Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

A Year of Food Life

By: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment. They find themselves eager to move away from the typical food scenario of American families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory-farmed foods transported long distances using nonrenewable fuels. In their search for another way to eat and live, they begin to recover what Kingsolver considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production. Americans spend less of their income on food than has any culture in the history of the world, but they pay dearly in other ways: losing the flavors, diversity, and creative food cultures of earlier times. The environmental costs are also high, and the nutritional sacrifice is undeniable: on our modern industrial food supply, Americans are now raising the first generation of children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Part memoir and 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.

©2007 Barbara Kingsolver (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist." (Publishers Weekly)

Good, but too long

There's an old church joke that's been told for years that goes something like this: A man dies and goes to heaven and is receiving a welcoming tour on his first day. He's shown a variety of rooms, each of which belongs to a particular denomination and in which those particular people are doing whatever is common to their little sect of Christianity. The denomination at the butt of the joke changes with who's telling it, but the last room is always occupied by that denomination and the angel says "Shhh, that's the So-and-so's. They think they're the only ones here." And the angel and the man tip-toe by.

Kingsolver writes a good book of course, but she's like the denomination that thinks they're the only ones present on the issue. Left wing types have bought into their own hype that they're the only ones trying to save the planet and the right wing types are all at Walmart buying Roundup.

A little less smugness and a more generous spirit would help her influence a greater number of people. Joel Salatin is on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum and he's arguably one of the most influential people on the scene today for making a real difference. Kingsolver is a great writer but maybe she should hire Salatin to edit her next book if she decides to produce a sequel.

Best of the Year

I've read, or listened to, quite a few books this past year. I would rank this one at the top of the list. I enjoyed listening to Barbara's voice and laughed out loud at many places throughout the book. Camille's recipes made me hungry and wishing I knew how to make my own mozzarella. The book does come with a more serious side than simply teaching us how to "grow our own food". There is a downside to this particular Audible selection. I don't have access now to the many facts given to me by her husband Steven. I think this is an oversight on Audible's part and hope to find the supporting footnotes on her website.

Thoughtful, but lapses into a bit of sanctimony

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes and no. It was my first experience with the "back to the earth" genre, and I loved the discussions about our disconnect with the real world. However, it kind of wore me down with breathless descriptions of bucolic living.I also felt the different voices in this narrative were superfluous, like they were just "tacked on".

Would you be willing to try another book from Barbara Kingsolver? Why or why not?

Yes. I've not ready anything else of hers yet but I'd like to see how she does fiction.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Yes. I'm not sure this should've been performed by the author and her family members. They seem like sincere people who really believe in what they are doing but their performance removed me from the narrative.

Wonderful!

I've been a Barbara Kingsolver fan for decades so I was thrilled when I found this treasure. It's so inspiring to someone wanting to unplug from the global food system and be more self sustainable. Fantastic!

great story!

I love this story.
I found myself looking forward to discovering with this family. well told,
funny and informative😆

Loved it

A must read for everyone. We all have to make a change. Very informative and motivating.

Storybook

The family in the book is atypical and it's an interesting story but not relatable to most folks. As someone who works in industrial food systems I felt that the critiques were often very judgey. I loved her writing style though. She has a nice voice as well.

loved everything about this book

Was a great story that I learned a lot from. my family is going to try the 100 mile diet and see how it turns out...

Phenomenal primer on eating well

A very pleasant all-out-from-every-angle warm bath of why to eat well and how--complete with clever, realistic humor. One practically needs a doctorate in grocery shopping to fill their fridge with guilt-free food these days!!! This book helps beginners as well as seasoned vets find the middle way of a healthy diet boot camp. More than anything, the constant break-down of such a complicated subject as the modern diet leaves a very strong echo of conviction that is sure to make even the staunchest "unbeliever" of eating well think twice about every bite--in the most pleasant of ways. If you care about the future of food (a.k.a. are a human being) you owe it to yourself to listen to this pleasant meditation on the most ancient and most basic connection that we have to one another and the earth: Food.

Really interesting

If you could sum up Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in three words, what would they be?

Educational, Enlightning, funny

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

no

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Any additional comments?

It's a little over the top in some area. its good information to have. She definetely has an agenda. its inspiring as well.