Bich Minh Nguyen

Read:
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Cows are naturally grass-eating animals. Why, then, in the American industrial cattle industry, are they fed grain? What are the consequences of this? The disturbing answers to these questions, and much more, can be found in Pollan’s lucid and important exploration of why we eat what we eat—and what it means for agriculture, our bodies, and the environment. He also investigates the “organic industrial” market (hello Earthbound Farm), literally hunts and gathers a meal, and explains why nowadays we Americans are mostly corn.

Reread:
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Clarity is the word that comes to mind whenever I reread this collection of essays. Didion brilliantly examines 1960s culture and counter-culture, a time when “the center will not hold,” with the kind of seeming effortlessness that can only emerge from a gaze of amazing precision. Her portraits of California and its icons continue to tug at this Midwesterner’s desire to go westward and then look back, in the way Didion does, in “Goodbye to All That.” That last essay, my favorite in the book, is an enduring paragon of style and true feeling.