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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
- A Year of Food Life
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
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Great book; didn't love the reading
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By: Michael Pollan
Publisher's summary
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.
Critic reviews
"Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist." (Publishers Weekly)
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What listeners say about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- pterion
- 11-15-07
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'.
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39 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Sydney
- 11-12-07
Eye opening
I really enjoyed listening to this book. I'm actually glad that I listened to it instead of reading it--I think listening forced me to slow down and really absorb everything the book says (I tend to read pretty fast). The juxtaposition of the different voices of the authors (Barbara K., Stephen H. and Camille K.) worked very nicely. Some of the points do get repeated a bit throughout the book, which did get a little annoying. However, that did not interfere with my enjoyment.
The book struck such a chord with me. When I was a child, there wasn't so much transportation of produce and I do remember how excited my mother would get when certain things came "in season." This book really brought all that back. I wish I had read this book in August or July, instead of November! I also appreciated the insight into the corporate food industry. The book makes me want to investigate further.
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31 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Niki
- 06-01-07
Bringing Pause to What We Eat
Since reading this book I can't reach for a pepper at the grocery store without wondering where it came from, how many miles it traveled, or how it was grown. In fact, I only buy my produce from my local farmer's market and am learning to eat seasonally. How and what I eat hasn't been the same since finishing this book - Barbara Kingsolver invites an intellectual conversation back into the American diet, after decades of forfeiting our knowledge about what's in our food over to the food processing plants and agricultural system. In our hustling bustling lives of today we must learn to take pause and give more thought to what gets us through day by day - our food. This book is a great way to stimulate how you think about what you eat and your relationship with food. Kingsolver's self narration of her book is charming and one of the best I've heard. If you enjoyed Michael Pollen's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" you'll love this book even more.
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30 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Betty Lou Fockler
- 09-09-07
Really Good Book
Totally enjoyable and informative! Wasn't sure I wanted to read another book about food and organics, but I'm very glad my friends encouraged that I do so. I didn't particularly enjoy the author's personal narration. As a gardener, food preserver and one who cares greatly about nutrition and good eating, it was very good. As one who owns and loves animals, the chicken and turkey tales were great. Don't miss this book if you care about food sources and learning how easy it is to prepare good food - and how this family did it.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- CARL V PHILLIPS
- 06-25-07
good book, especially good audio
This is a good book in any form (I have a paper copy too), though it is not a scientific reference manual. Those interested in the details should really read more widely because Kingsolver gets some stuff wrong (including part of her core theses). But the broad sweeps are excellent and she does a good job of painting a picture, and teaching lessons, in terms you will not soon forget. But what really sets it apart as an aural experience is the narration by the authors, which is personable and perfectly recorded and paced. As another reviewer suggested, you really feel connected to them through their narration, bringing another level to the experience of this captivating story and analysis. Without hearing her wax about it, I would never be inclined to plant asparagus! This is particularly good road-trip listening, as you drive through the in-between spaces where most of our food is produced (and also because the radio-style pace is better for driving than some audiobooks which are distracting or sleep-inducing). Even if you have read the paper version, get this and listen to it again in a year, and you will enjoy it again.
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17 people found this helpful
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Overall
- THoward
- 03-03-09
Good, but keep the perspective
I gave this audio book 5 stars for the reading, the content and humor along the way. At times, some of the content was too preacher-like and demeaning to the intelligence of common folk. I have overlooked these areas because the overall approach of becoming aware is the most critical part of the book. It certainly takes a cold-turkey jump into buying locally to really appreciate all we (technologically advanced countries) have taken for granted.
While not everyone needs to follow her footsteps, it was the learning curve needed to be able to share this topic with others.
So, if you like to be respectful to the Earth, but you won't scream at the woman wearing a silk blouse, or berate the cowboy for wearing leather boots, then this book should be enjoyable. As with all audiobooks, which is very different than a physical paper book, the reading is the key. The book was read by the author, her husband and daughter, and the tone was pleasing. I could not have finished this book if the author were to have read with a hell, fire and damnation tone.
For this reason alone, I give 5 stars!
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13 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Tiffany
- 04-22-12
Perfection.
This was my first audio book on audible. I LOVED it. I am very picky about my narrators, and the fact that it was the author herself made it that much better. I have the print version of the book but I just could not get into it like other Kingsolver books. So I downloaded the audio version and I can't stop listening! After I finished I just started it again! This book is so inspiring I would look for any recommendations of books just like it. Kingsolver's words are just so poetic that it makes you wish you were there with her canning tomatoes, working in the garden, hunting in the morel patch. I am kind of disappointed that my first audiobook was such a success, because now it is going to be hard to top it.
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12 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Jean
- 06-23-13
Transformative
I had just finished reading "Cooked" by Michael Pollan, so I downloaded this book which had been on my wish list for a while. I also recently listened to "Flight Bahavior" and really liked Barbara Kingsolver as the narrator. I was immediately pulled in to the narrative of their year of eating deliberately. I felt really inspired, and realized I was ready for this book.
Some people found its tone a bit preachy, but it appealed to me because it just made so much sense, as did "Cooked." I started buying nearly all my meat, dairy and produce from our Saturday morning farmers market, and whole wheat bread from a local bakery, as Pollan suggested. I just finally got that Big Agribusiness doesn't much care how healthy and environmentally responsible the products they produce are.
A supermarket tomato sold in February is inedible and buying it is just dumb. I'm trying not to bore my friends and family; my daughter gives me the eye-roll. I've started to really enjoy meal planning and cooking, and for those of you who are ready for this message, read this book!
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11 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jennifer Van Horn
- 08-18-17
Listening to this is like getting teeth pulled.
Would you try another book from Barbara Kingsolver and/or the narrators?
No thanks.
If you’ve listened to books by Barbara Kingsolver before, how does this one compare?
N/A
How could the performance have been better?
I'm on chapter 14 and I tried, I really tried to get thru this book. My sister really loves it, and I'm a nonfiction fan, but I can do without the flowering metaphors and the deadpan mom jokes, especially with the agonizingly slow pace that she reads at. Some authors shouldn't read their own books -countless times I've realized that I stopped listening an hour ago because it's way too easy to drown her out with literally any thought. The super random farm sound effects between the chapters are not needed either -they just waste time.
Was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle worth the listening time?
The story itself is really interesting, and I like when her kids read some of the parts, but I just don't think I can take another chapter. All in all I DO want to start focusing on buying and cooking vegetables according to season and reducing my carbon footprint by keeping up my garden. The story is there somewhere buried underneath the fluff, but it's the fluff that eventually did me in and made me give up. If the above performance sounds like something you can stomach, then yes, I'd say it's worth a listen.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Barna
- 07-11-08
Started out good; but then let me down
I really liked the way the book began; chronicling the year of local food and discussion of the food industry in this country. I started to lose it, however, when she went into making their own cheese and then the tours of some small farmers' operations. It started to get too preachy and seemed to prattle on without the realization that most readers would not be interested in making their own cheese (or sausage or whatever), and she just kept going on about it. Also had a touch of one of the "simple life" books which I have enjoyed in the past, it is true, but I don't expect here because she is a best selling author and presumably well off. I thought the "asides" by the daughter were absolutely not necessary and preachy as well and I have a hard time being preached to by a girl in her teens or early twenties.
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-
Story
Barbara Kingsolver has written these five short stories with the same wit and sensitivity that characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees. Spreading her characters over a variety of colorful landscapes, she tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance.
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Another great book by Kingsolver!
- By Rosemarie on 01-09-12
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The Lacuna
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
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Great Writers need Great Narrators
- By Gypsy Wife on 12-04-09
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Prodigal Summer
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches them from an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and her solitary life.
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Amazing!
- By Lily on 10-12-08
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Flight Behavior
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at 17. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media.
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A poignant literary work of art.
- By criswithcurls on 02-08-13
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High Tide in Tucson
- Essays from Now or Never
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Exploring the themes of family, community, and the natural world with the vision of a poet and the eyes of a scientist, Barbara Kingsolver writes about ideas as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom.
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Good book, but not unabridged...
- By Kathy Roberts Forde on 04-20-20
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Small Wonder
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us from one of history's darker moments an extended love song to the world we still have. From its opening parable gleaned from recent news about a lost child saved in an astonishing way, the book moves on to consider a world of surprising and hopeful prospects, ranging from an inventive conservation scheme in a remote jungle to the backyard flock of chickens tended by the author's small daughter.
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Not much of a Wonder
- By Max on 10-20-06
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Homeland and Other Stories
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Barbara Kingsolver has written these five short stories with the same wit and sensitivity that characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees. Spreading her characters over a variety of colorful landscapes, she tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance.
-
-
Another great book by Kingsolver!
- By Rosemarie on 01-09-12
-
The Lacuna
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
-
-
Great Writers need Great Narrators
- By Gypsy Wife on 12-04-09
-
Prodigal Summer
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches them from an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and her solitary life.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Lily on 10-12-08
-
Flight Behavior
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at 17. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media.
-
-
A poignant literary work of art.
- By criswithcurls on 02-08-13
-
High Tide in Tucson
- Essays from Now or Never
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Exploring the themes of family, community, and the natural world with the vision of a poet and the eyes of a scientist, Barbara Kingsolver writes about ideas as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom.
-
-
Good book, but not unabridged...
- By Kathy Roberts Forde on 04-20-20
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How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)
- Poetry
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with "how to" poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us.
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A Joy to Read
- By Lee Moderow on 05-20-21
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The Bean Trees
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.
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Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
- By Nancy on 02-22-12
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Animal Dreams
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman's struggle to find her place in the world. At the end of her rope, Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home to face her ailing father, with whom she has a difficult, distant relationship. There she meets handsome Apache trainman Loyd Peregrina, who tells her, "If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."
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She reads my heart
- By Sue Spahr Hodges on 08-03-18
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The Poisonwood Bible
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Dean Robertson
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
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Listen to the sample first!
- By Cheryl D on 07-30-08
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Unsheltered
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Brilliantly executed and compulsively listenable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred - whether family or friends - and in the strength of the human spirit.
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Spring for a professional narrator, please!
- By Gail D. on 11-05-18
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Holding the Line
- Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.
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Frodig sommer
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Pernille Geertsen
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Historien udspiller sig i en afsidesliggende dal i Appalacherne i løbet af én lang og varm sommer og beskriver tre kvinder, som på en eller anden måde ikke er faldet til i samfundet. Oppe på bjergskråningen lever Deanne Wolf et eneboerliv som vildtbiolog. I dalen nedenunder bor Lusa Landowski, født og opvokset i en storby og af samme grund aldrig accepteret i det lille samfund. I dalen bor også Nannie Rawley, der er hæmningsløs i sin kampagne for et renere miljø.
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The Dirty Life
- On Farming, Food, and Love
- By: Kristin Kimball
- Narrated by: Kristin Kimball
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story