Book Club

Welcome to the TCU "Think Purple, Live Green" Book Club.  The book chosen for the theme semester is The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  Participants will meet monthly to discuss questions such as those listed below, and to share your individual thoughts about the content of the provocative book.

The TCU "Think Purple, Live Green" Book Club will meet on the following dates and times at the locations listed.  Multiple days and times are listed each month in order to provide you options to fit your schedule.  Ideally, participants will participate one time per month.  

Check the theme semester calendar on the home page to determine if additional days and times have been added during the semester.  

Amazon.com offers the book in used condition beginning at $11.00 (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823). You can read the introduction and first chapter online at Pollan’s web site at http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore_excerpt.pdf or http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php.

Date	Time	Location
September
October 15, Wednesday	12:00 - 12:45	BLUU Market Square Private Dining Room
November 12, Wednesday	12:00 - 12:45	BLUU Market Square Private Dining Room

NOTE: The use of the private dining rooms require participants to purchase a meal.  The cost is $8.00 for all-you-can-eat.  Another option is to purchase 50 meals for $300 as a payroll deduction.  Eating at the Market Square will help members of the book club eat within the context of a dining facility and may provide an interesting context to the discussion.  

 

Discussion questions

Which of the four meals Pollan describes--fast food, industrial organic, "beyond organic," or entirely self-made--is closest to what you normally eat? Did you learn anything about how it's made that surprised you? Will you make any changes in your eating habits as a result?

"If nature won't draw a line around human appetites, then human culture must step in," Pollan writes. Are there certain foods you won't eat for moral, philosophical, or environmental reasons? If so, when and why did you decide to stop eating them?

Pollan believes that Americans are particularly subject to food fads and anxieties because we have "no strong, stable culinary tradition to guide us." What are your family or community traditions, if any, and how do they (or the lack of them) affect your relationship with food?

Have you ever grown, fished, or hunted your own food? How does the experience of eating it compare to eating something from a grocery store or restaurant?

Pollan writes that the pleasures of eating are "deepened by knowing." Do you agree, or are there some things you'd rather not know about your food?

"Even if the vegetarian is a more highly evolved human being," Pollan writes, "it seems to me he has lost something along the way"--namely, his or her links to cultural and family traditions, history, and biology. What do you think?

"Eating's not a bad way to get to know a place," Pollan writes. Describe a meal that deepened your understanding of a location you lived in or visited.

"Is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms?" Pollan asks, deciding that it is. Do you agree?

Discussion questions developed by the Sierra Club (see http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/letstalk/nov_2006/book.asp)

About the author: Michael Pollan (link his name to http://www.michaelpollan.com/) is a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. His previous books include The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder, and Second Nature: A Gardener's Education. Pollan was honored with a James Beard Foundation Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-IUCN Media Award for environmental journalism in 1999.