Just can't get away from the book reviewing habit -- recently I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's most recent book, In Defense of Food, at work (yes, it's in the collection of the FKCC Library!) and found it a quick, engaging and interesting read -- so engaging I started taking notes. Next thing I knew, I was reviewing it for Solares Hill and the review appears in the current edition (that link takes you to a PDF of the entire issue). The review is also available on the Citizen's website, where Solares Hill's book review appears each week, down at the bottom of the page. The book is a great, easily understood and entertaining take on America's dysfunctional attitude toward food. Plus Pollan's up there in my personal nonfiction pantheon -- along with the likes of Calvin Trillin, Ian Frazier, and Tony Horwitz (hmmm ... must add some women to that list*). I'll read almost anything these guys write and it's almost all great. Check it out -- here at the college library, from your local bookstore or from the Monroe County Library system -- they have two copies, in Marathon and Big Pine, both currently checked out. And here's to healthier eating!

*I feel compelled to add here that it's not like I don't read and admire women who write nonfiction -- Joan Acocella, Margaret Talbot, Melissa Fay Greene -- "Praying For Sheetrock" is one of those books that every nonfiction writer should read every year -- and of course my personal pantheon of Annie Dillard and Madeleine Blais -- I just think of them as more literary and less reporterly. I wonder if that's some sort of internalized sexist classification system. Got kind of a love-hate thing with Susan Orlean -- for instance, I thought "The Orchid Thief" was one of the world's great magazine articles, but stretched too thin as a book.