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)

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.

Honest memoir that inspires

This is the third time I have read this book and first time on audiotape. It was lovely listening to it being narrated by the author herself. This is an honest memoir about a family who were finally fed-up enough with conventional food life, that they moved to a piece of fertile property and began a journey of "growing their own". Its funny, adorable, educational, and whole.

great Book

loved the book its nice to read about somebody who shares the same views on growing there on food as I do

What a great book!

Unique story! Definitely worth a listen. I love how it was written by several people from one talented family. It gives it an interesting perspective. Very inspiring for me personally.

Life changing book

I have been heading toward growing what I eat and shopping locally for a couple of decades. This book has given me a boost back in that direction. During Covid, I did garden more, and eat more from the garden but sadly also ate more processed "comfort" foods. Time to go back to eating real foods again.

Inspiring

Love her fiction, was willing to give this book a try. I love her message and have started going to the local farmers market and my own small backyard garden

Loved it!

So happy to have learned that Barbara Kingsolver did the reading herself. I can’t wait to start applying the principles I have learned from this book into my own life.

Couldn’t stop listening

I’ve always believed growing one’s own food is best for health and the soul. I’m just starting horticulture studies and am so inspired by this book that I couldn’t stop listening!

Inspiring & Educational

I loved listening to the actual narrators tell their story of living a “locavore” lifestyle! It would be so interesting to hear an update from the family on how they live now and what has changed on their little farm. Maybe just a couple chapters more? ☺️ Definitely a new favorite and a must-read!

mixed feelings

I think I agree with other reviews that this particular book might be best left to print rather than spoken word.

Likes:
I already knew I liked Barbara Kingsolver's books and her particular viewpoint resonates with me. Her knowledgeable and thoughtful observations were well-stated but not dry. She skillfully and lyrically describes the wonder of watching vegetables and animals grow and ponders the ethics and traditions of our food choices. And EATING! The descriptions of mouth-watering meals made me hungry!

Dislikes:
I personally didn't respond to the contributions of her husband and daughter in this audiobook. I thought their voices interrupted the narrative and imagine that in the printed text these are sidebars - extras that could be skipped over if you already "got it" that you should only buy fair-trade coffee and that meat from supermarkets is from mistreated animals. There is a preachiness here that even I found tedious as much as I might be in agreement with the POV.

I think this book could have stood a lot of editing and found it difficult to finish, even though I appreciated the insight into her family's 'experiment'.