Title: Vegetable Love
Author: Barbara Kafka
Extent: 720 pp
Publisher: Artisan (a division of Workman Publishing)
Publication Date: 4 October 2005

The Gist: Subtitled “Vegetables delicious alone, or with pasta, seafood, poultry,…

Title: The World Without Us
Author: Alan Weisman
Extent: 320 pp
Publisher: Harper Collins Canada
Publication Date: 5 July 2007

The Gist: What would happen if human life disappeared from the planet tomorrow? How would nature…

Title: No One Belongs Here More Than You
Author: Miranda July
Extent: 224 pp
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 15 May 2007

The Gist: A woman who gives swimming lessons on the floor…

Time will show, I think, that the 2006 publication of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma marked a tipping point for the American food system. The book’s appearance coincided with a surge in the number of local farmers’…

A morning during which I’m reading a cookbook about preparing food in a French state of mind — with appreciation for high-quality fresh ingredients, a joyful spirit, and the social and sensual act of eating — seems a good…

Catharine Parr Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada came into my life at this particular time for for two chief reasons: (1) I was recently visiting Lakefield, Ontario, and (2) of late I’ve been rather obsessed with ]]> http://cursivemechanics.ca/2008/08/09/the-backwoods-of-canada/feed/ 0 http://cursivemechanics.ca/2008/07/26/the-100-mile-diet/ http://cursivemechanics.ca/2008/07/26/the-100-mile-diet/#comments Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:05:28 +0000 Jodi http://cursivemechanics.ca/?p=549

The following is a true story. It is an example of how your brain works after you read The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.

I meet with friends for a Summerlicious dinner at…

Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country is a book I had high odds of never reading. I knew nary a thing of Jake MacDonald’s memoir before plucking the hardcover copy out of the remainder…

Reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, I couldn’t help but wonder: What would it have been like to read this novella when it was first published in the 1980s, before the notion of achieving authentic happiness by “following…

“Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water,…