Eating Animals is fantastic in that Foer mixes his personal life and his family heritage with his arguments for vegetarianism, so the book doesn't read as "and then I went to a meat-packing plant, and this is what I saw." Granted, the book has its sections of undercover work, but the sections about Foer's marriage, the birth of his first child, and his childhood memories of his grandmother, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, are equally important and give a depth to the work by evoking pathos in the audience.
As a side note, one of my favorite things about this book is the title. Not only do humans eat animals, but we are in essentials animals who must eat. It's excellent and subtle word working from Foer.
Since I haven't read nonfiction since then, I approached my stack of "to-reads" looking for my next conquest. I only had one option: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. I bought this about a year ago after studying some of Plath's poetry and reading The Bell Jar. Plath's life is fascinating to me, and I'm looking forward to delving into it through her journals.
Speaking of journals, how many of you guys keep a personal journal? Do you ever wonder about your future children and grandchildren reading it, or if you end up famous, the rest of the world? It's kind of a crazy notion, isn't it?
I have a journal and I hardly ever write in it. When I do I do the catch up writing and never quite seem to get to the present. I remember reading my dad's journal from when he was a kid. My grandma would make her kids write in their journals periodically and one time my dad wrote: "My mean mom is making me write in this stupid journal!" It's stuff like that that our future kids will find funny.
ReplyDeleteI've always kind of had a difficulty with nonfiction. And that is whether the book is self-help, a call for political action, or a new social theory, you can almost guarantee that in the next year or two, another book will come out to trump it. And no one will read the earlier one any more except to learn how people thought "back then". Fiction on the other hand, is for some reason more timeless. If it's any good, it can change the way you think and act no matter when or where you read it.
ReplyDeleteBut I like your idea of reading journals and personal histories. I bet I could get into that.
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ReplyDeleteI go through months where I write in a journal and months when I don't. I find the times of struggle or bouts of depression are when I am prone to consistently fill it's pages. Sometimes I write quotes, song lyrics, or doodles, but its not much of a travelog. For a while I didn't even put a date or anything. Until I saw the movie Se7en and the serial killer in that movie kept journals without a date, haha
ReplyDeleteI was reading about Joyce Carol Oates. She was JSF's mentor. Her story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is in the textbook. I read it early last year and it has stuck with me.
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