25 Books You Can't Put Down
Go on, take what you need. A perfect mystery, a mouthful of poetry...;
O serves up a smorgasbord of the
summer's best reads.
By Cathleen Medwick
Farm City by Novella Carpenter
288 pages; Penguin
Marie Antoinette wore potato blossoms in her hair. Novella Carpenter, on the other hand, finds herself up to her neck in gizzards and sizzling compost. Farm City (Penguin) is Carpenter's delectable story of how she turned a "ghetto squat lot" in Oakland, California, into a working urban farm. Making cameo appearances here: a flashy neighbor called Lana (that's "anal" spelled backward, the woman helpfully explains), a pair of turkeys named Harold and Maude, lettuce-loving Black Panthers, and some engaging future bacon.
From the
July 2009 issue of
O, The Oprah Magazine
