Dirt: Cure or Love Story?

Found this dirty little gem in the *NEW* section of the library's offerings. (Gem means book, not dog.) This is one of the most ambitious books I have ever read. Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD undertakes a massive project in The Dirt Cure (2016).

In 332 pages, we review all the environmental, supply-chain, attitudes and ethos, additives, media-influences, family and cultural pressures, recipes, menus, kitchen layouts, camping, shopping, thinking and issues of emotional landscapes..... (breathe).... that result in our ruined gut-bacteria, cause headaches, allergies, and behavioral, neurological, hormonal, mental, emotional, endocrine/pancreatic, and cardio-vascular problems.

Beginning with a quote from Albert Einstein, we move to the revised "you are what your food eats," which points us to our first philosopher/foodie, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (3, 6). Then comes more.

Marcel Proust, Hippocrates, John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (John Muir again, then Albert Einstein, again), A reference to PETA with "Chapter Ten: Meet Your Meat," Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson (20, 61, 131, 159, 167, 169, 181, 233, 271, 297). Everyone from the bookshelf above, minus Beowulf there on the bottom. Ambitious.

If your home/office bookshelves look like mine, you are likely not the target audience for this book. But if a diet of take-out and soda makes you feel gross and you legitimately don't know why, or if you are more familiar with literary pigoons (from Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake), than their real-life facsimiles, then this intense book is a good intro of all the things!

(Yes, those are Beanie Baby Pigoons. Limited mash-up edition, 2004-ish. My dad made them for me after my first conference presentation. Believe it or not, my presentation was on Oryx and Crake. It all started there, I suppose.)

If you see some repeats on my bookshelves and yours, I'd point you instead to the documentary "Dirt! A Love Story!" [That one is more about dirt, and not, well, everything. Even though dirt is everything.]

Or I'd point you to Helene A. Shugart's Heavy (2016). Heavy takes us through the stories about obesity that we've naturalized. The thing about those naturalized stories, though, is they aren't just about obesity, they're about eating in our rhetorical situation in general. They explain what's going on in The Dirt Cure. But more on this later.

If you've read Heavy, then the place to point you is back to Das Kapital. Light summer reading, and trust me on this: NO ONE will bug you if you have your nose in that while you're at the coffee shop. The Dirt Cure? You will make friends. I speak from experience.

 
Read on, comrades, read on. Yes, that is a piggy bank. A Pigarx!

Dirty Books III

It's that time of year again. We've hit the 100 book mark. Time for a Party!

 Many gems, and as usual it is tough to narrow down a slice of them for this. So I'll let Caleb help (#99 Dirt Candy, Amanda Cohen & Ryan Dunlavey). Top Ten Dirty-Tweety Dog Books of 2016!

10. Another Person's Poison. Matthew Smith (#100)

9. Blue Angel. Francine Prose (#7)

8. The Psychology of Overeating. Kima Cargill (#88)

7. Beasts of No Nation. Uzodinma Iweala (#75)

6. Between The World and Me. Ta-Nahisi Coates (#27)

5. The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

4. Drinking with Men. Rosie Shaap (98)

3. The Size of The Universe. Joseph Cardinale (#87)

2. Everything, Everything. Nicola Yoon (#94)

1. Drop City. T.C. Boyle (#77)

Book #6, Randall Horton's  2006 poetry collection, The Definition of Place, is where I found #souphound: "...pain gnawing my stomach like a tick/ sucking blood on a lazy soup hound" ("Memory: Elvie Three Months After Rosetta's Funeral, 1954," p. 53).

A soup hound is a beggar, staring up at that soup pot waiting for something, with those big puppy eyes that they developed in their quest to domesticate us to their needs. Caleb is my souphound. You can find him on twitter as #souphound, with pictures of what I've read, a #bookselfie.

Something started happening. Those big puppy eyes, and that scruffy scruff scruff started getting some attention. First, a single like, #7 Francine Prose's Blue Angel. A dream of a book for anyone who has ever run a writing classroom. And all the nightmares!

Then two likes, Kima Cargill's (#88) The Psychology of Overeating. Souphound is not convinced by the argument about neoliberalism being related to overeating (he blames the parents, read: me). I am, however, convinced. He and I don't always agree on readings of contemporary capitalist formations.

Then three, Italo Calvino's (#91) Marcovaldo. Calvino's Invisible Cities is my soul-mate of a book. This one is pretty damn good, too.

We got some retweets. Uzodinma Iweala's (#75) Beasts of No Nation. A hard read. Have not yet watched the Film. Don't know if I want to.

Fellow readers commented on the books. Jeet Thayil's (#93) Narcopolis. I loved this book, too. It was The God of Small Things meets A Fine Balance. Caleb seems to have squished himself into proper languid position for reading this one.  

Part of me wanted to believe it was simply out of a love for the books. But the biggest part of me knew that it was that face, those souphound eyes. The way his posture told the story of the of the stories. Ta-Nahisi Coates, (#27) Between The World and Me.

It started to grow. I looked at the analytics. Hundreds of people were seeing these tweets. Ben Marcus' (#12) The Flame Alphabet, one of the most challenging post-apocalyptic parables I've ever encountered.

A publisher (Alabama Press) responded *and* retweeted a post with my furbabe. Joseph Cardinale's (#87) The Size of The Universe. In this home, we're happy to endorse all we read with adorable dogness!

Authors started responding. Nicola Yoon's (#94) Everything, Everything. OMG authors are checking out my adorable souphound--my everything, my reason for being brave in the outdoors, for reading The Little Prince with a full heart. (This paragraph makes more sense if you've read Yoon's book.)

Perhaps the croutons on the soup floated along when T.C. Boyle, (#77) Drop City, got into it with a souphound tweet:

I was humbled that such a well known author would take the time to tweet back about dogishness, and reading. And he did it again! (after I mentioned something about Caleb liking Neruda (#85: The Lost Poems).

So, from this sample set of the twitter-love for #souphound #bookselfies, I know this. Everyone loves adorable pictures of dogs with books. Or at least a lot of readers, and the writers I'm drawn to, are ones that like souphounds. Like Rosie Schaap (#98 Drinking With Men):

And Matthew Smith (#100 Another Person's Poison):

Set let us debunk the myth that readers and writers are mostly cat people.... Or let us continue the myth that Caleb is part cat. Or both. Caleb is lovely, and so are these books. 

The 100 Book Party happens soon, I promise. PM me if you want an invite. I also always welcome suggestions for my continuing reading list. If you want to see more #souphound #bookselfies let me know. Caleb's been making noises about putting out a calendar. What a ham.

But for now, he's got tired eyes from reading. Let's let him sleep. Total Book List Follows below. (or you can find it on Pinterest).

1. all about love. bell hooks*
2. Press Yourself Against a Mirror. Janelle Adsit+
3. Coyote At The Kitchen Door. Stephen DeStefano~
4. City of Thieves. David Benioff*
5. A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara*
6. The Definition of Place. Randall Horton
7. Blue Angel. Francine Prose*
8. The Best American Comics 2015. ed Jonathan Lethem*
9. Pitch Dark Anarchy. Randall Horton
10. Fear of Dying. Erica Jong.~
11. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Marie Kondo+
12. The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus
13. The Making of Home. Judith Flanders*
14. The Road. Cormic McCarthy~
15. The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov>
16. Selected Shorts: Food Fictions*
17. Everything I Never Told You. Celeste Ng*
18. This is a Book. Dimitri Martin*
19. Mycophilia. Eugenia Bone*
20. Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins*
21. Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson*
22. The Hunger Games. Susanne Collins~
23. On Chesil Beach. Ian McEwan*
24. The Grownup. Gillian Flynn*
25. Missing Mom. Joyce Carol Oates~
26. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Salman Rushdie*
27. Between The World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates*
28. A Great Idea At The Time. Alex Beam.~
29. Go Set a Watchman. Harper Lee+
30. Illness as Metaphor, and AIDS and its Metaphors. Susan Sontag~
31. Slice Harvester. Colin Atrophy Hagendorf *
32. Moral Disorder. Margaret Atwood*
33. Twilight. Stephanie Meyer~
34. The Curious Case of The Dog In The Night-Time. Mark Haddon~
35. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. Yiyun Li~
36. Delicious! Ruth Reichl*
37. Flight Behavior. Barbara Kingsolver*
38. The Remains of The Day. Kazuo Ishiguro ~
39. Open City. Teju Cole
40. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck. Sarah Knight*
41. Sleep Donation. Karen Russell
42. The Vanishers. Heidi Julavits*
43. Buffalo Noir. eds Ed Park & Brigid Hughes*
44. The Hottest State. Ethan Hawke~
45. Little Bee. Chris Cleave*
46. Foxfire. Joyce Carol Oates~
47. Prodigal Summer. Barbara Kingsolver*
48. A Hologram For the King. Dave Eggers*
49. Election. Tom Perrotta*
50. Looking For Alaska. John Green*
51. Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Maria Semple*
52. Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman
53. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Aimee Bender*
54. The Lime Twig. John Hawkes+
55. Horrorstor. Grady Hendrix~
56. Farewell My Subaru. Doug Fine~
57. Beet. Roger Rosenblatt~
58. Ready Player One. Ernest Cline*
59. Delicious Foods. James Hannaham*
60. Brain on Fire. Susannah Cahalan~
61. The Colossus of New York. Colson Whitehead
62. Honeymoon. Patrick Modiano
63. So You've Been Publically Shamed. Jon Ronson*
64. Bartleby The Scrivener. Herman Melville~
65. Incendiary. Chris Cleave
66. Get a Life. Nadine Gordimer~
67. Anagrams. Lorrie Moore~
68. So Much For That. Lionel Shriver~
69. A Tale For The Time Being. Ruth Ozeki*
70. The Vegetarian. Han Kang*
71. Not Dark Yet. Berit Ellingsen*
72. Good Girl. Mary Kubica*
73. Succulent Wild Woman. Sark>
74. The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern*
75. Beasts of No Nation. Uzodinma Iweala *
76. How We Write. ed S.C.A.
77. Drop City. T. C. Boyle~
78. The Bone Clocks. David Mitchell*
79. Chester 5000. Jess Fink *
80. We Can Fix It. Jess Fink*
81. Every Day Is For The Thief. Teju Cole~
82. Caucasia. Danzy Senna~
83. In Food We Trust. Courtney Thomas*
84. In America. Susan Sontag~
85. The Lost Neruda Poems. Trans Forrest Gander*
86. The News: A User's Manual. Alain de Botton*
87. The Size of The Universe. Joseph Cardinale~
88. The Psychology of Overeating. Kima Cargill
89. The Professor is In. Karen Kelsky*
90. How Starbucks Saved My Life: a son of privilege learns to live.... Michael Gates Gill~
91. Marcovaldo, or Seasons in The City. Italio Calvino~
92. A Gate At The Stairs. Lorrie Moore ~
93. Narcopolis. Jeet Thayil~
94. Everything, Everything. Nicola Yoon*
95. Pandora's Lunchbox. Melaine Warner*
96. Men We Reaped. Jesmyn Ward*
97. Writers Gone Wild. Bill Peschel>
98. Drinking with Men. Rosie Shaap~
99. Dirt Candy. Amanda Cohen & Ryan Dunlavey>
100. Another Person's Poison. Matthew Smith*

50* borrowed from the Library

31 ~ purchased from the Library book sale

4+ gifts

4> lent from friends

11 other. Wow. Is my math right?

LIBRARIES ARE IMPORTANT. SUPPORT THEM.