One of my very favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, has a new one out.

[Lex]

Kingsolver writes beautifully so I'm looking forward to this one! I'm loving the topic too. Has anyone here read it yet?

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Reviewed by Nina Planck

Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don't raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. Along the way, the Kingsolver family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious carnivory. This field—local food and sustainable agriculture—is crowded with books in increasingly predictable flavors: the earnest manual, diary of an epicure, the environmental battle cry, the accidental gardener. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is all of these, and much smarter. Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level; a well-paced narrative and the apparent ease of the beautiful prose makes the pages fly. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is a moralist ("the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners"), but more often wry than pious. Another hazard of the genre is snobbery. You won't find it here. Seldom do paeans to heirloom tomatoes (which I grew up selling at farmers' markets) include equal respect for outstanding modern hybrids like Early Girl. Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist. She makes short, neat work of complex topics: what's risky about the vegan diet, why animals belong on ecologically sound farms, why bitterness in lettuce is good. Kingsolver's clue to help greenhorns remember what's in season is the best I've seen. You trace the harvest by botanical development, from buds to fruits to roots. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national "eating disorder" and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn. The narrative is peppered with useful sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology (by husband Steven Hopp) and recipes (by daughter Camille), as if to show that local food—in the growing, buying, cooking, eating and the telling—demands teamwork.

[MuseRider]

1. Outstanding news!

I have been waiting impatiently for another one from her.

[countingbluecars]

2. She's one of my favorite authors as well.

I am definitely putting this on my summer reading list.

[kestrel91316]

3. Uh oh. ANOTHER book to go on my want list!

[Mist]

4. Sounds excellent--thanks for posting this. nt

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. Thanks for posting this

I read everything I can get my hands on by her . I love her work, she is among my favorite authors

[JitterbugPerfume]

6. She was on Book TV yesterday

and she was great!

I did not know that she recieved death threats after she wrote "Small Wonders" !

Seems some far right wing loonies took exception to her essays about 9/11.

[Lex]

7. Grrrr . . . I missed it. Maybe it's archived.

Book TV is CPSAN, right?

[JitterbugPerfume]

8. yes

sorry you missed it : (

[Lex]

9. I can't find the archive of the segment on C-SPAN.

Am I just too stupid? :cry:

[Wheezy]

10. Oooh!

Cool. Thanks for the heads-up! I love her writing!

[Lex]

11. Just to let you know

it's non-fiction, but damn--so good. I think it's her 1st non-fiction book. Still great writing as always with her.

[Wheezy]

12. Thanks Lex!

I know she has a collection of stories about Tucson, where she lives half the year (I'm in Phoenix), but I haven't read it yet. Not sure if they are fiction or non-fiction.

I'm sure it's terrific, whatever it is!

[hippywife]

13. Digging up this old thread because

I finally got a copy of this book from the library. I'm only on page 29 but I love it! She lays out a very good, concise conviction of the food industry via factory farming and the government from the very first. Loving it! Easily as well and enjoyably written as her fiction so far.

[Lex]

14. It keeps getting better. It completely changed my eating habits.

I've been much more of a "local-vore" now and pay close attention to the origins of the food I buy.

:hi:

[hippywife]

15. I haven't started yet

because I can see that it will take a little planning. But that's the goal. Grow it or buy it locally. Any good tips for a wanna be localvore? :hi:

[Lex]

16. I can't do the localvore thing completely.

In the spring/summer/fall I hit the local farmer's market hard and try to plan for the week. The requirement at ours is that the food can't be grown more than 75 miles away. They also have local egg, beef, pork, and cheese vendors there.

There is a grocery store in town that I frequent and I check the labels on the produce and try to buy what's closest.

I haven't tried canning yet, but I may do so.

I kept a garden in my back yard and had some tomatoes, peppers, cukes from it, but it can't sustain us. But it's a step anyway.

Some restaurants in town (a few) tout the fact that they buy as much as possible from local farmers, so we choose to go there when we go out to eat.


So I guess I've just become more aware of where my food is coming from, and eating local as much as possible.


And this was good news too (from my alma mater, University of North Carolina):

CHAPEL HILL -- A new commitment by UNC officials to purchase more local food for university dining halls could be a boon for local farmers and a boost for those who say local food is better for the environment.

"We have committed to putting together as much local as we possibly can," said Paul Basciano, Dining Services' executive chef, at a recent forum hosted by Fair, Local, Organic Food, a UNC student organization.

http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-911475.cfm?

[hippywife]

17. We pretty much already do that

for the most part. Gonna get a good garden this year if it kills me! LOL And start canning more than just fruit preserves. To do it completely, gonna have to develop seasonal menus and start cutting a few more things out of the weekly grocery trips. I'm really looking forward to this actually.

[Lex]

18. To read about Kingsolver & family's total immersion in local foods only

was great. She's truly an amazing writer (have you read Prodigal Summer?)and I've loved her books for years.

So much information is packed into this book of hers, and it was a family effort really. Have fun reading it. :thumbsup:

[hippywife]

19. I have read and loved

The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, and Animal Dreams. She is one of my very favorites, too.