Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (original 2007; edition 2007)

Barbara Kingsolver is a pleasure to read, maybe particularly because I usually agree with her politically, but I like to think I would enjoy her style, at least in fiction, even if I didn���t feel such accord. I like William Safire, for instance, even though politically we are divided; then again I don���t read him for politics but for grammar, which we have in common.

At least two friends think that Michael Pollan���s privileged status affects or even negates his message, or makes it or him untenable, because poor people don���t have the same options as wealthy. I can���t find their exact words, but anyway I remember disagreeing. He is perfectly open about his income, and says, perhaps not explicitly but maybe, in Omnivore���s Dilemma, that money makes life easier and expands your options.

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver even made me think I might like to cook. But the book���s huge flaw, that penetrates and weakens (if not negates) her theme, is her absolute silence on the issue of money. Money allowed her family to have two properties, in Tucson and Virginia (money allowed her family to have even one); it allowed them to move from aridity to fertility; it allowed them to break their backs tending their homestead instead of breaking their backs worse to achieve a less rewarding, less healthful sustenance.

She also says nothing about population. Agriculture allowed increases of population by feeding more people with more (or at least dependable), but lower quality, calories. And here we are, with quantities of people eating mostly low quality food (McDonald���s, millet��_). Population pressure leads to the occupation of marginal land (like that around Tucson [sorry, Rachel]). Not everyone can have their own little homestead in fertile, rural, undeveloped, adequately rainy Appalachia, because there just isn���t enough Appalachia to go around, in this country less alone on the planet. Mass, industrialized food production goes hand-in-hand with concentrated, untenable population.

Kingsolver and her family told their own story and their own reasons. She doesn���t have to come up a solution for civilization. But there was a definite tone ��� which I did not perceive in Omnivore���s Dilemma ��� that theirs were the best reasons. As it happens, I agree with her reasons and her solutions, but I can also see that hers cannot be everyone���s. I wish she had acknowledged that.

this book inspired me spend more time in my garden and pay even more attention to where our food comes from. includes some great recipes and resources. ( )

One of my favorite books. Lessons to learn, wonderful writing and oh, those chicken stories.
Recommended!
Read in 2008.h ( )

Barbara Kingsolver is one of those rare authors who can also audibly narrate well. Listening to this book may have been more enjoyable than if I had read it the conventional way.

The book chronicles her family's move from Arizona to Appalachia to a farm on which they pledge to eat locally for one year. Most of the food they grow and can/preserve themselves (even turkeys, which becomes the motif for the book) or get from within an hour's travel. They meet many people with similar convictions throughout the book and share their struggles and triumphs. Throughout the book, there are sidebars from Kingsolver's husband on the science and technology side of sustainable agriculture, and vignettes from Camille, their 18 yr old daughter on meal preparation and the teen perspective.

It's an informative book, but also entertaining. With a biology background and an established career as a novelist, Kingsolver is the perfect candidate to write out this story. Worth the read.

My one puzzlement is the pity-party for tobacco farmers who are losing their livelihood as that industry shrinks. I get that Kingsolver regrets the loss of farmers, and that it's more personal for her because she grew up among them, but don't they fit into a category akin to that of the corporate factory farms that she goes on to condemn? I am unable to reconcile this apparent contradiction. ( )

So much of this book I loved, especially the day to day experiences around growing your own food and raising livestock. My favorite descriptions were about raising turkeys and what it takes to successfully breed them. Kingsolver as the narrator of this audiobook made me laugh out loud several times. I loved how she described all of thei work on their farm, but it would have been refreshing if her kids and husband had rebelled even a little bit! They were incredibly accommodating and helpful all the time.

I wasn't a fan of the lecture feeling parts of the book. I wish I could buy all my food from local sources and in season- and I do for the most part, but this isnt realistic for a lot of individuals. Rather than hunkering down with her own family (who seem to have unlimited means) I would have loved to hear about her using her influence to help address the urban food deserts we have across the country.

It is funny that she is described as one of the 100 most dangerous people in the US. Heck I think we need more dangerous people like her.

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