The Gist: Good evening VegNews Book Clubbers! It is the second week of reading My Year of Meats, a novel by Ruth L. Ozeki. We read a good chunk of the book for this week, and both Jane and Akiko, the two main characters, have further developed. Jane has been able to direct several of the My American Wife! episodes, allowing her to make more authentic choices for the show, including a Mexican family, a large family through adoption, and Polish family with a handicapped daughter. Jane has also started to learn more about the meat industry, finding out about the antibiotics in meat after the previous director, Oda, had a seizure after eating some veal that a featured wife for the show had made, due to the fact that he was allergic to antibiotics. Jane also is learning more about the hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), an artificial growth stimulant for farm animals.

Akiko is having problems of her own—she is unable to keep down food which is making her infertile, and her husband, John, is becoming more and more abusive. She is definitely unhappy, but due to her culture, she feels trapped in the marriage, which was arranged by her boss and John's boss.

The Discussion: I hope you're enjoying the book as much as myself. Here are two discussion points to help get the conversation started. I look forward to hearing from you!

1. As you may have noticed, each chapter opens with an excerpt from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book. Do you feel that this interjection from another work enriches the novel? How so? If not, why?

2. Do you think that either Jane or Akiko will eventually become vegetarian? Why?

The Assignment: Please read chapters 7 to 9 for our discussion on Monday, November 15.

~VN Book Club Hostess Lyndsay Orwig

The Gist: Good afternoon VegNews Book Clubbers! It is now November, and we have begun to read the novel, My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki. The book has two main characters—Jane Takagi-Little and Akiko Ueno. Jane is an American documentary filmmaker with an American father and a Japanese mother. At the start of the book, she has been offered a job to run a television series called My American Wife!, which documents "real" American women, their families, and the meat they cook for them, in order to bring the American Heartland to Japanese women—Akiko being one of them. The shows only sponsor is the Beef Export and Trade Syndicate (BEEF-EX), who has its sights set on Asia. Hence, the new show.

We're only three chapters in so far, but so far the narration has gone back and forth between Jane's point of view to Akiko's, who lives in Japan, and whose husband is the representative of the ad agency in charge of marketing the meats. Akiko's husband has pretty much ordered Akiko to watch the show and to participate by cooking the meat recipes displayed on the show. Akiko is extremely unhappy, and her health is a reflection of it—she's bone thin and cannot menstruate. Her husband, Joichi (or "John"), wants her to put meat, literally, on her bones so that they can have a baby together.

Already, there are connections between the two main characters, particularly with The Pillow Book—Sei Shonagon's book of observations and musings. It is mainly a diary of sorts. They also both seem to be unhappy with their lives at the moment.

The Discussion: I am really enjoying this book so far! I have always been more of a fiction reader myself, because I love to lose myself while reading, and fiction helps me to do just that. Here are two discussion points to help get the conversation started. I look forward to hearing from you!

1. What do you think of the two main characters so far? Are there any similarities between the two? How do they complement each other?

2. It's sad, but My American Wife! sounds an awful lot like current reality TV shows on air. What are your thoughts on reality television? Do you think it shows a negative portrayal of American society?

The Assignment: Please read chapters 4 to 6 for our discussion on Monday, November 8.

~VN Book Club Hostess Lyndsay Orwig