Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

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Solar Power Your Home for Dummies is one of the more popular books out on solar power for homes. Since it’s part of the “for Dummies” series, it is likely basic to intermediate. The reveiws on this one are all over the map. — Zana Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just been going through the top books at Amazon in the sustainable living category, deciding which ones to feature. For some of them, I have to read quite a few of the reviews to get my own sense of them. I used to be a librarian, so evaluating books is something I love to do!

When I got to this one, I didn’t have to ponder it for even a minute. This Rodale reference book is  extremely useful. I have relied on this book (and earlier incarnations of it) myself, both in libraries when helping people and in my own gardens. Its subtitle is deserved: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals. – Zana
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End your worries about garden problems with safe, effective solutions from The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control! Read the rest of this entry »

This book  is currently one of the bestsellers at Amazon in the sustainable living category. Decluttering really helps with living in smaller spaces. If you tend to be cluttered, try playing around with greater simplicity in your apartment, house, motorhome, or whatever you live in — and see how it makes you feel! I have lived in very small spaces a LOT and have fought my packrat tendencies many times. — Zana

Product Description
When Peter Walsh, organizational guru of TLC’s hit show Clean Sweep and a regular contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show, appeared on national television shows and told people how they could reclaim their lives from the suffocating burden of their clutter, the response was overwhelming. People flooded Peter’s website (www.peterwalshdesign.com) with success stories about how his book had changed their lives.

Peter’s unique approach helped people everywhere learn to let go of the emotional and psychological clutter that was literally and figuratively choking the life out of their homes. Read the rest of this entry »

The Winter harvest Handbook caught my eye because we are moving back to Colorado after four years in Mexico. We’ve been growing year-round in our organic garden beds in Mexico, but the frost-free season at eight thousand feet is not that long! Luckily, the house that we bought already has a solar greenhouse attached, so we’ll have a good start. I see that Eliot Coleman is from Maine, so he has got to know a lot about cold weather gardening!

• ISBN13: 9781603580816
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine. Read the rest of this entry »

Barbara Kingsolver opened my eyes to the locavore (local eating) movement and the importance of getting as much of your food as possible from nearby sources.

I love this book. I must have read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle three or four times, always savoring different aspects. As you can see below, not every oneone agrees with me, but that’s to be expected. I highly recommend it, now available as hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, you name it.

• ISBN13: 9780060852566
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they?d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann, is a depressing book and an optimistic one.  I found it both VERY depressing and VERY optimistic. When a friend offered to lend it to me,  I wasn’t going to take it till I noticed who had written it. Hartmann is a prolific and profound writer on many subjects.

I took the book and buried it in a large pile until I had the emotional stamina to tackle the state of the world. That was a couple of days ago.  For two days, off and on, I read one discouraging fact after another until my heart was down in my shoes.

“I’m not going to read any more of it today,” I said to my husband at dinner last night. “I want a good night’s sleep and if I read one more example of how the planet is being destroyed, I think I will melt down.”

So I did other things during the evening. But a curiosity was growing in me. He had held out the carrot at the start of the book, that the ending was optimistic. I kept wondering how he was going to pull that off. Read the rest of this entry »