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

Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

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)

Half wonderful, half horable

I loved learning about life on a farm and how to eat with the seasons.

However I feel as if I am being preached to about global warming and oil. I just wish that I could get rid of half the book, and I would give it five stars. I know it is better to eat in the seasons, I just don't agree with why you should do it. I bet I would like it better if I actually believe man was causing global warming. So if you believe that you will love this book.

Anyway thanks Barbra I was a enlightening read.

Self Righteously Terrible

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

Yikes. This book is about how sad and unhealthy the rest of the world is in comparison to her family. A long over the top celebration of their life style. Learned very very little about how to actually DO anything with the land.

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

Narration was a fail, over-the-top self narration.

What else would you have wanted to know about Barbara Kingsolver’s life?

Absolutely nothing. Already know too much.

Any additional comments?

This author clearly has a background in literature. Therefore she is very happy to finally write her very own book. Result? Every sentence is over written. I want my money back

Loved the Journey

What other book might you compare Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to and why?

Botany of Desire

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

I enjoyed the different prespecitives from the daughter and mother.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Loved the discoveries made along the way and how they grew into the changes and worked things into their life

Any additional comments?

As an avid organic gardner and now chicken raiser (eggs only thus far) I think so much about the soil growing the soil and how to work with the plants animals and my climate. I loved hearing all the sustanable learning that went on in this book. Yes I also make my own cheese, can, freeze and dry my foods and enjoyed learning anothers personal experiences in these areas and how proud they also are of their stores.

Comedy, Drama, Environment, - what a great book !!

I found my self wondering why this great book about animals / vegetables wasn't also to be found in the comedy genre. Barbara is funny, witty, and VERY intelligent. She would also make a great philosophy professor. I love the way she thinks. THANK YOU ! Barbara, Camille and Steven. This was one of the best books I've read.

Inspiring. Delightful. Informative.

this was a very smart book. Barbara Kingsolver's narrative is rich with descriptive vocabulary and makes me ache for a patch of earth to grow and the space to raise animals. Her approach is decidedly humble and not preachy but she and her coauthors are direct and clear about their values and reasons for them. I know that can be a very sensitive issue from both a consumer's and farmer's perspective. I will definitely listen again and have been evangelizing the book starting early into its pages (or minutes rather!) If you are new to or well versed in exploring topics related to eating local and breaking away from large corporate agriculture this book is wonderful. Their family story is heartwarming and exciting in the normalcy of their lives. I especially loved Lily and her chickens! Such an enterprising and thoughtful girl.

Conscious food life

I’ve listened to Barbara’s audio version a couple of times and read the print book over the years. Her’s and her family’s act of living a more conscious and mindful food life then sharing it with her audiences is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read. If you’ve wanted to know more about making conscious food choices, homesteading, and family values, this is a compelling story told by a great writer and her family. If you listen or read, you can’t help but come away being changed to see our society’s norms in a different and more critical light.

Influential Locovore Manifesto

I went out and planted a garden after listening to this book. Some of the ideas about factory food and the importance of organic methods don’t sound as revolutionary as they did in 2007. Still, the loving detail in the story makes it worth hearing.

Inspiring

I am inspired to do a few more things than we already do, and there were a few things that were a great wake-up call.

Changed my life

It can't be understated - listening to this book has changed the way I choose my food, grow my food, dispose of Food I don't eat, and encourage others to do the same.

Inspiring and entertaining and very well performed!

Is FOOD important to you?

Food may be the battleground of the 21st Century, as we endeavor to find ways to feed the planet's burgeoning population. Look at Zimbabwe today: an society that was once self-sufficient has completely lost its way. People whose grandparents lived happily off of the land have been bilked out of their birthright, and now are starving, while other suffering populations have been tricked into throwing half of their Super-Sized Happy Meals into the trash because it's too much food and they can't convert it into fat fast enough. Sense that his review might be a bit personal? OK, I'll stop. Kingsolver tells the same truth in a much more digestible way, relating her family's adventure with globally-conscious food choices with wry wisdom, humor, and honest evaluation of the right way to live and to eat in a shrinking world.