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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Audiobook14 hours

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

“A profound, graceful, and literary work of philosophy and economics, well tempered for our times, and yet timeless. . . . It will change the way you look at the food you put into your body. Which is to say, it can change who you are.” — Boston Globe

Barbara Kingsolver's New York Times bestselling book describing her family's adventure as they move to a farm in southern Appalachia and realign their lives with the local food chain

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. It's a modern classic that will endure for years to come. 

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateMay 1, 2007
ISBN9780061449932
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Author

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia. 

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Reviews for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Rating: 4.445859872611465 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed reading Kingsolver's family journey of eating locally. It amazed me that she had the buy-in of the whole family, but I finished the book impressed by what they learned. Sure, they had a farm, plus the money and the time to do this, but the lesson I'm taking away from it is that you do what you want to and are able. Just in the past couple of weeks, I've been making different eating choices, mostly getting fruit salad on the side when it's an option at restaurants (instead of fries or chips), since fruit's in season this summer. I'm not bothering to ask where it's from or if it had to be thawed out.

    That being said, I bought some squash at the Raleigh Farmer's Market last month, and threw it out this morning because of mold. Fail. But I am looking for healthy recipes to cook ahead, partly because I'm starting grad school later this month, and partly because of this book. So there.

    Many thanks to Lisa for giving this one to me.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very inspiring and informative. Beautiful story interspersed with practical advice and recipes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    i loved this book! it's a beautiful reflection on a family growing their own food and eating local for a year. kingsolver's prose and wordplay are so wonderful; her descriptions are rich and vivid. the recipes included in the book look really yummy and i appreciated hearing the perspective of both her husband and her daughter. it's a book that packs in a lot of information in the midst of moving memoir. lovely and highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Barbara Kingsolver's account of her family's year-long effort to eat locally is hysterically funny as well as thought-provoking. She makes two good points that are often left out of other books: 1) the desire for edible things that aren't made in our region such as spices, coffee, chocolate, etc. is very much a part of us historically and locally. 2) our ability to survive and thrive in less than hospitable regions is made possible by introducing non-native food plants and by shipping necessities over long distances.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An extremely thought-provoking discussion of the costs of our "any food, any time, anywhere" culture.I listened to this one on an audio book during a long trip and the miles just rolled along. It did a get a bit long toward the end, but still worth the read (or listen).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A third of the world’s fossil fuel habit goes to supporting agriculture. Though that’s not the reason for the rise in organically grown food, it’s a good one. (The main reason is concern for the health of body, soul and soil.) A third of the world’s oil goes to growing and trucking food around the planet—and, in the U.S. at least, food transportation is tax deductible.No wonder the industrial food chain is so addictive. Not only can we get what we want when we want it (apples in late winter and spring from New Zealand, to give just one example), but we can get it cheap, too.Barbara Kingsolver, the noted novelist, and her family broke the habit. They did a geographical, moving from water-hog Tucson to a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley. There they got off the food grid and determined that they’d try to live for a year on only what they could grow or obtain within a certain, limited radius. They weren’t self-sufficient, by any means. To the contrary, one of Kingsolver’s driving themes is eating locally and doing business directly with local agriculturists.To this end, the Kingsolver-Hopp crew bust ass in a three-acre garden (and just where is the line between garden and farm? is a question she muses on), grow squash until they think their heads are going to explode, not to mention a zillion other kinds of vegetables. Growing it is one thing, processing the fruits of the earth into food that’ll last over winter is another. It takes a bit of labor to can a few hundred pounds of tomatoes but that and a barrel of past made from locally grown wheat will get you through the long night of the year and beyond.It’s not a vegetarian or any other particular diet this family effort of a book preaches. (Hopp, Kingsolver’s husband, contributes scientific and ideological vignettes with copious Web links, while daughter Camille Kingsolver serves up recipes (how many ways can you serve ready-steady foodstuffs, like canned tomatoes?) with a dash of what’s-it-like-growing-up-with-a-foodie? thrown in.) The youngest daughter, Lilly, raises chickens for eggs and meat, while Kingsolver raises turkey for Thanksgiving and a winter supply of protein.Rather, the family brings a passion born of rational intelligence to a subject far too often freighted with emotions, myths and outright lies. Although Kingsolver uses the neologism “localvore” (by etymological rights, I’d guess “locivore” would be better) and CSA (community-supported agriculture), what the book ultimately dwells on, in its choice and deployment of words and generosity of intelligence, is eating smart and caring about the way your food gets to and through you. As she points out, “Organic farming involves a level of biotic observation more commonly associated with scientists than with farmers”—meaning, instead of identifying bugs and encouraging certain of them, the petro-farmer sprays them all dead. Or tries, at least.Kingsolver is a cunning and funny wordsmith, as when she writes:“Like many other modern U.S. cities, [Tucson] might as well be a space station where human sustenance is concerned. Virtually every unit of food consumed there moves into town in a refrigerated module from somewhere far away. Every ounce of the city’s drinking, washing, and goldfish-bowl-filling water is pumped from a nonrenewable source—a fossil aquifer that is dropping so fast, sometimes the ground crumbles.”Industrial food, as foodies call petro-agriculture, is “consumed” in “units” transported in “modules.” And her choice of the amazing but familiar fact (especially out West), ground crumbling as water table falls, is a knowing nod to the headlines of our own lives. Kingsolver and her brood capture the absurdity of our current situation and then proceed, in a year of DIY food, to show how it might be different.Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a funny, loving, smart book with lots of know-how tucked into anecdotes and observations by turns funny, scary, and moving. Anyone interested in food and agriculture should read it (and how could you not be interested when your life depends on it?). We should all spend a lot more time thinking about dirt, water and food and especially about the cost of moving all those things around.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Animal, Vegetable, Miracle describes the life of the author and her family as they decide to eat only homegrown or locally grown foods for one year. A hard working dedication to describing their tasks alternates with humor about their failures. It inspired me to try my hand at making my own mozzarella cheese, which is easier than you’d think.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great over audiobook - between chapters there are soundclips of different animals that were discussed or general farm sounds or whatever. Normally I often think the introductory music to a book can be overdramatic somewhat, but this sorta feels like listening to a very extended NPR article. Plus, she's got a great voice and I enjoy the southern twang that comes out every so often. I found her enthusiasm contagious, whereas I normally listen to books that are somewhat drier - often with accompanying voice (though I do have some fav narrators). Also, another reason I really enjoyed that the author reading her own narrative was that I felt I really heard her intended inflections and sidebar thoughts. Sometimes those can get lost with other narrators. Her husband and daughter read their own contributions of essays, respectively, which I felt also adds personality and personal-ness for what they add. The recipes and seasonal weekly menus are also read aloud.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Frustrated by rising food prices and concerned about the environment, writer Barbara Kingsolver moves the family to Applachia and sets them on a mission to eat food grown within 100 miles of their home. I expected this to be a narrative piece about her experiences with local eating, but that's not quite what I got. Kingsolver begins the book as an experienced farm wife, equally capable of raising chickens, slaughtering turkeys and writing bestselling novels in her free time. As a result, she approaches the farmer's market and the barnyard -- in my opinion, the most fascinating locations in the book -- with a rather ho-hum attitude. I didn't get as many evocative descriptions of food as I was hoping for and I didn't get the sense that she approached this as an adventure. That, coupled with her sometimes holier-than-thou environmentalist attitude, occasionally frustrated me. As a millionaire author, she can afford to shrug off the higher cost of organic and locally grown food. Many struggling Americans, trapped between the costs of education, health care and keeping the family fed, cannot. That doesn't make them unenlightened people who don't care about the world, and Kingsolver doesn't really seem to acknolwedge that.These are some pretty powerful negatives, but don't let them deter you from reading the book. Every chapter is crammed with hard-to-find information about the environemental impact of industrial agriculture, the nutritional value of organic, local food and the benefits of eating free range, pasture-fed beef. I left each chapter feeling inspired that I could simultaneously eat healthier, save the environment and live without produce trucked in from around the world. If I hadn't read this book, I would never have known how easy it is to make my own cheese and can my own tomato sauce, and I would never have understood how small, local farms protect literally thousands of varieties of vegetables from extinction. Those things were absolutely worth my occasional frustration with Kingsolver's attitude.Bottom line: Read this book for information, not for the narrative. Especially recommended for people trying to get greener -- either in the environmental sense or the healthy eating sense.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Barbara Kingsolver has long been one of my favorite writers, but this most recent book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The book covers the year she and her family spent eating only food they had either grown themselves or purchased from local farmers personally known to them. Kingsolver’s skill as a storyteller is undiminished, and there are some wonderful sections as she relates their adventures plotting how to foist some of their bumper zucchini harvest off on unsuspecting neighbors and how they helped their new turkey crop re-learn the lost art of natural copulation. The book also succeeded in teaching me quite a bit I didn’t know about food and gardening. As someone who was raised on heavily processed foods, I was fascinated to learn the biological secrets of root vegetables, how a mild-mannered novelist “harvests” chickens at home, and how much better food can taste when it hasn’t been subject to the rigors of corporate food production. Her chapter on asparagus helped me understand why the tough, road-hardened variety found in most conventional stores is only a pale shadow of an organically grown stalk picked just hours earlier; her description of the succulent magic of morels made me want to take up mushroom hunting. In these celebrations of the pleasures of fresh, locally grown, in-season produce, Kingsolver was very effective in inspiring me to think more about how to plan my menus around what is seasonally available. I’ll be adding her sweet-potato quesadilla recipe to my menu this week, and I’m looking forward to trying out her dried-tomato pesto. On the down side, Ms. Kingsolver’s charming storytelling is laced with a rather heavy dose of preaching. I have no doubt that the food monoculture promoted by corporate America has had devastating effects on our health, taste buds, and environment, and the loss of crop diversity these practices have created has made us very vulnerable as a population. These are important issues that need to be talked about. But part of the reason I’ve admired Ms. Kingsolver’s past writing is because she has always woven her political views so seamlessly into her stories that, in reading her books, I always learned new things without feeling like I had been force-fed someone else’s opinions. That was not the case with this book. The first quarter is particularly thick with commentary on the evils of our current food system. More than once, I found myself slogging through sections that left me feeling more guilty about the food currently in my kitchen than inspired to adopt her suggestions. This tone made the read much less effective for me than it would have been had she focused primarily on the very real value her family gained from choosing to forgo convenience in favor of such fantastically delicious food.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. For those of you who haven't read the book, it's a memoir-ish book about Kingsolver and her family's year of living strictly on food they'd grown in their own garden or, when it was something they couldn't produce themselve, bought locally.For several years now I've wondered what it would be like if I had enough money to buy up some land and live off the earth. I have a grandmother and an aunt very much like Kingsolver. They had their own gardens and chickens and were very strict about what they would and would not eat. When I was younger I thought they were completely crazy, but now that I'm older I find myself wanting that way of life more and more. My parents also took up major gardening and animal raising after I'd moved out of the house and now I finally understand what they were trying to get to.I really liked that Kingsolver's book was not just a memoir, but also had pertinent information that might sway someone to decide to try eating locally or growing their own food. The informational boxes by her husband and the short essays and recipes from her daughter were some of my favorite parts of the book.I also enjoyed her defense of farmers. I've been a newspaper reporter in two small towns, both filled with farmland, which gave me a lot of opportunities to meet and interview farmers. I grew to really admire their way of life and their ability to keep at it despite the numerous factors standing in their way. To someone who has never been on a farm, nor talked to farmers, Kingsolver's descriptions may seem a little too poetic, but if you've ever been there you'd know that she's pretty dead on. She mentions this in the book too, after going on vacation to meet with some of her Amish friends, one of her city friends teases her about how she described the farm as if there were no worries just because the farmers had time to commune with nature.In the book there were also some parts that really stressed me out (the chapters about squash and tomatoes covering every surface of the house while they desperately tried to store and consume them). I currently have five tomatoe plants to take care of and have already been giving dozens of them away (luckily I don't live in a rural place where everyone else is trying to do the same). I don't know how I would cope with 50 tomato plants' worth of tomatoes to deal with. This and learning to butcher animals would probably be the most difficult things for me if I decided to try living for a year off of food I produced myself. I think it would finally be the thing to push me into vegetarianism for real.I think what I loved most about Kingsolver's book is that it made me feel normal. Sometimes I think my friends think I'm crazy, like the year I decided to learn how to make jam and proceeded to give it to everyone as Christmas gifts. Reading about making your own cheese or canning tomatoes makes me want to rush out and buy all of the tools necessary so I can do it too.Also, I loved Kingsolver constantly bringing up her issues with California produce. Kingsolver lives in Virginia and refuses to buy California produce because of how far it would have had to have been trucked in order to reach her supermarket. To her it's upsetting that people think they can have produce all year round by trucking it in from far and wide. And I agree wholeheartedly. However, it's easy for me to agree because I happen to be one of the lucky thousands to live IN California. That means I get fresh local produce, and a wide variety of it too, almost year round. Reading this book made me realize just how lucky I am to have that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love everything she writes. she has such a great voice - funny and friendly. I enjoyed this book because of my interest in eating healthy eating and local foods. Her effort to keep it up for a year gave me inspiration to follow her lead as much as possible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Oh Barbara Kingsolver, you are so amazing and brilliant… wait, I mean condescending. Sorry for the snarky comment, but after awhile her attitude was a bit much for me. Yes, the lifestyle she advocates is a wonderful idea, but having someone tell you over and over again that you really have to grow your own food because fast food is bad for you gets old fast. I just wanted to yell “WE KNOW!” It’s not a bad book, it’s just, most of what she says feels like common knowledge and she just comes across as so self-congratulatory. I also don’t think it’s feasible for many people to pack up and move from Arizona to the Appalachian mountains in order to grow a garden, which is what she and her family do. Most people in America (at least most of the people who are reading books like her’s) already understand that buying local is better for the environment, economy and our personal health. We know that working in a garden can be hard, but it’s also rewarding. We know that it’s not impossible to eat all local foods, but it can be difficult. My parents are living a very similar life. They raise their own chickens for eggs and meat. They grow all their own veggies, do their own canning and make their own jams. So maybe I’ve just heard all of this before. I really loved learning more about the process, I just would have enjoyed it more without the patronizing style of the book. There are certainly things I liked about the book. I think Kingsolver is right when she says that having a family dinner together is important. I also love how she teaches her kids the importance of these things. I love that she reminds us good things are worth waiting for. I think it’s also interesting that she emphasizes the value of cooking from scratch and notes that it has become a negative thing because it makes women seem “domestic” which is “bad” in America. I definitely learned some new things from the book and I appreciate that, I just wish it had been written in a slightly different way. BOTTOM LINE: If you’re interested in growing and raising your own food and curious about the ins and outs of the process then this is a must. If you already have a good base of knowledge and understand that a farmer’s marker is a good place to shop, skip it.  
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the story lovingly told of a family who decided to spend a year being conscious about where there food came from. They would grow or raise what they could, and they would buy local and get to know the farmers who sold them everything else.I thought this would be preachy; it was not. Kingsolver doesn't say that everyone needs to do this--in fact, she quite distinctly says that it's a luxury she knows most people don't have. Instead, she's trying to raise the level of awareness. Our food comes from all over the world. It's WEIRD that we don't know where it comes from or even that our meals typically consist of food out of season. (And does anyone know what's in season anymore? I sure couldn't have told you before.) We eat what we want when we want it regardless of when it's naturally available. And there are moral and practical implications.I learned so much in this book and got a few laughs along the way. I wasn't expecting it to be funny at all. I read part of this while sitting in an airport bar and needed to stifle more than one giggle so that my fellow patrons wouldn't think they were sitting next to a crazy person. I can't remember the last time I took this much pure pleasure from a book.This was just a joy to read. And you know what? I'm going to try to go to the farmers market more often.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little preachy but not a bad book. I get the premiss but the whole idea of eating local is a whole lot easier depending on where you live. Doing it in Virginia where she does is a whole lot easier than doing it in a small community on an island in the middle of the north Atlantic like I do.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Can you really eat nothing but local food? Can you talk your family into going on this journey with you? Barbara Kingsolver tries it. She and her family become intimately involved with the food they eat--growing it, raising it (and killing it) and meeting other local producers. There are some good recipes from Camille Kingsolver (Barbara's daughter and budding nutritionist) and information on food economics from Steven Hopp (Barbara's husband). Great writing on a topic we all need to know more about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book so much, I just for a second thought, "You know, I bet I'd love to live out on a few acres with chickens and turkeys, and raise a year's worth of produce," before reality set in. Instead, I think I just won't obsess about paying extra for the great veggies I get from the local food co-op. Kingsolver explains well the labor and love that those farmers put into growing the tomatoes, eggplants, and yes, even the zucchini that I've come to rely on. Our local farmers deserve every dime and dollar.The involvement of the whole family in writing the book paid off. Camille's recipes and essays and Lily's egg marketing strategies added to the book, while Kingsolver's husband Steven offered a more macro take on food production. Eat locally; you'll be glad you did.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tuscon to a family farm in Virginia, where they got right down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that physically nourishes even as the recipes and the memories of cooks and gardeners past nourish our hearts and souls. (Review by SLJ)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a powerful book for me. While reading the first two chapters, I think I drove my partner crazy reciting passages about the insanity of modern food production - there were just so many things that made sense or were so shocking to me.
    I bought this book for my father, because over the years he and my mother have grown a vegetable garden, and he's always been more inclined to 'buy the good stuff' when he's cooking or baking, and encouraged us to eat 'real' food, rather than frozen boxed choices.
    If you have the means (and room on your shelves, let's be honest about who we are), I recommend owning the book, as you can refer to the book's helpful ideas and links as well as look at the recipes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well written account of one family's quest for the locavoraian lifestyle. The Kingsolver family travels to the East Coast to re-think their consumption habits and farm for their food. The book details this experience through three voices, mother, father and young daughters who experience this lifestyle change with honesty and humor. Informative yet entertaining, the stories of the family interactions are interwoven with political/scientific analysis of United States farm policy. The daughters' involvement in the story telling brings the book alive with recipes, anecdotes and reactions to some of the changes that come with restructuring the supply in the family larder.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Count me among the choir Kingsolver is preaching to, here. I found her writing clear and passionate. I learned some things about food and the way food gets to my kitchen. We have a vegetable garden every year, but this book made me want to have a farm. And can my own vegetables. I did find the interjections by Kingsolver's husband and daughter a little jarring but easy to forgive.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    a compelling account of the author's attempt to subsist exclusively on locally produced food for one year. (each family member was allowed one luxury item and they chose: coffee, olive oil, fruit, and hot chocolate.) this was an enjoyable read and so much information is contained in this book. it'll inspire you to visit a farmer's market and educate you on a tremendous varitey of topics- from insect evolution to factory farming, to the growing cycle of crops. it's difficult to imagine a reader who wouldn't find this worthwhile.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Kingsolver and her family decided to experiment and live only on locally grown foods for a year. That included animals, vegetables and fruit grown on their own farm in Virginia as well as flour, meat and plants from local farms. The book describes twelve months on the farm, vegetables that grow in each and the foods that can be made from them. There is also a small section on the philosophy behind the whole idea embedded in each month, and descriptions of the family life as connected to the theme.The ideas behind the project are very sound- eat locally, eat organic- you will be healthy, you will help the environment, and you will help prevent cruelty to animals. If you absolutely must buy something out of your area like coffee, go for the fair trade.I picked it up because it was available, and because I have read other books by her and enjoyed them, but secretly I wondered what she could tell me, an avid gardener ridden with food allergies who had to readdress what and how the whole family ate a long time ago. Yet, I managed to learn quite a bit about everything, and especially about growing asparagus, types of potatoes and lots about turkey love life, and I enjoyed it as her engagement in the project was very obvious. The book was read by Kingsolver herself, her husband and her daughter, who are also co-authors. It was sort of mesmerizing to listen to it since I have never heard anybody describe vegetables so lovingly and the everyday hard work on the farm in such a relaxing and enticing way.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I listened to this book on audio CD - it's the first book I've listened to "read by the author" that I really liked.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. I was so impressed that this family was able to feed themselves and eat locally for an entire year. I already knew and agreed with many of the things they talked about, but sometimes you need a little reminder to make changes in your life. Some of the recipes are so simple and there is no reason I cannot make more things from scratch and can some stuff when it is in season. Reading this has inspired me to plant a bigger garden, cook more, and buy what is available at the farmers market instead of what I want.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "How do you encourage people to keep their hope...but not their complacency?" This is a question that one of Kingsolver's film-making friends asks. It is a question that I found to be central to my reading of this book. A couple of chapters in, I feared this would be a book all about how we are raping and killing our planet, and destroying our own health, by our current consumer and eating habits. And it is a book about that - I came away with a great deal of guilt that I didn't want to deal with, which easily leads to complacency. As Kingsolver says, "The truth is so horrific: we are marching ourselves to the maw of our own extinction. An audience that doesn't really get that will amble out of the theater unmoved, go home and change nothing. But an audience that does get it may be so terrified they'll feel doomed already. They might walk out looking paler, but still do nothing. How is it possible to inspire an appropriately repentant stance toward a planet that is really, really upset?"

    I think the author does a pretty good job of finding that balance throughout this book. After the initial bout of "preachiness," which is really the family's explanation of why they decided to try this year of eating locally, the book resolves into a generally hopeful and upbeat story of their experiences. The clan eschews any food that is not grown on their own land or produced within 100 miles of their home for a year. Kingsolver relates fascinating information, funny and touching stories, and great joy as she works through the family's story of growing, harvesting, preserving, and preparing its own food. The tales of turkey husbandry are particularly entertaining.

    And, while I did still come away with that guilt - I am overwhelmed by all the change that would be necessary to stop the wheels of the mass food production machine, too spoiled with having a huge variety of food choices, and too lazy to grow my own food - I did come away with a resolution to take some baby steps to help solve some of the problems outlined in this book. I already find myself reading produce labels and trying to buy more locally grown fruits and vegetables.

    This book reminded me how far I (and we as a nation) have come from being in tune with nature and the seasons. I grew up on a farm similar to the one the Kingsolver-Hopp family has. It was not commercial, but we raised and preserved a great deal of our own vegetables and meat. As a child, I was far more connected to the land and its cycles than I am now. It would be nice to get some of that back, but I feel ill equipped for the magnitude of project that the book's family undertook.

    Kingsolver makes an interesting and eloquent argument for meat consumption as well, which is interesting in this age of vehement vegetarianism. Her discussion of heritage species of plants and animals is compelling. And her take on some of our holidays is touching and thought-provoking. Her comment on Thanksgiving:

    "Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly. Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seeds: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time...In my household credo, Thanksgiving is Creation's birthday party. Praise harvest, a pause and sign on the breath of immortality."

    I enjoyed Camille Kingsolver's sidebars throughout the book, giving a teen's perspective on the family's project and providing a lot of recipes. Steven Hopp's sidebars are more informative but less entertaining.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very informative. however, a bit of a chore to get through
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    So educational and informative! A good mix of facts and storytelling fun. Parts read like a newspaper or textbook, but then it’s broken up by stories and anecdotes and recipes. A perfect mixture of learning and laughing. It was an amazing journey they took and it really makes you reassess your own relationship with food and groceries.