but she is not a writer. She regurgitates names who were at parties but she never really tells a story. She never captures the essence of any moment except maybe doing acid in San Francisco when she says, wow or something similarly inane. And in the end, she whines and whines about how little money she has while she’s telling of her trips around the world. And she claims, of course, that it was really her that both these men really always loved, which I’m thinking, you know, probably not.

Authentic but not really a great read.

you know, Shirley is interesting, just not that interesting. And especially not in this book.

This is a great great great movie and was in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart so we got it to see again and again and again.

toward the beginning, I was irritated because I could clearly see how this story, the conflict of this story, was going to work out. But I enjoyed the story anyway because Kingsolver is so good with a character.

I really like Newt. I know that is probably not a popular position, but if you will listen to him talk, he really is bright, and he really does have some ideas that are workable. Unfortunately, this book puts Newt’s idea of God first in the solutions. If we just pray in school, and say “under God” in the pledge of allegiance, it will be ok.

Well, Newt, that isn’t it. In fact, it is the whole paradigm of schooling that is flawed. I think you say “God” so much because you’ve screwed up so much in your own life along those lines (marriages, affairs, etc.). Now, I don’t really care that much, but I am saying that those aren’t ideas for real change any more than Obama saying “change” again and again and again makes for anything resembling real change.

What we need is government out of it, and people into it. However, that requires people to live more simply (not just have the bumper stickter) and to actually work and do things like grow their own food. Newts included.

you know it had to be an interesting book. He’s a decent writer although my husband thought the prose stilted and only made it through 1/3 of the book. I was mostly charmed. I think one has to be charmed by people who tell as many of their mistakes as successes.

His weakness is his contempt of the native backwater people, which is mitigated somewhat by his obvious real affection for them.

We have a couple of Seymour’s later reprints on country and homesteading skills, which are valuable resources. I think this was just an early version of those. And I was hoping for more stories because, having read Fat of the Land, I know the man can really tell a story.

I got tickled reading this book, having read so much of Logsdon’s writing. This book can be quite the inspiration, particularly for those on limited amounts of land. As always, Gene’s got great information and told in an entertaining, funny way.

But, this is perhaps the most uneven Logsdon book I’ve yet read. It is EARLY Logsdon. In particular, the transitions within chapters are . . . stark, sudden. It is also interesting that the copyright is to the Farm Journal or whichever big ag mag he was employed at at that time. And knowing his later writings, I know he’s more organic now than then, but still with the healthy skepticism of the official version of how to do it.

I know people are supposed to find Kunstler to be a kick in the groin, but I find much of his writing strangely hopeful—probably because I’m living a life that is not dependent on oil.

Kunstler is, in general, a bigot against Southerner’s, so it is a grin to me that the real hero of his book, the person who causes all good things to happen, is the brash and pushy Southern religious kook. He cleans the pre-story story with a couple of big bombs and a couple of big epidemics to rather neatly cut the population. But his story neatly incorporates many different perspectives on the new world without machines, and how those different perspectives deal with it. Surprisingly to most people, most of them do figure out how to deal with it.

It also becomes clear what all we’ve lost to industrialization. And I think how we don’t just know instinctively how to get that back. But how humans do drift back to it.

I think people better start imagining what a world without machines might look like for them. And how they’d feed themselves in such a world.