If you haven't ever read any Barbara Kingsolver, you don't know what you're missing.
She's a wonderful, wonderful writer, and I found listening to her novel Prodigal Summer on CD (read by the author herself) to be a highlight in my intellectual life. Few things have given me more pleasure.
I love this writer's voice so much that if calories were absorbed by reading her words, I would have expired long ago - buried in a Super-Sized coffin as a testament to the dangers of gluttony. (Reading the novels of Danielle Steele would be the anorexic's diet in this analogy; you'd be skinny but utterly miserable.)
I've just been reading Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - a non-fiction account of her family's decision to change their eating habits by restricting themselves to food grown and raised locally. What an eye-opener! I now yearn for a small acreage and can't wait for spring so I can assault the nearest farmer's market.
But I digress.
As usual.
It's been several years since her last novel, so I was jumping up and down when The Lacuna hit the stands this month. I actually ordered that thing online (something I never do with books). It arrived yesterday, but I haven't started it yet. I am waiting for a quiet moment when Gigi and Spouse are in bed. And when that moment comes, I'm gonna savor that baby like a fine wine. There's an interview below from The News Hour on PBS. (The News Hour, btw, has been our exclusive source of news since 1988. It's the only news program in existence that still has its integrity intact. Go here to see their online version.)
Here's a list of some of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction: Animal Dreams, The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Prodigal Summer, and The Poisonwood Bible. (That last one is a "hard" read - she's dealing with some very heavy and dark subject matter there.)
If you're already a Kingsolver fan, check out her interview below.
Barbara Kingsolver interview from The News Hour's November 13, 2209 broadcast on PBS:
