Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
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Book Summary Information
Author: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. HoppEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 0060852569
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Summary: 5 Stars
How often do people today stop to think about the food they are eating? How many people even know when a particular type of food is in season? I certainly don't. I bought chives at the farmers' market the other day and probably caused the farmer some heartache when I remarked that I didn't know chives had flowers. They do. Did you know that?
Kingsolver, her husband and her daughter wrote the book and it is full of disturbing facts about how much fuel it takes to bring a banana to Chicago in the winter, and how many pesticides are in our grain, and how almost all the diverse and fabulous native plant varieties of the United States are going extinct (that's right- *extinct*) because large farming corporations control our seed supplies.
Kingsolver is pretty left-wing and she clearly has serious issues with the World Bank and other organizations, but her points are valid. It is more than a little frightening to be bludgeoned over the head with the statistic that most food in the United States travels about 1,500 miles to get to your plate. That means fruit in this country has more passport stamps than I ever will.
The book's writing is very dense- in general, I feel that memoirs are fast reads, but this is almost more a treatise and a plea than a memoir. It is jammed with recipes and short essays and lots of information on the mating rituals of turkeys. In my opinion, all three authors can be a bit sanctimonious and overzealous in their writing. Barbara Kingsolver spends about ten pages ogling over asparagus. Her husband seems to have visited every possible organic food website on the Internet and urges us to do so as well. And Camille... well, her parts of the story just seemed a bit stiff and forced to me.
But the family clearly has a passion for what they do. After reading this book, I have visions of myself with a victory garden-esque vegetable patch growing in my parents' backyard. There are decisions we make in life, and the passive ones are often just as important and impactful as the active ones. Just because you don't think much about what you're doing doesn't mean it's not making an impact in a profound way.
This is one of those books that makes you consider those decisions. It might not change your life, but I guarantee that it will make you pause next time you're in the grocery store. And, just maybe, to pass over purchasing bananas.
Summary of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life-vowing that, for one year, they?d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
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