I don’t mean to be so book-promo-oriented, but it really makes my dad happy to read positive reviews of my new book and I like to make my dad happy. Because why wouldn’t I want to make him happy? Just look at the stuff he creates and sends to my kids? (This is only the cover!)
First, here’s a post from my friend Michelle Van Loon. I like how she started out by explaining how mealtime wasn’t much of a joy in her growing-up years:
My mom was a diet afficionado. It seemed that she tried on for size every fad diet that came during my childhood. The Cottage Cheese Diet. The Grapefruit Diet. A few rounds of Weight Watchers. A leaning tower of Lean Cuisines stashed in the freezer. An always-uneasy relationship with “starch”, or as we like to call it/them today, carbs.
She also disliked cooking. The standard fare at our dinner table was broiled steak, defrosted Green Giant frozen vegetables and an iceberg lettuce salad. Or else takeout Chinese, pizza, or KFC. The combination of her yo-yo dieting and her allergy to the kitchen meant that mealtime was rarely much of a delight. (Continued)
Next, the Stadtmensch blog had some good things to say in a post titled “Joy. It’s What’s for Dinner.”:
Rachel Marie Stone’s book, Eat With Joy by InterVarsity Press, is a feast for those who care about issues pertaining to how society views food and the complicated area of food ethics. For those of you who know me as a guy who tends to eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants and somehow never manages to gain weight (or mass as the science textbook will state), you might be wondering why I decided to write a review of this book, much less bother to even read it. After all, my story is very different from Stone’s who, in the introduction, describes her own conflicted feelings with food as she was growing up. Generally speaking, I have not felt any such anxiety about eating food throughout my life and do not suffer from either anorexia or obesity. Indeed, I can pack away the food so well that it even led one coworker of mine to remark in a teasing way, “He’s very serious about his food.” That comment is more accurate than that coworker realized for I believe that eating well ought to play an important part in the life of a Christ follower. Therefore, Eat With Joy is a book that is very relevant to the conerns of this blog: those of calling, community, and culture. (Continued)
Then, Donald McKenzie of Dining With Donald had these very kind words:
If you have never give much thought to what you eat, how it’s produced, and what it means to eat together, this book is a very accessible primer on those subjects. This is not a scolding book, you will not be made to feel guilty about your actions or inaction in how you relate to any of the topics, particularly those relating to issues of food justice.
At its heart, what makes this book such a great new contribution is how it views eating as an extension of the grace that is offered to us in the Eucharistic meal where we feed on and are sustained by Christ. (Continued)
Finally, Alissa Wilkinson reviewed the book at Books and Culture:
Eat with Joy is a primer on eating for those exhausted by trying to do it perfectly. In each chapter, Stone tells stories from her own experience and presents a well-researched examination of an issue that faces us today—obesity, eating disorders, family meals, food justice. Then she holds it up against the Bible to help the reader understand how God’s gift of food is just that: a gift. We must cultivate and tend it—and, above all, we should be grateful for it. (Continued) There you go, Dad! (And thanks to those who took the time to read the book and write about it.)
