I just finished Ruth Ozeki’s mind-blowing novel, My Year of Meat, and want to highly recommend it to all you bookworms out there! New and used copies of it found here at Amazon.com here and Barnes & Noble.com. (Note: it was first published in 1988 with the slightly different title, My Year of Meats). It’s would be a great Christmas gift, perfect for after you’ve gorged yourself on plates of Christmas dinner roast beef and prime rib.
I know, I know. You’re probably like, “Oh no, this one of those crazy pro-vegan books, right?” Far from it. But I will admit that, as someone who is infamous for eating steak for breakfast (medium rare, please, and on the rare side!), it rocked my meat-loving world. I still can’t bring myself to eat beef again… yet.
It’s about Jane Takagi-Little, an aspiring documentary-maker, who produces a Japanese TV show about “the wholesomeness and deliciousness” of American beef, which unknowingly connects her with Akiko Ueno, a Japanese housewife who lives on the other side of the world, diligently cooking each “Meat of the Week” for her demanding salaryman husband.
Complex, funny, eye-opening, and heart-wrenching, the story effortlessly interweaves issues on American culture, Japanese women, health, and, of course, what goes into my beloved medium-rare sirloin steak.
The book is even in eleven languages and published in fourteen countries. It won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award, the Imus/Barnes and Noble American Book Award, and a Special Jury Prize of the World Cookbook Awards in Versailles. Seriously, read it!
Learn more about author Ruth Ozeki on her website here.
