update and review
Jun. 15th, 2006 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kodalaiMy update is... well, there's nothing much happening. I'm holding down three jobs at the library, workin for (let's be honest) shit pay for untrained work. Until I hear back decisively from JET, I can't really in good faith enter into any more involved commitment, and I suppose to be honest I could use the break from rigorous intellectual activity, too.
Although I find I'm taking it out elsewhere. My mailroom job leaves me with a lot of time to sit and read, and I voluntarily sat down with Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.
The book is... well, I'll just quote one of the reviews included in the copy. "This book should be required reading for every high school student in America. Also every adult in America. In fact, it should just be required reading for everybody." And I really think it should. I might even go so far as to say it's more important for Americans to be educated on this subject, with this book, than on the tempest of politics. Because presidents come and go, wars come and go, and they may or may not crash profoundly into every American citizen's life, but McDonald's.... McDonald's endures.
I'll warn you, it's not an easy read. It took me more than a week to get through it despite the inevitable workday reading periods; it's a long book, the text is very dense with information, and the style, while easy and readable, is not the bouncy, jocular sort of journalism that goes by in a flash. But it's worth it. You should, of course, approach the text with the same critical eye you approach every text -- keep in mind the author's motives, and watch their phrasing, understand how they're using statistics and what the numbers really mean, and in the end you may or may not agree with his analysis. But there's just so many facts in this book that everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to know. Schlosser himself notes, in an afterword, that his book has been roundly denounced by fast food and meatpacking industries (surprise, surprise;) but also observes that no critic has ever actually disproved any individual factual claim in the text.
On a more personal level, I read this book with a kind of guilty satisfaction. Satisfaction, because my family (probably knowing most if not all of what's in this book) always adamantly avoided fast food, and I inherited the distate and aversion without really ever knowing why. I have never in my life, not even once, voluntarily eaten at a McDonald's. Fast Food Nation thoroughly validated and vindicated my vague feelings of revulsion and suspicion towards Ronald McDonald, Burger King, Disney, hamburgers and beef in general. (Guilty because I continue to be guilty of other fast food transgressions, like eating at Pizza Hut or Dominoe's and inconsiderately regularly consuming chicken; also because I held feelings of self-righteous superiority before being able to justify them.)
Parts of it are pretty disturbing. It's kind of hard to say which is more stomach-turning -- the description of the conditions of the illegal immigrant worker forces in the meat-procesing industry (This book has been likened, and fairly, to a modern-day Upton Sinclair's The Jungle) or the less graphic, more subtle, but no less horrifying analysis of the prostitution of America's children to advertising. One way or another, Fast Food Nation carries a message that every American -- of every ethnicity, every class, every political or social orientation -- needs to hear.
Lined up next on my mailroom reading list is One Hundred Years of Solitude, on a reccomendation from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ayelle, and then Tolkein's The Silmarillion.
I've also been to see X-men 3; and while I won't include any spoilers here, I'll say that it's a very entertaining movie with very clumsy handling of all involved issues, and internal plot inconsistencies the size of dinner plates. My tagline for the movie: THEY FINALLY LEARNED.
Although I find I'm taking it out elsewhere. My mailroom job leaves me with a lot of time to sit and read, and I voluntarily sat down with Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.
The book is... well, I'll just quote one of the reviews included in the copy. "This book should be required reading for every high school student in America. Also every adult in America. In fact, it should just be required reading for everybody." And I really think it should. I might even go so far as to say it's more important for Americans to be educated on this subject, with this book, than on the tempest of politics. Because presidents come and go, wars come and go, and they may or may not crash profoundly into every American citizen's life, but McDonald's.... McDonald's endures.
I'll warn you, it's not an easy read. It took me more than a week to get through it despite the inevitable workday reading periods; it's a long book, the text is very dense with information, and the style, while easy and readable, is not the bouncy, jocular sort of journalism that goes by in a flash. But it's worth it. You should, of course, approach the text with the same critical eye you approach every text -- keep in mind the author's motives, and watch their phrasing, understand how they're using statistics and what the numbers really mean, and in the end you may or may not agree with his analysis. But there's just so many facts in this book that everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to know. Schlosser himself notes, in an afterword, that his book has been roundly denounced by fast food and meatpacking industries (surprise, surprise;) but also observes that no critic has ever actually disproved any individual factual claim in the text.
On a more personal level, I read this book with a kind of guilty satisfaction. Satisfaction, because my family (probably knowing most if not all of what's in this book) always adamantly avoided fast food, and I inherited the distate and aversion without really ever knowing why. I have never in my life, not even once, voluntarily eaten at a McDonald's. Fast Food Nation thoroughly validated and vindicated my vague feelings of revulsion and suspicion towards Ronald McDonald, Burger King, Disney, hamburgers and beef in general. (Guilty because I continue to be guilty of other fast food transgressions, like eating at Pizza Hut or Dominoe's and inconsiderately regularly consuming chicken; also because I held feelings of self-righteous superiority before being able to justify them.)
Parts of it are pretty disturbing. It's kind of hard to say which is more stomach-turning -- the description of the conditions of the illegal immigrant worker forces in the meat-procesing industry (This book has been likened, and fairly, to a modern-day Upton Sinclair's The Jungle) or the less graphic, more subtle, but no less horrifying analysis of the prostitution of America's children to advertising. One way or another, Fast Food Nation carries a message that every American -- of every ethnicity, every class, every political or social orientation -- needs to hear.
Lined up next on my mailroom reading list is One Hundred Years of Solitude, on a reccomendation from
ayelle, and then Tolkein's The Silmarillion.I've also been to see X-men 3; and while I won't include any spoilers here, I'll say that it's a very entertaining movie with very clumsy handling of all involved issues, and internal plot inconsistencies the size of dinner plates. My tagline for the movie: THEY FINALLY LEARNED.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 02:24 pm (UTC)I was surprised, not because I didn't know about that sort of thing but because I don't really think of it. High Fructose Corn Syrup is corn. And it is in everything. Even the cows eat corn, and so cows are made of corn.. or something like that. but yeah. similar sentiments, just proving how stupid americans are about food.
i really liked london.. sigh!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 05:24 pm (UTC)This entry comes just as I'm looking around and frustratedly estimating I've read each book here at least three times and concluding I need new reading material. So. Might just pick it up. ^^
no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 09:50 pm (UTC)http://www.fastfoodnation-movie.com/
no subject
Date: 2006-07-13 08:24 am (UTC)