Hey, did you know that if you eat tomatoes from the grocery store, you’re literally eating the fruit of slave labor?

Yeah, me neither.

Not only are commercially grown tomatoes artificially “degreened” by ethylene gas until their skins take on the familiar reddish hue – just one of the reasons store-bought tomatoes taste either like crap or nothing – but the relentless drive by the humongous Florida tomato industry has created a modern-day slave trade not seen in the U.S. since we supposedly ended slavery in 1865.

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook is hard-hitting investigative journalism in the best sense of the word: the horrors he uncovers about tomato agriculture, both in terms of the food we eat and the people who grow it, are disturbing and uncomfortable, but that’s the point.

Not since  Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and E. Benjamin Skinner’s A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery – two books that should be required reading for every American – have  I been forced to think so deeply about the unthinkable things that go on in every day in my country. And not since Food, Inc. have I made such immediate and clear choices about the food I will buy and eat from here on out.

Tomatoland was at times hard to read. But it was also, in a word, life-changing.

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What can you do? Grow your own tomatoes, or buy them from a local farmer’s market. If you have to buy a store-bought tomato, those from in California or Mexico are far less likely to be exposed to as many pesticides or harvested by slave labor.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a copy of the book that I borrowed from the public library.

I’ve been meaning to read American Wife for ages, since I’m a Curtis Sittenfeld fan, but I kept holding off for one big reason: did I really want to read a novel based on the life of former first lady Laura Bush?

The answer, it turned out, was very much yes.

I’ve long said that Sittenfeld’s gift is writing so well that one falls straight through the prose and into the story – that same effortlessness that makes reading anything by Stephen King such an engrossing pleasure – and this was no less true with American Wife. In a tale that spans decades, beginning with Alice Blackwell’s childhood and traveling all the way up until the middle of her years in the White House, Sittenfeld has pulled off a portrait of an interesting and complex woman whose poise, intelligence and beliefs were almost always overshadowed by the personality traits and actions of her husband, the political power and connections of her in-laws, and the assumptions and anger of an increasingly war-weary public. To say that Alice Blackwell – and the woman she fictionally portrays – was misunderstood is an understatement.

The last, short section of this novel felt less fleshed out compared to the carefully woven story of family dynamics and drama that came before, but it is a small disappointment compared to the overall pleasure of this surprisingly compelling book.

Sometimes I simply don’t know enough to be fascinated. American Wife corrected that, and I was hooked.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a copy of the book that I borrowed from the public library.

Sixteen-year-old Margo Crane of  Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell has been hailed by book critics from every corner as being one of the most unforgettable fictional heroines of the past decade, and they are not wrong.

Called “a 20th century Huck Finn” in the July 2011 Indie Next List, Margo is a survivor in every sense of the word, and her odyssey up and down the rural Michigan river she calls home is, in the tradition of all great epics, equal parts harrowing, haunting, and hopeful. This is both a beautiful and beautifully written story, made richer by Campbell’s masterful, almost spare prose and her main character’s incredible strength, fortitude and heart.

Margo is unforgettable, and it’s her unwillingness to flinch, matched only by the novel that tells her story equally unflinchingly, that makes this a truly excellent, utterly captivating book. Do not miss.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a copy of the book that I borrowed from the public library.

It’s not often that I shake my head while reading a book, nodding along and fairly shouting, “Yes, yes, yes!” (there are plenty of times I shake my head while reading a book, muttering, “No, no, no,” which occurs right before I stop reading it and/or throw it across the room), but that’s exactly what happened with The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk, aka @garyvee.

Fine, so I’m a Vaniac, so what? I love Gary’s tremendous passion for what he does. (Anyone who gets so fired up and stays so real he regularly swears during talks to huge crowds wins points in my book, which comes as a surprise to exactly no one who knows me in even the remotest way.) Gary and his ghostwriter, who he openly credits for getting his thoughts down on paper (more points), distill a small portion of that passion into this book, creating a simple syrup out of Gary’s beliefs about committing to and caring about one’s customers.

It’s true this is a business book, and it’s true I tore through it because it’s extremely relevant and applicable both to my business and what I do literally every single day, but more than that, it inspired the hell out of me. And that’s all I really ask out of a business book: to fire me up and stay real and, as a bonus, teach me something along the way.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on my own copy of this book.

It’s not just that Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander is a funny Holocaust novel (yes, you read that correctly, and it is extremely funny), it’s that its main protagonist manages to ask the really big, really important questions while remaining somehow tender, paranoid, and hopelessly human at the same time.

Set in rural New York and populated by a small cast of superbly vivid characters – including perhaps the most famous victim of the Holocaust, who turns out to be very much alive and continuing her diaries – this is a fast-paced, well-constructed and strangely delightful story.

It’s possible for a novel to be all at once hilarious, twisted, wonderful and mordantly true. Hope: A Tragedy proves it.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a copy of the book that I received from the publisher.

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a tiny (what were you expecting?), enjoyable read. Something heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, sometimes just plain weird, this little gem of a book should be forgiven for the few places it falls short and enjoyed for the small pleasures it offers, overall.

Brain Pickings has a lovely round-up of page shots and video from the book, if you’re so inclined.

FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a copy of the book that I received from the publisher.

After nearly ten years of on-and-off blogging, a year and a half of which has been (mostly off) on this blog, I finally sprang for a custom design and my own little corner domain with a window. Ain’t it just the prettiest?

Huge props to Sarah Fite of Momalom for taking a lump of unformed blog and making it shine. Thank you for all your hard work and mad skillz, Sarah!

Now, onto 2012 and a new resolve to write more actual posts instead of writing them in my head. Happy New Year and happy reading, people!

What’s more overdue than this blog post? Lots of things, but whatever. Onwards.

A few weeks ago (please let it only have been a few weeks), my friend Brian of The Cheek of God emailed and asked if I’d be interested in a guest review. Brian’s an excellent writer and an avid reader, and I trust his opinions about books, which is actually (unsurprisingly, characteristically, ridiculously) pretty rare.

I’ve been meaning to post about the thoughtful, beautifully written Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom for the Urban Wilderness by Lynda Lynn Haupt, but things got away from me. And really, Brian wrote a great review, and I’d be remiss to keep it from you any longer, so dang it, here it is.

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Tom Perrotta (Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher) is a friend of mine on Facebook. And we keep it real. For example, just the other day I told him that I had enjoyed his recent short story (“Senior Season”) more than I was enjoying his latest novel, The Leftovers (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). I was frustrated, having reached nearly page 100 and finding nary a compelling plot in sight. Even as a recovering Pentecostal, I still find the notion of a rapture of the chosen ones more than a tiny bit intriguing; I listen for the trumpet still today. So Perrotta’s premise, of a rapture-like “Sudden Departure” and how it affects one particular small-town family, drew me in.

And then left me hanging. I wanted more, for the story to move forward, beyond those left behind to deal with the aftermath. They weren’t very interesting, after all. They just kept remembering they way things had been and spinning their wheels, only to crash into yet another day. A day with still no answers.

Others chimed in after I left my comment and told me to persevere. So I did. And a funny thing happened…I started to enjoy the story. As I spent more and more uninterrupted time with them, each character settled down into a familiar groove and just started living. The sort of living I admire, filled with surprises and knee-jerk emotions and contemplative moments where things almost start to make sense, only to vanish in a cloud of smoke. I began to care for these people, even as they did the most amazingly, and sometimes shockingly, unexpected things.

If time permits, read The Leftovers in as few sittings as possible.  In and out of it didn’t work for me, and probably won’t for you either. Let it steal you away, like a rapture would.  And enjoy the ride…