Title: Eating Animals
Author: Jonathan Saffran Foer
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 346
Rating: 3.5/5
I‘ve had this book for a while now, but I was a little bit intimidated by it and I’ve also heard a few things about Jonathan Saffran Foer that I’m not particularly keen on. On the flipside, this is a beautiful-looking book and so it had that going for it, and I’m glad that I finally picked it up in the end.
Sure, I don’t see entirely eye-to-eye with Foer on everything that he writes about here, but it was quite useful still because there was a bunch of research that I hadn’t come across before and some different statistics that I could use to improve my own arguments. Other than that though, there wasn’t a huge amount here for me.
Part of the problem is that it’s more of an account of his personal journey, and it’s not one that I could really relate to. Then there’s the fact that there are quite a few super boring sections including one long bit which was basically just a list of different definitions. It didn’t exactly make for engaging reading.
In fact, that’s one of my issues with the book as a whole. Foer’s writing style was kind of dry and while the information itself was good, I wasn’t particularly into the way that it was being conveyed. I wasn’t really mad keen on the way that his own personal experiences crept in, even though it was kind of required for the way that he told the story.
So that brings me on to the big question of whether I’d recommend this one, and unfortunately there’s really no easy answer. I mean, I guess I would if you’re a Foer fan or if you want to know more about animal agriculture, but I’d also argue that Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery is probably a better resource, though it goes into even more detail and so it might be overwhelming. Other than that, I guess it’s just okay. So yeah.
