I thought I would continue an earlier post, divided up into part 1 and part 2, on recent books surrounding food issues that seem to be so very prevalent in our society, as there are some new interesting sounding books I’ve seen around. There was also a request from one of these earlier posts to include a short description of each book, so I’ll do that from now on too. Here goes…
•Food Security for the Faint of Heart written by Robin Wheeler, published by New Society Publishers, 2008. Wheeler, a BC resident, permaculture activist, author, teacher and founder of the Sustainable Living Arts School, writes about the trip to the grocery store we all so often take for granted. What would we do if there was no grocery store? Where would we get our food? She tries to empower her readers into re-gaining control over their food and where it comes from with chapters such as “Preserving garden food” and “Saving freezer food during a power outage”.
• The Omnivores’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is written by Michael Pollan, published in 2007 by Penguin Press. Simply put, Pollan as a self-proclaimed omnivore, writes a narrative work in which he evaluates where his dinner could come from; specifically from fast-food/industrial, organic, or self-gathered. Pollan also wrote In Defense of Food which I mentioned in part 1, and Botany of Desire in 2002.
• The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Food Supply and What You Can Do About It by Thomas F. Pawlick. I like the look of the table of contents of this book because though it starts off with chapters titled “The End of Food”, “Collateral Damage” and “The X Files” and a little tale about a tomato that won’t ripen and bounces like a red tennis ball, which all sounds pretty grim (necessary to read, but grim just the same) he follows these with chapters of solutions, called “Think Locally, Fight Locally” and “Being Human”. I like it already. BONUS: there is an interesting interview of the author by Malcolm Jolley on Gremolata.
• Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini, with Forward by Alice Waters, published in 2007. Petrini has written a stack of other books on the slow food movement, is the founder and driving force of Slow Food and was recently acclaimed as a great innovator in Time Magazine’s list of European Heroes. Slow Food Nation teaches it’s readers about the ways in which they can re-gain control of what they’re eating. BONUS: see a little youtube clip of Petrini.
And if you want to ponder the world of food in a different way, you can check out Food by John Knechtel, Editor, and Director of Alphabet City Media in Toronto, Canada. This book puts together a variety of both visual artist and writers examinations of food: healthy food, unhealthy food, new food, old food, food with emotional ties, food as it’s told from different peoples points of view. What a novel concept; this will most certainly be my next purchase. Knechtel has also edited books on the topics and appropriately titled Trash, Fuel and Suspect.
Happy reading!
~ j
