[Reading] Books of 2011

One of my new year's resolutions (well, anytime resolution) is to read more books. So here I hope to chronicle my literary adventures of 2011.

1. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - I still don't quite understand the whole wand thingie because I was desperately rushing to finish, so I'm sure I will re-read it. Can't wait for the movie!!

2. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - I think I actually read this book before, but I really didn't understand it the first time. The book and the movie is pretty different!

3. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

4. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix

5. Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert) - I've always been interested in the topic of marriage, and I'm glad to have read this book before getting married at the end of this year. Gilbert puts into words everything I have ever thought about in regards to marriage and much more. It's not to say that this book deterred me from entering into matrimony, but instead, it prepared me to know what I was getting into.

6. Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince - finally done with the harry potter series!! can't wait for the movie!!

7. The Double Comfort Safari Club - I still remember back in Utah when I went through the first few books of this series with a craze. It's easy reading with a take-home lesson!

8. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Eat foods. Not too much. Mostly plants. 7 little words, so much depth.

9. How Starbucks Saved My Life - I seriously thought this would be a promotional book for Starbucks, but I learned so much from it: Be humble. Embrace every challenge in life, big or small. And do not ever think that you are too great for anything. Don't be pretentious.

10. Food Fight - I will admit that there were some parts that I skimmed over, especially parts with lots of numbers and statistics... But this is a very instructive book and speaks to me greatly as my thesis was related to vending machines in jr high schools.

11. The Omnivores Dilemma

12. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson

14. Velvet Touch

15. Murder on the Orient Express

16. The Other 8 Hours

17. I Remember Nothing

18. Gang Leader for a Day

19. I Was Told There'd Be Cake

20. My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space

21. Reader's Digest Guide to Skin Care

22. Someone Will Be With You Shortly

23. Eating Chinese Food Naked

24. The Penny Pinchers Club

25. Lost and Found

26. Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood

27. Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes

28. Half Broke Horses

29. Girls in White Dresses

30. Chasing Harry Winston


31. The Hunger Games


32. The Dim Sum of All Things

33. Catching Fire


Chinese Books:
1. 占星術殺人魔法

2. 馬來鐵道之迷

3. 雙頭惡魔

4. 魔術師

5. 幻影

6. 血咒

7. 點與線

8. 花之寺殺人事件

9. 蝴蝶效應: 人生中不可忽視的小細節

10. 聖惡女


Re-reads:
1. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone

2. The Glass Castle

Attempted:
1. Sense & Sensibility - I'm sorry but I really don't see the hype about Jane Austen... I could not get myself to pass chapter 3. I suppose I will have to resort to the movies.

2. Lolita - I was actually really proud of myself for getting past half the book. Then the ramblings style of writing really got to me and I lost the battle. Quite a disturbing book though. I got the movie queue'd up in Netflix ;)

3. An Object of Beauty - I guess I expected this book to be really good based on reviews and that the author is Steve Martin. It probably is; I just can't relate to the NY lifestyle, neighborhoods, and the whole art scene.

4. 松本清張短篇傑作選 (上)

5. Shopgirl

[Reading] Eating Animals

I got into this book pretentiously knowing what to expect: that it was the story of a father-to-be questioning dietary choices available to his son. He would visit and vividly describe factory farms - I get it. But what I really got was a ton more.

Jonathan Safran Foer starts the book by questioning why we don't eat dogs. Not that he would eat a dog or supports the practice of eating men's best friends, but he questions the practice of eating fish, poultry, cattles, pigs, turkeys, and, wait a minute, why not dogs? They are not any more inferior or superior in terms of quality of meat or "animal-ness". I actually agree with his view. We don't eat dogs (or even think about eating them) because we use them as pets. What if, for instance, in a parallel universe men raise pigs as pets? Would the dogs and cats of that world become food?

The book disturbs me in not only the pictures it paints of animal life in factory farms or "farming" methods, most of which you and I probably know in the back of our heads but successfully ignores. For example: the overcrowding, the exorbitant amount of feces, and the castration/insemination (the last of which was new knowledge to me). It also describes the irony of the term "factory farming," precisely because what the factories are doing are the opposite of what we know to be traditional farming. Even the most dangerous and violent criminals have human rights to dignity and decency; what of these animals that have done nothing to perturb the human population to exist in peace? Don't they deserve any shred of decency in quality of life?

To say that one must not could not eat animals is not what Foer concludes. Eating (what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat) is personal choice, but that doesn't mean one should eat blindly. To not know where or how your food comes from and the travels it had to go through, that is simply ignorance. To be better informed and make educated decisions, that is perhaps what Foer suggests.

I'm not sure I can give up meat altogether. Throughout my college and graduate-school days, I did experiment with vegetarianism. (As a dietitian, I believe that I should attempt different diets to know what my clients and patients go through.) It seemed that my body craves animal protein from time to time. I could eat less of it, even none of it for a few days. Then the desire comes with an urgency. It's unexplainable, and I don't intend to understand it, even after reading this book. But I would like to be better learned about food sources and invest in products that have come from a better way of farming, travel, and slaughter (as best as possible anyway - is there really such a thing as humane slaughter?). I hope all is not too late and that I can improve the way my family eats as well.