This review will be short and sweet because 1. I read this book over a month ago 2. It was kinda boring.

I will lay out my issues with this book for you and hopefully save you from some of the confusion it caused me.

Let’s start with the title: “The Butcher and The Vegetarian.” I don’t know about you but when I saw this title I thought the book might be about a butcher and a vegetarian. Call me crazy but that is what the title says to me.

Now let’s examine the cover. You can see “the butcher,” he’s the guy standing behind the meat counter handing a wrapped package to a lady we assume is “the vegetarian.” Above their heads is a heart coming from thought bubbles belonging to each of them. Now if I were to judge this book by it’s cover, even if I took the title out of play, I would think this was a book about a woman falling in love with a butcher and him also falling in love with her.  Pretty straightforward, right? Then we add the title in and this book just HAS to be a love story involving a butcher and a vegetarian.

One more thing we find if we look at the inside flap of the book, an excerpt from the description reads: “Warily, she ventured into the butcher shop, and as the man behind the counter wrapped up her first-ever chicken, she found herself charmed. Eventually, he dared her to cook her way through his meat counter…”

SO, if you haven’t read this book, you probably think, as I did, that it is a book about a butcher and vegetarian. This book is not about  butcher and  vegetarian. It’s about a vegetarian. There is no love story, at least not one involving two people falling in love. I’d venture to say there is no love story at all. There is an exploration. The vegetarian tries new foods and likes some and dislikes some and learns a lot about meat and how it affects her health and the health of the world. The event mentioned in the excerpt simply did not happen.

Throughout the book I kept waiting for the charming butcher to arrive on the scene and turn the book into the love story it promised to be. That never happened. This really soured me on the book. If the book had just been HONEST about what it was; maybe a title like “In Search of the Right Food for Me” or “My Food Journey” or even “Meat and The Vegetarian,” I would have felt better about it. If the cover art had shown the heart bubble between the meat package and the lady, it would have been more true to the book.

If I have saved one person from shaking this book upside down and waiting for a love story to fall out, I feel I have done my duty.

The end.

 Guess what? You can get pretty much any book you want FOR FREE, just around the corner from where you live! It’s true! You just walk right in, tell ‘em what book you want and they hand it over to you. Now, you don’t get to keep it forever but you do get to keep it for as long as it takes you to finish it. This free book fantasyland is called “The Library” and though it may seem like I’m being a bit sarcastic here, really, I’m not.

See, I used to spend a lot of my hard(ish) earned money on books. Books that I usually only read once and then added to the ever-growing collection in my towering, wall-to-wall book shelves. My new year’s resolution this year was to STOP BUYING BOOKS. It sounds so easy but I was scared. I (shamefully) hadn’t used the public library since I was about 13. Sure, I used the school library for projects and reports but for some reason I plumb forgot that there was a public library in every town I have ever lived in that was chock full of the books I was paying $14.95 a piece for! It seems totally crazy when you think about it. Last year I probably spent well over a couple hundred dollars on books. I am an avid reader, I always have a book I’m reading and I sometimes read up to a book a week. Used book stores helped defray some of the cost of all these books but really, I was buying the cow when I could have gotten the milk for free. I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!

I got a Los Angeles library card a few years ago on a tour of the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles. They explained on the tour how the LA Library system is streamlined and connected to make it easy to get a book from any LA library delivered to the one nearest you so you can pick it up at your convenience. I got my card on the spot then promptly did nothing with it. That is, until this year when I mustered up the courage to go online and test out this supposedly easy system. Turns out, it was just as easy as they said it would be. I found the book I wanted, put a hold on it and checked back in a day to see if it was ready for pick up. All this from the comfort of my couch! When the book was ready at my library of choice, I swung by and walked up to the front desk where they scanned my library card (which conveniently attaches to my keychain!!!) and handed over my book with a receipt that provided me with the due date. It was that simple.

The pictures in this post are all from my chosen library, the Westwood branch.

I love this place. It is everything you expect a library to be and more. It’s incredibly quiet (of course) but also just tranquil and peaceful. It has huge windows that reveal lush green tree tops and bright blue sky, it almost feels like reading in a tree house when you sit near these windows.

There is a great kids area with stunning butterfly wing stained glass windows. The building is beautifully made with interesting materials and sculptures. It has an airy, open feel but also has small rooms downstairs from the main library area for meetings and book groups.

If you, like me, forgot about this amazing resource, maybe now is the time to reconsider. Just think of all the money you could save! Check it out: www.lapl.org (get it? check it out?. Punny, I know.)
PS. If you’re really lucky, someone will leave little surprises in the books that you get to discover! I’ve found photos, notes, grocery lists and boarding passes!