more muck to wade through than good information.