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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
- A Year of Food Life
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
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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)
Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time
All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.
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- Unabridged
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Dan Buettner, the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Zones, lays out a proven plan to maximize your health based on the practices of the world's healthiest people. For the first time, Buettner reveals how to transform your health using smart eating and lifestyle habits gleaned from new research on the diets, eating habits, and lifestyle practices of the communities he's identified as "Blue Zones"—those places with the world's longest-lived and thus healthiest people.
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Good Info, Well Presented
- By Soozzone on 06-29-15
By: Dan Buettner
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The Tastemakers
- Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue (Plus Baconomics, Superfoods, and Other Secrets from the World of Food Trends)
- By: David Sax
- Narrated by: David Sax
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eye-opening, witty work of reportage, David Sax uncovers the world of food trends: Where they come from, how they grow, and where they end up. Traveling from the South Carolina rice plot of America’s premier grain guru to Chicago’s gluttonous Baconfest, Sax reveals a world of influence, money, and activism that helps decide what goes on your plate.
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Informative - Engaging - Entertaining!
- By Rena on 09-01-14
By: David Sax
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The Backyard Parables
- Lessons on Gardening, and Life
- By: Margaret Roach
- Narrated by: Margaret Roach
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Margaret Roach has been harvesting 30 years of backyard parables - deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper - and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more. After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo."
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Great Writing Distracting Reading
- By Amazon Customer on 02-11-13
By: Margaret Roach
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French Kids Eat Everything
- How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules
- By: Karen Le Billon
- Narrated by: Cris Dukehart
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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When she moved her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon expected some cultural adjustment. But she didn't expect to be lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack, or to be forbidden from packing her older daughter a school lunch. Karen is intrigued by the fact that French children happily eat everything-from beets to broccoli, from salad to spinach - while French obesity rates are a fraction of what they are in North America.
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Can I have a snack? mais non, bien sûr - NO!
- By Marie on 03-21-15
By: Karen Le Billon
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Steak
- One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef
- By: Mark Schatzker
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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"Of all the meats, only one merits its own structure. There is no such place as a lamb house or a pork house, but even a small town can have a steak house." So begins Mark Schatzker's ultimate carnivorous quest. Fed up with one too many mediocre steaks, the intrepid journalist set out to track down, define, and eat the perfect specimen.
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Journey into a deeper appreciation for beef
- By John Madany on 10-08-20
By: Mark Schatzker
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The Bucolic Plague
- How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir
- By: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A happy series of accidents and a doughnut-laden escape upstate take Josh Kilmer-Purcell and his partner, Brent Ridge, to the doorstep of the magnificent (and fabulously for sale) Beekman Mansion. And so begins their transformation from uptight urbanites into the 200-year-old-mansion-owning Beekman Boys. Suddenly Josh---a full-time New Yorker with a successful advertising career---and Brent find themselves weekend farmers, surrounded by nature's bounty and an eclectic cast.
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Selling your dream and name dropping
- By Mark on 09-13-12
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Lunch in Paris
- A Love Story, with Recipes
- By: Elizabeth Bard
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman - and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs - one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine.
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ok to pass the time
- By Robin on 03-25-13
By: Elizabeth Bard
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Buttermilk Graffiti
- A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine
- By: Edward Lee
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories? A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country.
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Good listen for the aspiring food snob
- By thurman r. on 02-09-22
By: Edward Lee
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Little Heathens
- Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
- By: Mildred Armstrong Kalish
- Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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As foreclosure fragments her family, five-year-old Mildred and her three siblings find refuge with her grandparents enjoying a modest retirement. When the "little heathens" flush the seniors and their child-rearing skills out of retirement, the grandparents deploy tough but loving bedtime schedules, Bible and prayer routines, and plenty of character-building chores. Having no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.
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Makes you appreciate today's living
- By Susan on 03-11-11
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Eating for England
- The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table
- By: Nigel Slater
- Narrated by: Nigel Slater
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The British have a relationship with their food that is unlike that of any other country. Once something that was never discussed in polite company, it is now something with which the nation is obsessed. But are we at last developing a food culture or are we just going through the motions? Eating for England is an entertaining, detailed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation of the British and their food, their cooking, their eating, and how they behave in restaurants.
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A Must-Hear!
- By Laura on 07-04-08
By: Nigel Slater
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She reads my heart
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Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
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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?"
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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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Didn’t finish - not interested
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Spring for a professional narrator, please!
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High Tide in Tucson
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Good book, but not unabridged...
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The Dirty Life
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Kristin Kimball left New York City to interview a dynamic young farmer named Mark, her world changed. On an impulse, she shed her city self and started a new farm with him on 500 acres near Lake Champlain. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of the couple’s first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through their harvest-season wedding in the loft of the barn.
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I have mixed feelings about this one...
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The Poisonwood Bible
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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!
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Homeland and Other Stories
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Overall
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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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We Are What We Eat
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In We Are What We Eat, Alice Waters urges us to take up the mantle of slow food culture, the philosophy at the core of her life’s work. When Waters first opened Chez Panisse in 1971, she did so with the intention of feeding people good food during a time of political turmoil. Customers responded to the locally sourced organic ingredients, to the dishes made by hand, and to the welcoming hospitality that infused the small space - human qualities that were disappearing from a country increasingly seduced by takeout, frozen dinners, and prepackaged ingredients.
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Good message, but take with a grain of salt
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Old-Fashioned on Purpose
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When the pandemic hit in 2020, flour and vegetable seeds flew off the shelves. But homesteader and entrepreneur Jill Winger believes these longings for sourdough bread and fresh veggies are more than a trend. As our society races toward progress, we’ve left something important behind. We are more connected than ever before, yet we’re still feeling unfulfilled. In Old-Fashioned on Purpose, Winger shows how simplifying our lives and adopting retro skills such as gardening and handiwork can be the key to creating the happy and healthy life we’re yearning for.
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A bit disappointed (so far)
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Animal, Vegetable, Junk
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Performance
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The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments.
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Mostly Junk
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By: Mark Bittman
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Second Nature
- A Gardener's Education
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Story
In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere.
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Love Pollan, don't love this (but you might)
- By Mary on 02-05-12
By: Michael Pollan
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The Omnivore's Dilemma
- A Natural History of Four Meals
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance.
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Great book; didn't love the reading
- By Lily on 11-02-08
By: Michael Pollan
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
- Andrew
- 01-09-09
Good for a city slicker
Barbara Kingsolver does know how to tell a good story. She manages to turn what can be a very boring topic and makes it relatively interesting. For anyone who hasn't grown a large garden, eaten their own food, or know why asparagus isn't available in August, then this is a good book. She talks about why, when and how food is grown.
In the vein of making a good story she also anthromorphize all animals and plants. For example, the end story turns a large part on turkeys she is raising. Having raised the exact breed of turkeys she does perhaps gave me a little more insight. Her story is cute, but they aren't people. Applying human attributes to turkeys, or any animal, is annoying and not very helpful. They will squat or want to mate with a towel on a stick.
You also have to be careful. She wants to return her turkeys to a more "natural" animal that can raise their young and help the breed survive. This desire may kill the breed. Bourbon Red Turkeys have never lived on their own, they are a commercial breed developed in the 1900 and raised for meat. If you want to save the breed you need people to buy the meat, which then encourages people to raise the breed to meet the demand. This means it has to be affordable. Having birds sit on their own eggs and raise the breed means a female may raise 6 or 7 birds a year. They can produce up to 50 eggs/year, artificially incubated that's 50 turkeys. Heritage turkeys are already expensive enough to raise and sell, you don't need to increase costs more. Over the last 100 years they almost died out since they have little economic value and are raised as a hobby. If we're not careful they will be lost forever.
Her parts of the book are mixed with commentary from her partner and daughter. She's pretty lose with the facts in the first place, but in these asides lack total balance or realism. They really do detract from the book.
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Overall
- Elizabeth
- 07-31-08
Moan, moan, moan.
Yes, the world will soon have no more to give to mankind. Yes, it's wonderful that the author was able to live a year of sustainability. Thanks for alerting the rest of us to options to reduce our ever-destructive impact on the world. I am so glad that your turkeys now know how to mate. I am so sad that petroleum based transportation systems hold us all in their ghastly grip. Oh, for another era . . .
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3 people found this helpful
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- Julie
- 05-16-22
Great book, with a caveat
I really enjoyed listening to this book. As an avid gardener and a supporter of local farms for all of our meat and eggs, I related strongly with a lot of the narrative. Barbara Kingsolver has a beautiful turn of phrase, and it was lovely to hear her husband and daughter adding their perspectives, too. The only reservation I have in recommending this book is that there are elements which we would recognize today as fatphobic as well as scientifically inaccurate as we have learned more about discrepancies about how thin people and fat people are treated by doctors and how that impacts health. A good listen if you can get past that, but if you have a history of disordered eating I wouldn’t recommend it.
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- Barbara Neil
- 07-18-12
If you think her fiction is great...
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I have already reccomended this to quite a few friends and hosted a book group to discuss it. I will continue bringing it to the attention of the many readers at my Library.
What did you like best about this story?
Barbara not only writes with wit and charm but narrates with soothing clarity and is incredibly easy on one's ears. The additional sections from her husband and eldest daughter are very well done, and have been bookmarked to refer to their statistics and wonderful recipes. If this book doesn't make you think about how you are living and what you are putting in your mouth, I don't believe you are really listening. If you have the slightest interest in food or gardening this is a must-listen. Non-fiction that reads like fiction is hard to find and their farm life and travels take me to a beautiful place full of sun and tomato leaves. It's realism does not leave me despondent. It is clear that if we try to eat seasonally and locally each of us can make a difference even if we don't aspire to do it perfectly. Contains very practical ideas and educates without lecturing.
Hopefully there will be a revised and updated edition or a sequel in five to ten years.
Have you listened to any of the narrators???s other performances before? How does this one compare?
no
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I have never written a review before but this title demands it. If I could buy a copy for everyone I would. Thank you Ms. Kingsolver for doing such wonderful work with the book and the narration. It is such a joy.
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- Mom
- 04-12-20
Interesting
This book provided an opportunity for me to explore my interest in gardening, while creating very necessary discussions with friends and family about the food we eat.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-17-18
Inspiring
Excellent read. I've been dreaming of growing everything my family eats for years. This book has helped me too refine that goal and to believe it's possible to eat locally and accomplish what I really want -- healthy foods that support my local economy.
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- Debbie Struck
- 02-23-21
Life changing read!
At a book exchange that I hosted during Christmas 2020, this book was gifted. Unfortunately, I was not the receiver. However, when the lucky person chose this book and opened it three out of the eight women present all said aloud, "oh! That book changed my life." So, a copy found its way to me asap. They spoke absolute truth!
Kingsolver has the most amazing writing voice and an even sweeter narrating voice for her audible version. She utilizes her gifts of story telling to share her family's journey on a year with local only foods. She massages the reader/listener with tender truths of vegetables, animals and the miracles of life and our creation like a farmer gently turns the soil of a garden to prepare it for the new season's seeds. Just as the story mesmerizes you into a world most likely far from your own, she, along with her husband and daughter, drop the heavy seeds of truth about how America's food industry's dignity has been unnaturally interrupted.
I am both highly inspired and forever changed just as my book exchange friends confessed they were.
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- DK
- 10-12-16
Loved!
This book is like no other in conveying g the realities of living green. I laughed, cried and learned so much. Wonderful read!
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- Jennifer F.
- 07-30-12
Love Barbara Kingsolver... hate her reading voice
Would you consider the audio edition of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to be better than the print version?
I have read all of Barbara Kingsolver's books multiple times, and have been a fan for years. I was really excited when I saw that she was reading her own books, and promptly downloaded a couple.
Unfortunately, I find her reading voice/rhythm unbearable. I never finished listening to either of her books that I purchase from Audible.
So. Buy her books, but skip the audiobooks.
Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?
No-I couldn't stand listening to her. It was as though she was reading/speaking to a 5 year old or someone she thought was slow to understand.
Any additional comments?
But her books are great, so go forth and read them all!
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-06-15
Lovely!
This book is fantastic. Kingsolver does an outstanding job of delivering this story with humor, much information, and most importantly, hope. I have a bit more time on the road and I might just re listen instead of starting my next book, it's so good!
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