"That's what I'm trying to tell you. [Scientists] aren't popular. Maybe your medicine is too bitter. Or you're not selling to us. Maybe you're writing us off, thinking we won't get it. You should start with kindergartners and work your way up." (p. 321)That's the book in a nutshell. Kingsolv...
I love the way Barbara Kingsolver tells a story. It was fun to learn some true facts in the middle of fiction. I am not a die hard believer in global warming. Not to say it doesn't exist but this is truly a story meant to convince the reader that the science is true and one sided. The rural po...
On one hand, there is nothing new here, and on this same old tirade, I disagree strongly with the author. Examples:* Relativism. I'm sorry, I believe infanticide to be wrong for all cultures, for all times.* Missionaries, particularly protestant missionaries to Africa were entirely the endeavor o...
Okay, so Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was one of those books that significantly changed my life, and I really liked, as did the rest of the world it seems, The Poisonwood Bible, but I honestly cannot tell you what made me want to read Kingsolver’s essay collection Small Wonder. Maybe I read about i...
Very descriptive and calming. Three stories tied into one, and cleaned up neatly at the end. A good summertime read.I read this book again, so I can write a better review, since this book definitely deserves a second thought.This is a book to be savored, meaning, it is not a light easy read, and ...
I have read most of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels, including her most recent, Flight Behavior, and the beginnings of the Taylor Greer story, contained in the novel The Bean Trees. I always like the author’s easy, unpretentious, humorous style, which does not at all conceal her artistic flair for p...
Barbara Kingsolver has such a way with words. She can crystallize a moment, a thought, an emotion, and fasten it to the paper like very few people can. There is such detail and nuance in the book that I'm finding it very hard to sum up. I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could. (I try to give 5 st...
Leave it to my mother. Every time I get to the point where I've almost relegated her to the lands of the unenlightened, she pops out of the woodwork and shows off a surprising amount of taste; for a Baptist minister who proudly voted for George W. Bush and thinks Carrot Top is funny, my mom occas...
Barbara Kingsolver was one of a few novelists I fell head-over-heels in love with as a pre-teen; that is, an AUTHOR I vowed to follow, instead of a book or series. At this point it feels, as I'm sure it does for many of her fans, like I know her. That's part of her appeal, of course, and she cult...
"But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like eachother and still be in one piece. Wha...
I was downtown in front of the Federal Building with a small crowd assembled to protest war in the Persian Gulf; he was in a black Ford pickup. As the truck roared by he leaned most of his upper body out the window to give me a better view of his finger, and he screamed, “Hey, bitch, love it or l...
This train rocks, sliding north. It’s four in the afternoon and the sun is bright on the left side of the train, beaded like a salt crust on the dirty windows, so that much is sure: the train is headed north. The last ten days are like shreds in a bag of scraps. Nothing in memory makes sense. Eve...