kristianawithak's reviews
1598 reviews

Columbine is a book put out by Twelve. It is one of my favorite publishing houses because they only put out twelve new books a year. They give their attention to promoting those select authors and their work. It is a smaller imprint of Hachette books, but it is such a great idea. If a Twelve book seems remotely interesting to me it gets pushed over the edge because it's been selected by Twelve and thus probably worth my time. Hence....Columbine. Not the cheeriest of topics.

I was in high school the year this happened and it was facsincating to hear the story told years after the fact and to realize that I never really learned what happend. It was a tragedy that I only heard snippets of and believed everything I heard. It seems that is how a lot of people remember Columbine, through the headlines and news clips that spread speculated information about the murders.

It was structured in an interesting way, with fair treatment given to the murderers, the victims, the parents and the city.

I do not know how to sum up Eating Animals. I read Michael Pollan's latest books after watching Food Inc. to help me decide what I would eat and why. I've been pretty set on my choices and Eating Animals is another good reminder to why I won't eat factory farmed meat or foods containing meat. I don't know what it would be like to read this book without that decision already firmly planted in my mind.

I enjoyed the style of Eating Animals. Foer is definitely not your run of the mill writer and his approach to this non fiction book is fresh. It did not seem contrived. It seem like Foer was organizing the things he had learned, the information he'd gathered, his conclusions and his decisions for his own life in a concise, interesting and appealing way. The interviews with farmers, activists and others in the agribusiness were interesting and well placed throughout the book.

Listening and reading the book was like watching a horror film at times. There were parts that made me sick, parts that made me want to close my eyes and parts that I read aloud because I couldn't be the only one experiencing this knew information. (Hank is really kind in letting me continually add new and weird facts about modern factory farming to his brain. He did ask that he be allowed one day void of gross chicken trivia, which worked out well since I had gotten to the pig chapter.)

All in all it was a fascinating well organized read. I don't agree with all of Foer's conclusions and I definitely don't agree with the PETA interview, but I highly recommend it and wonder what others think of it.

I really like the beginning and the end of the book. The world created at the open of the book was so charming and so peculiar that it was hard when that world was disrupted. It was a good, creative read, but I don't know who I would recommend it to.

I'm pretty sure some of the stories were mixed up on my Ipod.