books #83-86

83. Fast Food Nation* by Eric Schlosser ***. If I weren't already vegetarian, I would be now. Actually, Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats, a fictional work that includes some of some of the practices described in Fast Food Nation, was the real tipping point for me becoming vegetarian (the second time I read it). I think Ozeki's subsequent book, All Over Creation, was meant to convert me to eating only organic food, but that takes more effort/money than I can be bothered with. I'm feeling guilty about my shameful McEmployee past, too.

84. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides ****1/2. I think this book needs its own post.

85. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith ***1/2. I bought this from a charity shop in Conference Country, since I'd read the library books I'd brought with me. I visited a tenement house that had been turned into a museum there, too, which was pretty cool. I like museums that recreate/preserve old houses and the like, so I can imagine what it might have been like to live there. I really enjoyed this book, although it was a bit didactic at times. Of course, I liked it because I could empathise with Francie's loneliness, especially her realisation after school was over that she could have been friends with her fellow students, but I also enjoyed it for the same reasons I liked the museum.

86. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson ****. Another charity shop find (every charity you could think of, and a lot more, had their own shop). The fact that this book was partially autobiographical makes me sad for the author, but also admire her. Her early earnest evangelism was pretty funny and I loved her attempts to win a prize at school for her bible verses and Wagnerian dioramas. The later parts of the book, where she, not very successfully, tries to find a way to reconcile her self with her rigid community were heartwrenching, though.


*Apparently, it's uncool to link to Amazon now. I hope Google is still sufficiently not-evil. You get to read a random page this way, instead of astroturf reviews.
On second thought, Google Books doesn't have every book. I also realised that it might help to link to somewhere with a plot summary, since I'm slack about providing those.
I just read further down the comments at Phantom's and discovered that people earn money from linking to Amazon! I think I'll sell out and go back to that, or at least, the less(?) evil Powell's.