Chronically Distracted

I've been gone, I know. I also started school yesterday, so my feat of finishing my list of books before school started is kinda *poof* right now. However, I plan on keepin' on, because I do want to finish reading all of those books, and hopefully writing semi-interesting posts about them.

Guess what book I did finish! Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun.
A very good book that I hope to write about soon. I checked it out from the library but hope to buy it because I think that it's a book that helps to keep in mind what racism is and the ramifications of it.

Anyhoo, gotta get to work on my school work (woo! Masters!), but I have a little question. There is a place on my online profile for school to put a homepage. Would this little blog of silly information be something safe to be advertise to fellow students and/or teachers? Or is it better to just keep the whole thing quiet? I'm gonna have to ponder it, but wouldn't mind some input.

Hope everyone's having an enjoyable summer! (And good luck to goraina fighting off the katydids!)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

I started reading this book Fall 2008 in my Global Food Web class which started me on my whole “I eat grass fed and/or organic meat, try to avoid high fructose corn syrup, try not to eat meat in restaurants *coughnevermindtheantelopeburgercough*” thing.
Since it’s a class, of course, we only read parts, but given the ease with which I read it, sooner or later I knew I’d finish the whole book.

I’ve planned to finish books from classes before, but this is the first time I’ve actually followed through.

The book follows Kingsolver and her family as they move from Arizona to Virginia and begin an experiment where they only eat local food (with the exceptions of coffee, chocolate, and I believe cranberries for Thanksgiving). They do this by utilizing their new space to grow a great variety food, the knowledge (acquired from various places) to make cheese, can tomato sauce, freeze various kinds of food, harvest turkeys and chickens, make up new recipes, and work the farmers’ markets. The family even gave up bananas, which I cannot ever seem my family doing, given the addiction to smoothies.

Along with all these great, informal, relatable details about what it’s like to live with such a close connection to the food, Kingsolver’s daughter includes many great recipes (there’s a zucchini chocolate chip cookie recipe is amazingly delicious, a classmate of mine made them for our last day potluck and they tasted so, so good) that the family made throughout their year, and Kingsolver’s husband includes great deal of information of the more statistical kind, like what is happening to our food sources, vegetable, fruit, and meat, and to our earth.
Kingsolver has a lot of information crammed in between personal stories about the hows and whys of what they are doing and their decision to do so.
It’s a great non-threatening (well, depending on who you are, her convictions might be a bit strong for some) introduction to the various environmental reasons for taking a hard look at what is going on with the food that is supposed to nourish our bodies and souls.

I just wish this kind of food was available to all people, no matter the income. What a wonder it would be to have the choice to eat like this accessible to all, so that eating healthy was not determined by class but by choice.

And! (on a hopefully more positive note)
If you’re interesting in checking out the recipes in the book, here’s the website full of recipes:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Next book up: Racism! More specifically Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun
A hundred pages into it (halfway through the book) and it’s been a real good read. Maybe I'll read something less intense after that.

Finished the book, but I haven't finished my thoughts-written-out, so that should be coming up soon.
Good book too, makes me want to grow a garden.



Which I did!! There shall be pictures up soon. It's so purdy. Family planted it together, my dad built it (I helped), and together he and I picked out veggies and planned.
I am a lucky girlie.

I've probably shared this link before, but with my slowly increasing, if somewhat whiny, efforts to be healthy, looking at many of these pictures make my arteries hurt. Obviously I have to encourage others to check it out (which I found through mr. boyfriend thanks to kokopellinelli ): http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/page/1

Mini-update over!

ETA: To be honest, there are probably some things on that website I would eat if it were allowed. But it's not, thank goodness.

My List. In no particular order. Except for the first one, which I am currently reading.

- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and CAmille Kingsolver
- Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun with responses from William Ayers, Lisa D. Delpit, David Mura, and Patricia Williams
- From Mouse to Mermaid ed. by Bell Hass and Sells
- ¡Caramba! by Nina Marie Martinez, transl. to Spanish by Liliana Valenzuela
- A New Dawn ed. by Ellen Hopkins (yes this is a book about Twilight. It's a fun analysis of the whole thing).
- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
- The Sophia Teaching by Robert Powell
- The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro
- Haiku Mind, 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart by Patricia Donegan
- Righteous Porkchop, Finding A Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Hahn Niman

It's quite a list, which I didn't really think about when I made it. Will I read it all? I have noo idea.

A couple of the books (the Kingsolver and Mouse to Mermaid ones) are leftovers from classes I took where we didn't read the whole book but I'm brain-thirsty for more.

And a few I'm already halfway through, like ¡Caramba! and A New Dawn. The book I have already read this summer already is Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. A crazy, funny book filled with personal tragedies (that's they way I would put it) turned into an amazing book that I will probably own one day. If I ever get famous and write a book about myself I hope the sad stuff comes out with such great funny lines. Every time it took a turn for the quite sad it ended up in the reflection of the insanity of life through humor. I loved it, mainly because it took things that would probably normally make me feel a little squirmy learning about, because of how personal the book reads, and keeping me reading because of the writing, the humor, and the power within the words.

Good book.

This should be a fun little experiment!

Ooh, back from vacation!

Seattle was awesome. Like amazing library, amazing food, amazing view, amazing museum with SCIENCE FICTION and MUSIC.

Have you been to the Seattle Space Needle?! :D

I promise I will post pictures and stories soon, like how I tiredly walked through Pike's Market marveling at everything and didn't quite wake up all the way until I saw a store in the mall I had been wanting to go to but couldn't find one in my area.
I really wish it hadn't been the mall that woke me up. Maybe it was the smell in the store. Or the sugar from the pastries kicked in.

Plus!:

There is a plan for the future of my lil' ol livejournal.

I hope to emulate the posts of my favorite bloggers (such a pretty word, emulating), but during this time I also am going to start a bit of a book journal. There are several books I want to read this summer, and usually I don't do that because reading during the semester has about worn me out, but I need to catch up with my reading list.

Here's the new plan: Post the list of books I want to read. Write my reactions once I finish them, very short ones because I never feel qualified to write any kind of review. Move on to the next one.
I probably won't go through the whole list, but it'll be a nice try.
Along the way I'll hopefully be sending out some love to my favorite bloggers.

Tomorrow or the next day, maybe: Book List!