I put off reading this book because I thought it would make me an instant vegetarian (again), and I wasn't sure I was ready to give up meat-y goodness indefinitely. (Un)Fortunately, that was not the case. I was excited because I had heard the book was beautifully and emotionally written. I love few things more than good fiction authors writing great personal essay work (see: Barbara Kingsolver's short essays, not Animal Veg.). But this I found disorganized, and at points just plain repetitive. More than anything I found myself hoping for just one more interesting anecdote (which I expected the bulk of the book to be, duped!), rather than one more clumsily explained paragraph about how factory farming is mean. Don't get me wrong, factory farming is TERRIBLE, I know that, and I already try to eat little or no factory farmed meat and will continue to do so. But what I was really hoping for was an impassioned discussion about the feelings around meat eating or not as he struggled with how to raise his child, and in that I was disappointed, it's just another meat is mean book. So, I'll work on taking down my meat intake (which is already pretty low), and reminding myself to make sure that my eggs, fish and meat are coming from responsible places (which is easy in my neck of the woods), in order to hope that someday everyone has as good of options as we do here in hippie dippy Northern California. JSF, see you when your next work of fiction comes out.
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