Clearly, the hosts at Et in Arcadia Ego are more about leading a life of otium than producing good media.  But we’re back!  On this episode of the podcast, Andrew talks to Leah about the supermarket pastoral.  A form identified by Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals, the supermarket pastoral is a vision quest for pure foods and authentic experiences with nature.  Don’t miss this leisurely discussion, that covers the organic food industry, community gardening, the Obama’s White House, lead-infested garden, and more.

Leah recommends two novels by Ruth Ozeki, a Japanese American writer.

Andrew recommends a photo essay by James D. Griffioen.

Both the title of the book I’m reading, and where I went today.
The book is by Ruth Ozeki. I read it a few years ago and liked it well enough. The other day I was thinking of books to look for on BookMooch, and I remembered it, and remembered also that it was set in Idaho. So it was promptly mooched.

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SillyBilly has grown, as he is wont to do, and most of his pants, while fitting his skinny butt, are real floods at the ankle. Very hard to find pants for this boy. We went to the local awesome thrift store first, as they have loads of kids’ clothes. Today, not so much. No suitable pants to be found. But I did find this lovely item, for the not-very-princely sum of $35:

(If you look closely, you’ll notice that the pillows have an African wildlife motif. They will be turned around to the plain side. or re-covered, because they are a bit too kitsch for me. The kids love them, of course. Otherwise this is in the running for the Nicest Couch We’ve Ever Owned.)

To obtain this lovely couch, SillyBilly and I had to put it on hold, go across town to get Anthropapa on his lunch hour, bring him back to the store, obtain his agreement that It Will Do, go get lunch, take him back to work within the hour, then come all the way back across town again to go home, then in 3 more hours go back across town again to get him and Napoleona, and bring them all back to the store where we bought the thing and loaded it in our van, having to tie the back door down as the couch was too large to fit. Then we brought it home, unloaded it, and wedged it into our now too-full living room.

Did I mention it was raining all afternoon? And I had a splitting headache? And SillyBilly was being A Royal Punk?

But now we have some semblance of a normal living room, with somewhere for me to sit with both kids to read stories. The cats seem quite pleased as well, especially the old, fat one that practically needs a harness and some crampons to get on our bed. I sprayed it (the couch, not the cat or the bed) liberally with Feliway to hopefully trick the cats into thinking the couch is a love object, not a scratching post.

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In order to get the couch into the van, I had to finally take out the ginormously heavy crate of books that had been lurking back there for weeks. Most of the books in it were Steiner books, so perhaps I’ll dredge up some interesting stuff over the rest of NaBloPoMo.

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In case any of my 10 loyal readers are horror fiction fans, I’m giving a shout out for my old friend Marc Paoletti. Anthropapa and I knew him back when we were first married. He’s still witty and handsome, with the added bonus of now being a successful author. I just tracked him down (I laud Thee, O Mighty Google) and am waiting to hear more about his recent exploits.

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Looks like my brain was All Over Creation today. How was your day?

I think all meat eaters should know what goes on in the lives of the animals they consume, from birth to death. I grew up in a rural community with lots of small farms nearby, but now that I live in a city, most of my meat comes from large farms. And Ruth Ozeki’s excellent novel shows the ugly side of factory farms, making it Unsafe for animal lovers. But like I said, I think if you eat meat, this is a truth you need to confront. You may think differently. And the book is otherwise excellent, so I’m going to recommend it anyway, despite deeming it unsafe. More below.

“But the one thing you learn during war is that you can’t pick and choose, and in the end, pretty much everyone is a loser.” Ruth Ozeki’s “Jiro” from Click

In my experience there is nothing wrong with judging a book by its cover. In fact, I have discovered many books simply by taking a risk on the cover art. At work I walked by the novel Click and found myself turning back, and I could barely believe that the cover was a plain dust jacket and not a layered cardboard design – the camera just looked too real to be a photo. It was only after I picked up the book that I discovered how brilliant this book could be.

Click is a young adult novel written by ten authors (Linda Sue Park, David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Roddy Doyle, Tim Wynne-Jones, Ruth Ozeki, Margo Lanagan, and Gregory Maguire) and the proceeds are donated to Amnesty International. The actual story these ten authors tell is about the legacy of the fictional photojournalist George “Gee” Keane and this man’s influence and effect on those he encountered during his life. The story is told through a variety of voices including Gee’s grandchildren and the subjects of his portraits.

As a whole Click is an easy, interesting, and fun read. With the holidays fast approaching Click is the perfect book to take on an airplane or to snuggle up with over a hot cup of chocolate. The book is described as “one novel ten authors,” but this perhaps is not entirely true. However, it is also not a short story collection. Click is a frame story where each author writes a new “frame” that develops the plot as a whole. In some ways the actual physicality of the text – or at least the terminology describing the text – sustains the idea of photography. Other continuing themes in the book reflect Gee’s grandchildren’s inheritance: his grandson Jason receives a package of autographed photos and his granddaughter Maggie receives a box containing seven seashells.

I admit that in addition to the dust jacket that I picked up this book after seeing Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle were contributing authors. Otherwise I very well may have passed it by. Some chapters were certainly stronger than other chapters and I now need to spend some time with books by David Almond and Ruth Ozeki. My least favorite chapter was actually the first chapter by Linda Sue Park. I had never read anything by Park, but I found her chapter the least engaging and original of the collection. Regardless of the one weak chapter, Click is a terrific book to pick or to give to a young adult in your life.