Customer Reviews

Glass Paper Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things

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Glass, Paper, Beans is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I have just completed it for the second time. Each time I read it, it opens my eyes a little more to the idea that to everything, there is a story. We as adults are often like little children who think milk comes from a store, having little or no concept of the work it took to get it there. It is comforting in a way to know that I am connected to so many people through the ordinary things of life, and those people lives are complex, creative, and hold a beauty all their own. I enjoyed Cohen's insight into three lives and how they interacted with initial stages of each product, bringing details of their private lives into play, weaving the two together. Cohen's book brings with it a greater appreciation for the ordinary things in my life. I know that people are behind them, not a new revelation, but now brought to life.

I loved this book! The author starts with a simple train of thought and follows it on a sort of quest to investigate the "stories" behind everyday objects. In the course of her investigations she examines myths, histories and philosophies surrounding these things. The book is kept from becoming dry by the vivid pictures she makes of the people she meets in her investigations. Beautifully, almost poetically written, she uses simple language to convey some very complex ideas. ...A book to make you think.

This is one of those books that resonates with me yearsafter having read it. The book's starting point is the author sitting in a cafe drinking coffee in a glass mug, reading a paper. She realizes that she has no idea where the stuff she is surrounded by comes from. This book answers the question in the beautiful prose I have come to expect from this gifted writer. The story of each item is told from historic and personal viewpoints. This is an essential book!

Leah Cohen is a great author, and a wonderful professor. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is detailed, thorough, and thought-provoking.

and finally gave it away. While I think it's a great concept, I don't find it a page turner, or enough to make me care about any of the three characters Ms. Hager Cohen follows throughout the book.

Leah Hager Cohen ends this books with the words: everywhere you rest your eyes, invisible stories blossom. Well, in this book it is her intention to tell you every possible story about every possible thing and person that relates to every possible other thing and person, starting from her having a cup of coffee and readin the Sunday paper. This is "world in a grain of sand" gone mad. The premise is a good one, and was in fact why I bought the book in the first place. But how much is enough? Cohen doesn't appear to even care to ask the question; her editor, if there was one on the project, was probably cowering in a corner, subject to Cohen's steadfast refusal to edit out one precious word. Precious. That is the main word that comes to mind to describe this. While Cohen on the surface has intentions of getting to the root of things, to the connectedness of things, she writes in a way that calls more attention to her style of writing than to what she is trying to describe. She is a very talented writer. What comes to mind is the most talented girl in high-school, doing her best to show off and please the teacher, and get the best boy. But only now after a degree in writing.

An example, her description of fog in Mexico: "Everyone knows that the mist nourishes the coffee plants, caresses them like handmaidens with damp, cool fingers, cradles them in a moist pellicle all through the dry months." Never mind that the person she is observing only made it to the 12th grade. Never mind that I don't even know what the heck "pellicle" means, let alone him. And handmaidens in Mexico? Give me a break.

For paper, she follows a guy with a state of the art tree harvester that slices through trees like butter. Well, sure, that is the source of paper, but this is hardly a getting to know where paper is made or even one person who has their hands in the pulp.

The descriptions are rather lop-sized, weighted toward the fellow in Mexico for some inexplicible reason. And, that in and of itself could have made for an interesting study. But so many pages devoted to him, and so fewer to the lady at the glass factory (and all sorts of nonsense about her time off work) as well as that guy cutting down trees (for both lumber and paper)... well, maybe you get the idea. Cohen had an epiphany in a cafe, presumably had an editor that she could sweetalk into approving her airfare to Canada, Ohio and Mexico, and then ran (and ran) with the idea. And ran on with the sentences.

If you really want to know about glass paper or beans, you'd be better off buying seperate histories of them. And, while you will come away from this book with three portraits, of varying degrees of intimacy, you will likely also be saying to yourself.... get on with it Cohen. What does Ruth's arthritis have to do with the price of eggs?

And you know what? She could probably write you a whole book to answer that question.