Book Discussion: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

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Past Event ....... April 7^th, 2010 — 6:00 pm

avm Wednesday, April 7, 6 p.m. in the Couture Room, a discussion of author Barbara Kingsolver’s award-winning book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, held in conjunction with the “One Book/One Community” reading program cosponsored by the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries. Free.

Further details:

Area citizens are invited to participate in a group discussion of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 7, at the Lewiston Public Library.

Written by the best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver, the book was selected earlier this year for the Twin Cities’ community-wide reading program, One Book/One Community. It is the story of how Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life in which they vowed to either grow all their food themselves or buy it from their Appalachian farmer neighbors.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the book takes an earnest and entertaining look at both this personal struggle to limit one’s diet to locally grown foods and at the system of food distribution that exists in the U.S. and around the world. In relating their story, Kingsolver, her husband and their teenage daughter impart a wealth of information on food and nutrition in America, sharing mouth-watering recipes as well as eye-widening facts and figures.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has been hailed by the New York Times as “cogent and illuminating,” by the Washington Post Book World as “charming, zestful, funny and poetic,” and by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “inspiring…zealously devoted to home and hearth (and) unstinting in its concerns about this imperiled planet and the impact of extravagant American lifestyles.”

Leading the April 7 discussion of the book will be Rick Speer, director of the Lewiston Public Library. He points out that, for those who have not already read the book, there are multiple copies available to check out at both LPL and the Auburn Public Library. Copies are also available for purchase at a 20% discount at Mr. Paperback and the Bates College Bookstore in Lewiston, and Percy’s Burrow and WaldenBooks in Auburn.

This year’s One Book/One Community initiative is a collaboration between the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries and several other local partners, including Lewiston Adult Education, Bates College, CMCC, USM/LAC, the Downtown Education Collaborative, Healthy Androscoggin, St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, Encompass Marketing, Phoenix Farm and the participating bookstores.

The upcoming book discussion will be held in the Couture Room on the first floor of the Lewiston Public Library, which is located at 200 Lisbon Street. For more information on this event or other One Book/One Community activities, contact the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3135 or www.LPLonline.org.

Posted: Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 in Book Discussion