Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a memoir of eating locally for one year, largely from the author’s own property. Lots of folks have taken on personal projects like that, but few of them are an acclaimed novelist and can therefore provide the promise of a well-written, engaging story just by having her name on the cover.

The first time I read this I was excited, but a little sad. I was living in an apartment in a large complex and could only “garden” in pots on my little patio. Much of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is about working Kingsolver’s small farm and, while I was inspired to look for more locally-raised foods in my own neighborhood as well as join a community supported agriculture program and plant a few more things on that patio, I couldn’t do what the author and her family had done. I turned the last pages of the book feeling inspired, but also wondering if the author was looking down on me for not being able to afford enough land to raise chickens, turkeys and winter squash.

I still like this book, but now the ideas don’t seem so new to me. I still can’t raise chickens and turkeys, but I do have a backyard now, a significant portion of which I’ve dug up to create a vegetable garden. The biggest lessons in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are not really about raising your own poultry (or owning enough property to do so), even if some of the most interesting and amusing stories are. No, the more important points are about learning what is growing around you, understanding the seasonality of foods, and understanding where the food you choose to buy actually comes from.

Inspiration to grow your own food and eat what has been grown or produced nearby and Barbara Kingsolver’s great story-telling merge wonderfully to make this a very good book, interesting as well as entertaining.

You might also like: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Coming next: Startide Rising by David Brin

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings

I’m always a little sad when I finish The Lord of the Rings. Mostly because a great story, one that immersed me in an otherworldly place and time, is over. I’ve always had a difficult time, however, really embracing the chapter entitled “The Scouring of the Shire,” which comes near the end of The Return of the King and in other readings my little bit of sadness comes from the disappointment I feel in that chapter.

 

This time, of course, I knew what was coming and braced for it. Since there were so many things I enjoyed even more than I ever had before in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, (and in The Hobbit) I even thought I might come around to like “The Scouring if the Shire.” Sorry. Not yet.

The rest of the novel is a wonderful as the rest of the trilogy. I had forgotten at least as many details from this book as the others and the refreshing of my memory was exciting and enjoyable. I’m a little more mature (okay, quite a bit more) than the last time I read it, so the deeply felt losses and sacrifices were more compelling. A happy ending to such a brutal, hopeless story must be hard won and I no longer shy away from themes at that level, especially in such a great story.

I just can’t quite get a grip on how the Shire could have gone to the dogs so quickly and easily while our hobbit heroes were away. I appreciate that the work that must be done to clean up the corruption, social and physical, in the Shire demonstrates the changes and growth Merry, Pippin and Sam experienced while off adventuring, but it’s hard for me to believe that “Sharkey” could have reached such a Snidely Whiplash-like level of ridiculous pettiness. Oh well. There are a lot of pages in this trilogy and in The Return of the King itself that are more than enjoyable enough to make up for my confusion over one chapter.

And so the end of an age of Middle Earth and of a beautiful fantasy series has come. It’s a bittersweet ending of mixed triumph and loss. I read the last page, as always, with a sigh.

Of course, I could always read it all again.

 

 

Coming soon: some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

May Reading List

Since I actually finished all the books on my April reading list, there are no hold-overs in my Distractible Reading for the month of May. (This is really quite a victory for me.) This leaves room for a long fantasy novel, the beginning of a science fiction series, and a classic.

Here are the three books I plan to re-read in May:


Startide Rising from the Uplift series by David Brin

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, a book I looked forward to re-reading before I even finished it the first time.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated into English (I can't read French).



Coming soon: some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.


A Year of Books I've Read Before

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

If it hadn’t been such a blow to my reading ego to admit defeat by Jane Austen, I might have put Mansfield Park down and never picked it up again. I remembered this novel being disappointing-the story and characters, not necessarily the setting, construction, or writing – but this time it was almost unbearable.

 

You see, I like Jane Austen’s novels. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma are some of my favorite books. I’ve been looking forward to re-reading them in this Year of Books I’ve Read Before, but I decided to give Mansfield Park a go first, largely because I wanted to figure out why my memories of it are less favorable. Now I know.

Fanny Price is a tough heroine for me to follow. She’s meek and prudish and seems to be almost totally against amusement and those who partake in it. I guess we’re supposed to see the shallowness of the privileged elite and their constant strive for entertainment (that is, most of the rest of the young characters in the novel and their pursuits) as foolish and impractical while Fanny’s goodness is to be admired and ultimately rewarded. Okay, fine. I just wish she had some of Elizabeth Bennet’s wit and pluck, or Elinor Dashwood’s pragmatism. Or even had learned a valuable lesson in the course of the story and grew and changed for the better, like Emma Woodhouse. Nope. Fanny is the same puritanical stick in the mud from beginning to end. The only change she seems to make is from a frail and not particularly attractive child to a pretty woman.

Mansfield Park is long, and I think Austen could have made her points without quite so many pages. The extended period in which the young people at Mansfield plan and rehearse the play Lover’s Vows took me almost as long to read as it could have taken place in real time. In retrospect, I should have skipped it, already knowing what would happen at the end of it all. The more scandalous and exciting parts of the story seem to breeze by in comparison, and I found those more enjoyable.

Of course this novel is written with the unique use of language characteristic of Austen, which I really do like to read. I mostly read her books for that language, sometimes marveling at its brilliance. It’s hard to really get enthralled by a book’s words alone, however, and I wish I’d been less bored and irritated by so many parts of this story, or that I could have felt compelled to cheer on Fanny Price as I have Austen’s other heroines.

 

Coming soon: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before