Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • The CBR Team
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us

Open Registration for CBR13 ends Jan. 31! Sign Up Today!

> FAQ Home
> Genre: Cooking/Food > It’s not easy being green (CBR12Bingo 2: Green)

It’s not easy being green (CBR12Bingo 2: Green)

Eating Animals by Johnathan Safran Foer

October 15, 2020 by octothorp Leave a Comment

” I can’t believe how much we have in common. We’re both studying the environment, we’re both utterly humorless about our vegetarianism, and we both love the Rolling Stones. Yes, not For their music, but for their tireless efforts to preserve historic buildings.”

This book is Lisa Simpson and Hugh Parkfield in a nutshell. Because eating animals is wrong. So horribly, horribly wrong. In Simpsons arcana, the episode that follows this one establishes that Lisa is in fact a vegetarian, but that episode finds Apu horrified at Lisa’s willingness to consume animal products, resulting in the realization that while you can find the choices of others wrong, it isn’t your place to cast judgement upon them.

Ya listening, Foer?

Many of his arguments are persuasive, and I truly hate factory farming. But a) not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they eat based on morality (his anecdote from his grandmother aside, “if nothing matters, what is worth saving” isn’t gonna keep most starving people from eating a burger if it’s not a matter of their religion), b) the problem with gray areas is that lines delineating black from white start to seem arbitrary (yeah, I’d eat a cow or a pig or even a bunny, but not a cat or a dog – I just don’t look down on those who’d eat what I wouldn’t), but that isn’t necessarily an point in favor of extremism, and c), most frustrating in the current political climate, unless everyone gives up meat tomorrow, it’s a drop in the bucket against factory farm conglomerates. The American People can’t even get basic healthcare for themselves, or slow down a rush confirmation of a supreme court justice a large majority think shouldn’t go through until after the election. We can’t do shit.

You want to help animals? End corn subsidies. It will keep the animals fed grass once it’s cheaper, which will lead to happier healthier animals, and takes one component of farming as monopolistic business out of the equation. But that doesn’t allow you to look down on others for eating meat.

It’s also mildly infuriating that Foer makes family central to his argument against eating animals, but he and Kraus had a fairly public split that may or may not have been emotional-infidelity related, which makes the line “if nothing matters what is left to save” ring differently years later.

From the book: “saying that meat eating can be ethical sounds “nice” and “tolerant” only because most people like to be told that doing whatever they want to do is moral.” Agreed. But that shoe fits just as well on the other side; failing to recognize that others have different priorities, morality, or just plain don’t have the energy to fight is just as blinkered.

Filed Under: Cooking/Food, Non-Fiction Tagged With: cbr12bingo, Green, Johnathan Safran Foer

octothorp's CBR12 Review No:119 · Genres: Cooking/Food, Non-Fiction · Tags: cbr12bingo, Green, Johnathan Safran Foer ·
· 0 Comments

About octothorp

CBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR  9

I buy books faster than I can read them. View octothorp's reviews»

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • msvreadsbooks on The Last Resort – Meh.Thanks, all! I'm excited to get started on this journey and to read more reviews from my fellow Cannonballers (is that what we're called?).
  • msvreadsbooks on The Last Resort – Meh.Then this book is for you! Haha. It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
  • andtheIToldYouSos on Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.ONE OF US ONE OF US
  • andtheIToldYouSos on Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.I let the art come my way through the Tor instagram...if I sought it out, I'd never stop!
  • Sandra Hennessey on Book Club Discussion: The Glass HotelPerhaps you should stop reading her novels. Station 11 is the outlier— her other novels are much more like this one. I love her writing...
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in