Vacation Reads and More: Part 1
I have fallen way behind on posting some of my recent reads. To further add to the backlog, I just came back from a beach vacation where I basically sat under an umbrella and read for a week. Due to time constraints as well as lack of motivation to write thorough reviews on all of my recent books, I have decided to go with a new format based on my other favorite blog - Midtown Lunch. This blog is geared toward the food-obsessed like myself who doesn’t want to eat a deli sandwich every day for lunch. The blogger posts on all the cheap restaurants, food carts, etc in the NYC midtown area. He summarizes his lunch experience, post some photos, and then does a +/- section.
I have decided to follow this format by posting a brief summary of each book and then a +/-. The goal will not be to provide a true review of each book but rather to either garner interest or disinterest in any of these books from our readers.
Here goes (in order of read the longest ago to most recently read):
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
This book was previously reviewed here by RaeRae but as a refresher, Kingsolver and her family move from Tucson to a family farm in Appalachia and decide that for 1 year they are only going to eat food that is grown locally and seasonally in the Virginia area. She has 2 daughters, a teenager and a pre-teen, so it is all the more impressive that she managed to do this considering how challenging it often is to cook for children. Kingsolver’s basic premise is that if we really want to stop harming the environment, then eating locally is the way to go. Her descriptions of how much fuel and resources are used to transport food are mind-boggeling.
She acknowledges that this experiment is “easier” for her since they live on a farm and are able to grow the majority of their produce and raise turkeys and chickens. However, she gives a lot of guidance throughout the book on how to make small changes in your food buying and eating habits.
It is amazing how much the availability of food has changed even in my lifetime. When I was growing up, you couldn’t buy a perfectly ripe peach in the middle of January - it just wasn’t available. And that is exactly Kingsolver’s point - you should eat what is seasonably available. The amount of damage to the environment as well as the economics of transporting that tree-ripened peach in the middle of January is nonsensical.
Kingsolver keeps the book entertaining by including recipes, funny stories as well as lots of historical facts.
THE +
- Powerful statement about our eating habits vis-a-vis the environment
- Motivated me to shop at my farmer’s market on the weekends
- Good recipes
- This book has become a topic of conversation amongst my friends
THE -
- I was paralyzed the other day in the grocery store when I wanted to buy apples for my kids and they were all from Chile. I succumbed and bought them anyway
- In the 21st century, you shouldn’t have to deprive yourself of eating bananas because they don’t grow in the northeast
- I’ve been feeling way too guilty eating a lot of my meals
Next up:
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
This was one of those books that got a lot of hype in 2006 and definitely did not live up to all the hullabaloo. The book describes the lives of three privileged 30 yr old New Yorkers right before and after 9/11. There is the beautiful daughter of a famed journalist who has never done anything with her life, the more homely, intellectual documentary film maker, and the resident gay male to round out the three-some. Interwoven with these three characters is the famed journalist and his subservient wife, his nerdy, brilliant nephew from Middle America, and lastly the daughter’s sarcastic, condescending fiance. Sound pretentious and contrived? Well it is. I did not find any of the characters in the least bit likable and my main problem with the book was that the writing was pretentious, over-wrought, full of run-on sentences and much too wordy. And in what I found to be a lame and almost offensive ending, Messud used the tragedy of 9/11 to neatly wrap things up for the characters and their ongoing issues.
THE +
- Any book set in NYC is somewhat interesting, because I know the streets and restaurants they are referring to
- The characters are so pathetic that it makes you feel that much better about your life
THE -
- Way too long, no real plot, like reading a bad reality show
- Completely uninterested in the characters
- Use of 9/11 to “wrap things up” really stank
Obviously a thumbs down for me.
And on that happy note - I will sign off and continue the vacation reads in parts 2 and 3.
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:59 am
On Kingsolver: Ragdoll coined a great word for when you know what you’re supposed to do - not buy Chilean apples - but do anyway - you were a “hippy-crite”
On Messud: I’ve avoided this book like the plague from day one. The whole children of privilege finding their way in New York City - *yawn*. Glad to hear that my suspicions were upheld.
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:39 am
You might not be a hippy-crite in that case. Due to the vagaries of geography and microclimate the Chilean apple orchard might not have to be fertilized and sprayed for pests. With economy of scale, the transportation costs and fossil fuel consumed per apple might be minimal. Whereas your locality might not be right for apple-growing, so the local apple farmers have to bombard the soil with fertilizers and spray for worms day and night to wrest an apple tree out of the ground. In that case, you’ve more than negated the advantage you gained by buying local.
(I’m of course drawing a broad hypothetical here.)
I found this review extremely thought-provoking:
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2564
I’d be interested to hear what y’all think of it.
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
Dr. J encouraged me to read the Texas Observer review and I found it spot on. While Kingsolver and others of the Eat Local movement simply meaure a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Observer’s author, James E. McWilliams, shares a study out of New Zealand, which “expanded the equation to include dozens of other energy consuming factors, including water usage, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transporation, etc.” In some instances the researchers found it could be more energy efficient for consumers to buy items imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a local producer. Fascinating!
The author goes on to make many suggestions about where our emphais should be based on a focus on comparative life cycles rather than simple geography.
I, for one, am happy to have another approach to eat local. As a resident of north Texas, my options are much more limited than Kingsolver’s rural Virgina. Even McWilliams located in Central Texas has more access to interesting and local food than I do. The Hill Country has proven to be fertile ground for all sorts of farm-to-market food producers. However, I’m beginning to wonder about the costs of those Hill Country efforts, based on the study referenced above. Again, fascinating stuff.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
The Tex Observer article is an interesting read. I’m concerned about some of the economies of scale that seem to require factory farming, which can be devastating to local environments. Ask anyone who lives near a North Carolina hog farm. The appeal for eating locally is that it is easy to understand. Life cycles can get complicated quickly. With complexity can come obfuscation. But I like bananas, too. And I like bringing my hemp bag to the local farmer’s market each week (now just around the corner from Dr J’s old digs). If nothing else, buying fruits and vegetables has become part of our weekly routine. That can’t be all bad. My head hurts.
If nothing else, the books have people talking.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Not economies of scale, Tim - it’s about ecology of scale. (Wha? My head hurts, too.)
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Yes, I don’t think we disagree on any of this, and I’m not sure that McWilliams accounts enough for the environmental degradation of factory farms and CAFOs in this piece. But it’s at least thought-provoking, and his take-away point is spot-on (according to me).
That said, there is definitely something spiritually nourishing about knowing where your food comes from.
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I agree with all of you and had actually seen an article in the NYTimes about the New Zealand study shortly after I read the Kingsolver book. Our cracker jack government needs to come up with some type of labelling system that indicates the carbon footprint of the food. Only then will the average consumer be able to make heads or tails of what they should and shouldn’t buy. My local fish store, Wild Edibles, just announced that they are using signs and symbols to indicate the sustainability of the fish you are buying. Check out the article in yesterday’s paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/dining/22stuf.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.
It’s definitely a start.