Barbara Kingsolver « Books Worth Reading

Monthly Reading: March 2009

April 1, 2009 at 10:15 am | In Monthly Reading, Reviews | 4 Comments
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Adrian, Fantasy, Historical fiction, John Brunner, John Gardner, Nancy Horan, Post-apocalypse

Cover of The Children's Hospital

The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian — post-apocalyptic

Grendel by John Gardner — fantasy

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan — historical fiction

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver — abandoned

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner — abandoned

My rating scale:

1 star: Abandoned before finishing. Don’t waste your time.
2 stars: Poor. Avoid with extreme prejudice.
3 stars: Average. Read it, have a good time and move on. Or not.
4 stars: Great. Push it on your friends and family.
5 stars: Excellent. Keep it, treasure it, reread it.

Disclaimer: My ratings are very personal and may have little to do with the book’s artistic or commercial merit, or its place in the literary canon. Rather, the rating reflects how the story, characters and writing spoke to me and augmented my understanding of the world.

Elsewhere on the web, here are some other reviews of a few of my favorites:

Book vs. Film: Watchmen (The A.V. Club)
The Remains of the Day (A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook)
Ender’s Game (A Striped Armchair)

Monthly Reading: December 2008

December 29, 2008 at 12:15 pm | In Monthly Reading, Reviews | 4 Comments
Tags: Amitav Ghosh, Barbara Kingsolver, Children's literature, Food and cooking, Historical fiction, Horror, India, Memoir, Richard Matheson, Roald Dahl, Short stories, Yann Martel

: Cover of Sea of Poppies: A Novel

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh — Indian historical fiction

The Witches by Roald Dahl — children’s literature

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel — short stories

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver — food memoir

7 Steps to Midnight by Richard Matheson — horror

My rating scale:

1 star: Abandoned before finishing. Don’t waste your time.
2 stars: Poor. Avoid with extreme prejudice.
3 stars: Average. Read it, have a good time and move on. Or not.
4 stars: Great. Push it on your friends and family.
5 stars: Excellent. Keep it, treasure it, reread it.

Here are the posts on my blog that were getting the most reads this month:

Finally, here’s a little link love for other bloggers reviewing favorites of mine:

The Time Traveler’s Wife (The Book Lady’s Blog)
The Road (A Novel Menagerie)
Anansi Boys (Things Mean a Lot)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Rhapsodyinbook’s Weblog)
Sea of Poppies (Book Club Classics)
The Catcher in the Rye (Zawan’s Blog)
Never Let Me Go (Tuesday in Silhouette)
The Blind Assassin (Things Mean a Lot)

Wow, y’all have been reading some good books!

The Sunday Salon: Reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

November 9, 2008 at 4:18 pm | In Books, Sunday Salon | 12 Comments
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Stewart O'Nan

Book cover via Amazon

I’m on my own this Sunday afternoon, and taking advantage to get stuff done. First, I had to rearrange my “to read” shelf, which had gotten entirely out of control. Sometimes I am a little overly ambitious when I stock my “to read” shelf, thinking I will finally get around to that huge classic (such as War and Peace) that I’ve been meaning to read forever. But when the books spill over onto the floor and I still can’t find anything I want to read, I know it’s time to rearrange.

This time I was just brutally honest with myself. I cleared away the classics and books I borrowed from my husband’s shelves that had gotten good reviews, leaving only the books I really wanted to read. I might start adding the other books back in once the “to read” shelf is reduced to manageable proportions. But who am I kidding? I have over 30 points at BookMooch right now, just waiting to be spent.

My nighttime reading right now is A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan. I started it last night, and so far, it’s engrossing. It’s set just after the Civil War in a small Wisconsin town, and already there is a dead body, a strange cult living in the woods and a mysterious disease. The main character is the town constable, undertaker and preacher. The book is written in the second person (you), which is a little strange, but it seems to fit.

Today I am focusing on getting through some more of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This book was slow going at first, because I felt like I had read all of the admonitions about our horrible food industry before (which I had, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma). But now I am knee-deep in Kingsolver’s summer garden with her, and it’s become a lot more interesting and a lot less heavy-handed. I’ve already found several recipes I want to try, such as melon salsa and home-made mozzarella. She is inspiring me to start thinking about next year’s garden, which I hope to be able to pay more attention to than I did this year, with my newborn son taking all my energy.

Which brings us to the subject of food. What am I cooking today? It is gray outside and a little gloomy, so I want to make someting warming: Chicken, Mac & Cheese from Sara Foster’s cookbook Fresh Every Day. Plus, if I have the time and energy, I want to try my hand at making bread. I am a bread-baking novice, so I want to start with something easy: Mark Bittman’s 60-Minute Bread.

That’s my Sunday. How’s yours?

Knowing What’s in Season: The Vegitannual

Booking Through Thursday: What are you reading?

July 4, 2008 at 5:47 am | In Books | Leave a Comment
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Booking Through Thursday, Joshua Ferris

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme about books and reading. I thought I would use it to inspire posts when I don’t have any ideas what to write about. Of course, I could write a review, but I’m just lazy right now. I actually have a whole pile of books I’ve finished that are waiting to be reviewed — I’ll get around to them one of these days.

Here’s this week’s question:

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

Last night, I started Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, which I recently mentioned was a book on my wishlist that I was looking forward to reading. In the middle of Chapter 2 and I’ve already laughed out loud a few times — a good sign. This may be the first (and only) book I’ve ever read that is written in the first-person plural tense.

I’m also reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This was another book I was greatly looking forward to reading, but I can’t make much progress. I started it a few months ago, when I was still pregnant, but I had to put it down because it was depressing me so much. I picked it up again recently, read one page and remembered why it was so depressing. The statistics she provides on our whole food system and how precarious it is are frightening. Maybe I don’t need to read this. My eyes were already wide opened by The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Here’s what else I’m reading: Squishy Turtle and Friends. That’s Not My Puppy. That’s Not My Monster. Duck in a Truck. The Foot Book. Going on a Bear Hunt. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Yeah, I have a four-month-old.

My Year Spent Trying to Come Up with a Book Idea to Make Me Some Money

November 19, 2007 at 8:23 am | In Books, Publishing | 1 Comment
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Judith Levine, Nonfiction

I have to rant about something now. I’m really sick of all of these “I spent a year of my life doing something crazy or out of the mainstream or stupid and now here’s my book about it.” This seems like the latest trend in publishing to give pseudo-writers something to sell and foist more dumb books on an unsuspecting readership.

I will admit to having read a couple of these. I read Julie and Julia, in which the author spent a year of cooking recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering French Cooking, and found it entertaining but frivolous. I also read Judith Levine’s Not Buying It, in which she spends a year not buying anything that isn’t “necessary” and found it a waste of money. I would like to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, but then, she is a “real” writer.

Here is a small sampling of other “year” books from Amazon:

The Year of Living Biblically
A Year Without “Made in China”
A Dog Year
The Year of Eating Dangerously
and so on

I think Nickel and Dimed started it all, which I haven’t read but was probably an important book. But come on, haven’t we had enough? This morning, I read in the paper about someone posting fake ads on Craigslist in order to get material for a book about a year spent posting fake ads on Craigslist. Is that really what we want to spend our time reading about?

Once again, I feel like the publishing industry thinks we’re stupid and will buy just about any trendy crap they shovel out. But I don’t think these books are really aimed at discriminating readers. Rather, they’re marketed toward those people who only read one book a year or only buy one book a year, or some such depressing statistic.

Meanwhile, it gets even harder to find the good writing buried under all the schlock. And I imagine it gets harder for the good writers to get something truly innovative published. As an aspiring writer, I take one look at the whole world of publishing — which I once was a part of and grew rapidly disillusioned with — and wonder why I should even bother.

We have to figure out a way out from under the gigantic publishers and the chain bookstores, and get back to writing, publishing and reading meaningful books. Why does everything in our culture have to be about making as much money as quickly as possible?