I just visited the website for the 100-Mile Diet and discovered that the book's US title isn't 'The 100-Mile Diet'. Instead, they're calling it Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.
Bejaysus! What a terrible title. 'Plenty' tells me nothing. The subtitle tells me less. Maybe they had a weekly food fight. Clubs of food geeks have started to spring up around the idea of implementing a 100-mile diet. Will food geek clubs spring up around eating 'plenty?'
What are they reinventing by changing the title? There's a whole online buzz around the idea of the 100-mile diet. Do a search: The title is friggin' self explanatory! The only results for 'Plenty' are for the specific book title itself, and then only from booksellers offering the book. There's no grassroots, no word of mouth, no energy. Look at the page for the US edition on their website and it even says 'The 100-Mile Diet Book (US Edition).' I mean: W.T.F?
There's no confusion over distance; they didn't call it the 100-Kilometer Diet. They didn't call the book 'Vancouver's local eating habits' or something that makes it only applicable to our region of the world. It's meant as a specific example, rooted in the local, of how people can choose to eat sustainably.
Maybe I'm reacting so strongly because I read the first two chapters of the book on the weekend and I'm charmed by it and I can just taste how terrible the US title is. Plenty is the California strawberry of titles -- all taste has been bred out of it for the sake of being placeless, of being transportable to anywhere.
And if you're in Vancouver and want to meet the authors of the 100-Mile Diet, they'll be doing a reading and presentation at UBC Robson Centre on Monday, May 14. Sign up is free but you have to get your name on the list through the UBC website.
Posted by James Sherrett at May 4, 2007 12:29 AM