I recently finished Paul Roberts’ The End of Food.  Don’t read it.  I can sum it up in one word: DOOM.

This book explores the current system of food production as it has moved from the western world and is currently moving into the developing world.  As food has become more available, food production has become more specialized and more cutthroat.  Profit margins keep getting cut all along the chain so that it becomes necessary to produce more volume of higher value products which leads to pushing the system well past its tolerances for safety and sustainability.  The system will fail dramatically – whether it’s due to an epidemic, climate change,  an economic crisis, or some other factor.  There is no hope or solution, we’re all going to die when the system finally collapses.

It’s this total lack of even a glimmer of hope that I found most peculiar about this book.  Usually the author has some kind of solution, however impractical and fanciful it may be.  To his credit, the author doesn’t seem to delight in our certain doom.

The more I read, the harder I found it difficult to take this book seriously.  If we’re all inevitably doomed (even the survivalists are included) then what’s the point?  He doesn’t say so explicitly but it seems that the purpose of this book is that after the crisis comes and most of the population is wiped out, the survivors will be able to look at this book and tell each other that this guy saw it coming. 

From spiked’s review:

What isn’t entirely clear to me is why the book was written, other than to make its readers anxious – or rather, to appeal to a generalized sense of anxiety that already exists. The book seeks to throw up terrible scenarios that might occur, but rather than suggesting that society might innovate around these emerging problems to develop something better, the assumption seems to be that big corporations will buy off our useless political leaders or that the technical problems we face are simply insurmountable.  — Rob Lyons

Really, don’t read this book.  The only reason to read it is if you’re deeply pessimistic and want confirmation that the human race is doomed.  Go listen to a TED talk where problems are faced with courage and resourcefulness.  Go plant a tree or a garden.  If this book is right, you’re dead no matter what you do and if it’s wrong the solutions are going to come through thoughtful action and not from pessimistic navel gazing. 

Tags: book, quote, read, review

I read Patrick Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind a few days ago.  It was a decent book, but probably a couple hundred pages too long.

Name of the Wind tells the story of Kvothe who has become a legend in his own lifetime and now hides away as an innkeeper in a backwater town.  This book covers the early part of his life as a child (and later teen) prodigy.  This book is fantasy and I’ve found that so far the magic system seems reasonable to me.  There are a lot of unanswered questions in this book, which is hardly surprising as it is the first book in a series.

In reading this book, I was reminded of a cliche described in Beyond Heaving Bosoms – a heroine is constantly described as brilliant and yet every time you get to see her in action, she acts like an idiot.  Kvothe struck me as this kind of hero.   It got really annoying and I kept hoping that someone would show up to slap some sense into him.  The book is too long for the ground it covers – there were a number of page-long scenes that could have been covered with a few sentences. 

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de St. Exupery

I will probably read the next book in this series on a slow day.  I really don’t have much hope for it though.  I’d love to see this author write with a 300 page limit as I think there is a good story in there somewhere. 

Tags: book, quote, read, review