I read this in March when it first came out. It's a big, beautiful epic of a book that spans 50 years in the lives of twins born in an Ethiopian hospital mission to a nun, who dies in childbirth. Everyone I have handed this book off to has loved it. The blurb on the back cover says it all “This book has everything: nuns, conjoined twins, civil war, and medicine.” (Conjoined twins that are separated at birth...so nothing at all like "The Girls").
Citizen Vince by Jess Walter (Every Knee Shall Bow)
I attended a "good summer reads" event earlier this summer and Nancy Pearl raved about this book. (An older book so maybe the group has already read) It's about a life time criminal who is put in the witness protection program and moved from NY to Spokane into a new life as a donut maker. The book begins as 'Vince' becomes aware of the 1980 election between Carter & Regan. Described as a comic, political, crime novel and was an Edgar winner. I told Nancy I was pitching this to my book club and was there anything else I needed to know? Her response:
Nancy Pearl
Just that it's one of the few mystery/thriller that really make for a good discussion - like why it's called Citizen Vince, how it ended, whether Vince is admirable or not - all that kind of thing. Also, there's an interview I did with him a few years ago - if you google seattle channel jess walter you could watch it. As I recall, he made some very interesting points. Let me know if they select it. Also - maybe he's one of the authors who will talk to book clubs? I don't know if that's the case or not. but wouldn't it be fun? He's great.
Two other books I would like to throw out for consideration:
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Amy & Isabelle)- linked short stories revolving around a retired Maine school teacher (Olive). Described as a novel set in stories. (won this year's Pulitzer)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett - set before the Civil Rights movement, it's the stories of the black ladies' maids that every white family had working for them in the south. Two friends have read and raved about it.
Two other books I would like to throw out for consideration:
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Amy & Isabelle)- linked short stories revolving around a retired Maine school teacher (Olive). Described as a novel set in stories. (won this year's Pulitzer)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett - set before the Civil Rights movement, it's the stories of the black ladies' maids that every white family had working for them in the south. Two friends have read and raved about it.
Audrey's Suggestion
ReplyDelete"The Omnivore's Dilemma" is the book all WSU freshmen are reading this year. It ties in nicely with our Kingsolver book and the one about peaches - bad with titles this morning. Here's an excerpt one of the reviews from Amazon.com:
From The Washington Post
Most of us are at a great distance from our food. I don't mean that we live "twelve miles from a lemon," as English wit Sydney Smith said about a home in Yorkshire. I mean that our food bears little resemblance to its natural substance. Hamburger never mooed; spaghetti grows on the pasta tree; baby carrots come from a pink and blue nursery. Still, we worry about our meals -- from calories to carbs, from heart-healthy to brain food. And we prefer our food to be "natural," as long as natural doesn't involve real.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: The first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. And each section culminates in a meal -- a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and a salad from Whole Foods; and grilled chicken, corn and a chocolate soufflé (made with fresh eggs) from a sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms and pork, foraged from the wild.
The first section is a wake-up call for anyone who has ever been hungry. In the United States, Pollan makes clear, we're mostly fed by two things: corn and oil. We may not sit down to bowls of yummy petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to get to our tables. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country, and the packaging in which they're wrapped. We're addicted to oil, and we really like to eat.
We've lost touch with the natural loops of farming, in which livestock and crops are connected in mutually beneficial circles. Pollan discusses the alternatives to industrial farming, but these two long (and occasionally self-indulgent) sections lack the focus and intensity -- the anger beneath the surface -- of the first. He spends a week at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, a farm that works with nature, rather than despite it. Salatin calls himself a grass farmer, though his farm produces cows, chickens, eggs and corn. But everything begins with the grass: The cows nibble at it at the precise moment when it's at its sweetest and are moved from pasture to pasture to keep the grass at its best height. Their droppings fertilize the grass, and the cycle is under way. There's a kind of lyrical symmetry to everything that happens on this farm. Even the final slaughtering of chickens is done quickly and humanely, in the open air. It isn't pleasant, but compared to the way cattle are fattened and slaughtered in meat industry feedlots and slaughterhouses, it is remarkably reasonable.
We needn't learn how to shoot our own pigs, as Pollan does; there's hope in other ways -- farmers' markets, the Slow Food movement, restaurants supplied by local farms. To Pollan, the omnivore's dilemma is twofold: what we choose to eat ("What should we have for dinner?" he asks in the opening sentence of his book) and how we let that food be produced. His book is an eater's manifesto, and he touches on a vast array of subjects, from food fads and taboos to our avoidance of not only our food's animality, but also our own. Along the way, he is alert to his own emotions and thoughts, to see how they affect what he does and what he eats, to learn more and to explain what he knows. His approach is steeped in honesty and self-awareness. His cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling.
Be careful of your dinner!
Reviewed by Bunny Crumpacker
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Here's a short video about the new book by Jess Walter "The Financial Lives of the Poets" available Sept 22 (link to Youtube video)
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/l992xz