Finish this quote: The man who does not read good books has ...

I've read a lot of books about being green, going green, sustainability, environmentalism, organic & natural food and our broken food system in the past couple of years. And there is still a pile of them waiting to be read. A new one just arrived in the mail yesterday.

I haven't written about all of them, but I have written about quite a few. While I'm gearing up for my 500th post that will happen sometime next week, I'm looking back at some of the posts I've written over the past two years. Today, I've got links to some of my book reviews or book recommendations.

Dr. Seuss was a Tree Hugger - One of my very first posts, short and sweet, about one of my all time favorite books, The Lorax.

Reusing and Recycling: A Lesson from Grandma Prisbrey - My youngest son and I learned about this amazing woman, Tressa Prisbrey from a book we grabbed from the library one day. Bottle Houses is a beautifully illustrated biography that tells about the village of houses she built out of bottles and other things found at the dump.

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic - Our desire to consume causes problems socially, emotionally and environmentally. Affluenza is inspiring, and despite its serious message, an entertaining read.

Serve God, Save the Planet - This short post leads you to a review I did on Sustainablog for this book that I believe Christians and non-Christians can take inspiration from.

Green Reading for Read Across America Day - A list of books that I recommended for anyone looking for something to sink their teeth into.

Simply Green Parties - For some clever ideas on how to green up any celebration, I recommended this book by Danny Seo.

The Green Teen - This recently published book by one of my fellow MNN bloggers Jenn Savedge is a practical and well organized resource for teens who want to get a little (or a lot greener).

And finally a few links to books I've reviewed elsewhere:

Sarah Snow's Fresh Living
Food Matters
The Unhealthy Truth
When Santa Turned Green (I'm not kidding - it's a book)
David Suzuki's Green Guide

Oops! I forgot to pick a winner!

I totally forgot to pick a winner in last week's book giveaway. The 4th of July holiday kind of threw everything out of kilter. It was a great holiday, by the way. Lots of time for good friends, good food (lots of it local), and good small town celebrating.

Okay, on to the winner of David Suzuki's Green Guide. The winner is....

GJK who not only wants to the book, but she wants my Internet Cafe, too. Sorry, the cafe is not up for grabs, but the book is.

I'll have another book to give away next week.

Book giveaway: David Suzuki's Green Guide

Welcome to week two of Robin is purging her office. Actually, we're purging lots of rooms and spent the better part of the last two days clearing out the room we call The Internet Cafe. It's a small room right off the kitchen that has the boys' computer in it, book shelves and a small table where my husband and I frequently drink coffee and work on our laptops - hence the name of room.

It's also where the boys do their homework, and by the end of the school year we were knee deep in papers and other stuff that had piled up in the small space. Purging when you're trying to be environmentally friendly is tough. I recycle all that I can and find new homes for useful things we no longer want, but sometimes there is no other option for some things than the trash can. 

But I digress. You want to know about this week's book giveaway. I'm loving this giveway option to find homes for these books.

David Suzuki's Green Guide: How to find fresher, tastier, healthier food. Create an eco-friendly home. Make sustainable transportation choices. Reduce consumption and be a green citizen.

(Seriously long name for a book, isn't it?)

I reviewed this book for Sustainablog last year. It's an information intense book. It's kind of like a resource guide for greening most of the aspects of your life.

A disclaimer: I've written a bit in the book. There are some passages underlined and a few written notes that I jotted down to remember when I wrote the review. The book is in great condition except for that, though.

Here's what you have to do to win this book:

• Leave a comment in the comment section saying you'd like the book. 
  
• Make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. The winner will be chosen randomly. If I chose you and find there is no way to contact you directly, I will chose another random winner. You can either leave your e-mail address in your comment, make sure that there is a link along with your comment that leads me to contact information, or as some smart people did last week - leave me your twitter name.
  
• Live in the U.S. Sorry, I can't ship to other countries at the moment.
• The contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Monday, June 29th. Winner will be announced onor before Wednesday, July 1st. (okay, I just realized July is only one week away - scary)

Have you checked out the  $1 charity fundraiser that I'm participating in with a group of other fine eco-bloggers yet? We're trying to raise money for an environmental group and those who donate get to vote on who gets the money. Please consider voting and donating a dollar.

And the winner is...

deoxy!

I'll be shipping National Geographic's True Green Home to deoxy who told us about one way she goes green in her home

Right now I'm trying to make my skin care greener and less toxic. I'm using jojoba oil as a moisturizer while I use up the rest of my cleanser. When it is gone, I am going to try using a mix of Castor and jojoba oils for the oil only cleansing method.

So far the jojoba is working wonderfully as a moisturizer. I was a bit skeptical, since I have somewhat oily skin, but I only use a tiny amount and have had nothing but good results.

I'll probably post the next book I'm giving away later this afternoon or evening.

Book giveaway: True green home

It's time to purge. My office is getting out of control, and I have to do some clearing out before I get swallowed up. I've been sent quite a few books over the past year to review, and I thought I could share the wealth with my readers by giving some of them away while clearing some shelf space for myself.

I'll be giving away one book a week until I've gotten rid of all of them.

First up is National Geographic's True Green Home: 100 Inspirational Ideas for Creating a Green Environment at Home. You can see my original review of the book here.

What do you have to do to win this book? It's simple.

• Leave a comment in the comment section saying you'd like the book and list one thing that you do around your own home to be more green.
  
• Make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. The winner will be chosen randomly. If I chose you and find there is no way to contact you directly, I will chose another random winner. You can either leave you e-mail address in your comment or make sure that that there is a link along with your comment that leads me to contact information.
  
• Live in the U.S. Sorry, I can't ship to other countries at the moment.
• The contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Monday, June 22nd. Winner will be announced on Wednesday, June 24th.

Books: The Green Teen by Jenn Savedge

My colleague Jenn Savedge, the parenting blogger from MNN, must be one super organized mom because not only does she parent two kids (hey, I do that), write daily for MNN (hey, I do that, too), and keep her own personal green blog, The Green Parent, (hey, I've got a personal green blog - this one), she also writes books about going green (hey, I.... want to do that some day....).

She's just published The Green Teen, a straightforward, well-organized reference book full of tips, resources and advice for eco-friendly teens. In The Green Teen, Jenn not only explains the how’s of going green; she explains the why’s, too, and helps teen to understand the importance of the part they can play in caring for the planet.

There is information on how to Green Yourself, Green Your Home, Green Your School, and Green Your World. All of the tips and advice are things that teens really do have control over - its all advice about what they can do, not what they can convince their parents to do.

From the back cover:

Let's face it: Adults will not see the devastating effects of global warming that you and your children and your children's children will ahve to face head on. So while it's a good idea to enlist the help of adults in the environmental movement, it is really up to you and your friends to spearhead the charge to change.

You have the knowledge, the skills and the POWER to save the planet. And this book can show you how.

Not only is the information in the book relevent to teens, it's been organized and presented in a manner that will get teens' attention. Lots of bulleted lists, charts, and sections that are broken up logically so teens can read through quickly and still get great information.

The book also points teens to websites and places they can text for more information. It's clear that every aspect of this book was written and designed with teenagers in mind.

I did a short review on the section about packing a waste free lunch last week on MNN.

If you've got a teen in your life who is interested in the steps he can take to be more eco-friendly, introduce him to this book.

Organic labeling rules

I was sent a copy of Sara Snow's Fresh Living to review for MNN, and I'm really impressed with the book. I've been entrenched in this green stuff for about two years now and no longer consider myself a newbie. So when a book that is meant to discuss the basics of what you can do around the home both teaches me things and holds me attention, it's a good book. 

One of the things I learned in the book was about the standards that the USDA has for labeling a food organic.

• For a product to say it is 100% organic, it must be 100% organic by weight with the exception of the water and the salt in the product. It will, of course, also carry the USDA organic seal.
• A product that isn't 100% organic, can also carry the USDA organic seal. 95% of the content by weight (except for the water and the salt) must be organic. It can have the words organic in the name of the item or on the package.
• Products that are made with 70% or more organic content can say on the front that it is "made with organic ingredients" as long as the other ingredients meet a USDA approved list. If the product is not at least 70% organic content, it cannot mention organic content on the front of the box. It cannot carry the USDA organic sea.
• If the product has less than 70% organic content, the ingredient panel can mention the organic ingredients, but it can't mention it on the front of the package. It cannot carry the USDA organic seal.
  

This is helpful to know, don't you think?

Book Review: Serve God Save the Planet

I mentioned Serve God Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth in one of my posts the other day and said a review would be coming. I wrote the review for Sustainablog so you can go there if you're interested in reading about it.

I thought the book was fabulous and I was very challenged to further my green efforts not just to help the earth but to help those who live on it, too. I encourage you to take a look.

Book Review: Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

It took me over a month, but I finally finished reading Affluenza. It is such an information rich book that at times I could only a read a few pages before I had to put it down and think or journal about what I had just read. 

According to the back cover, affluenza is "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting  from the dogged pursuit of more."

The book explains how Americans became infected with affluenza, what its symptoms are, how it's negatively affecting our social, mental and physical health, and how it is negatively affecting the environment. 

It's difficult to sum up the book in a short review, so I'm going to write about what I was struck by most. Here it is. In the U.S., our country's health is defined by the gross national product (GNP). In order for the government to say "we are doing well" the amount of stuff that we produce and consume needs to be constantly going up. If everyone in the U.S. were to collectively say, "we've had enough, we don't need to keep buying stuff" our country would consider itself in huge trouble.

This is just scary. In order for people to continue to afford more and more stuff, they need to make more and more money. Most of the time, making more money comes from working more. In the U.S., most people are already working an unhealthy number of hours. So people become unhealthy so the country seems healthy.

The book does a much better job than I am at explaining how this is a problem and how it will become a bigger problem if our measure of health does not change from the GNP to another method that takes a look at not only how much we consume but how good the quality of life we have is.

The book was written in 2001 and published before 9/11. It's fairly prophetic in places. It predicts what will happen when oil prices rise (as they have recently), when the economy becomes bad and families loaded in debt end up in foreclosures (sound familiar?), and food prices begin to rise. When the book was written, the authors didn't know when these things would happen, but they knew they would eventually. Well, eventually is now.

It may not seem like it, but I found this book very inspiring. It brought to light a lot of problems but it also proposed solutions to those problems. Solutions that I can be a part of. I'm glad I chose to read it. It has helped me to make the choice to move from simply looking at what I'm trying to accomplish as a thing that helps the earth but as a thing that helps people here and now including me and my husband and kids.

I've already begun my next book - not The Omnivore's Dilemma as I had meant, but one titled Serve God, Save the Planet. With any luck, by the time I'm done reading it, I'll have spent a little time reading up on how to write a book review.

Reusing and Recycling - A Lesson from Grandma Prisbrey

There are times when I purposely set out to give my children a lesson about the environment and there are times when the lessons just come up naturally. One of those times was the other day when my son noticed that there was some plastic trash in the compost we had picked up for the garden. I was able to explain about how long it takes natural elements to break down and how long it takes plastics to break down. Quick, easy lesson.

Another lesson came later that day when he and I sat down to read some of the books we'd gotten from the library. I've taken to picking out one age appropriate biography for him and had grabbed a book called Bottle Houses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey.

In the 1950's and 1960's, Grandma Prisbrey built one room "houses" out of bottles that she had found at the local landfill. Beautiful, colorful houses. She furnished everything in these houses from things she found at the dump. People began to view these houses as art, and eventually Grandma Prisbrey built walkways out of things she found from the dump so people could easily come to visit.

These houses still exist in Simi Valley, California, although they suffered damage in the 1994 earthquake. 

The book is beautifully illustrated and the author makes these bottle houses sound so inviting that my son and I want to go see them. NOW. We can't do that, but  there are several websites that we were able to visit to find out more information and see pictures.

What I loved is that reading the book led into a natural discussion about reusing and recycling. The book never once uses the words "reusing" or "recycling." It's not written as a book that was meant to be an environmental lesson. It's a loving tribute to Grandma Prisbrey and her folk art. But the lesson is naturally there, anyway.

Here are some of the websites I found.

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village - This looks to be a site put together by those who run the village.

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village Tour - a YouTube video with footage from the village set to a Modest Mouse song. My five year old really likes to watch this over and over.

Bottle Village Walkway of Fame - Another YouTube video that has close up shots of the materials that were used in her buildings, and also tributes to those who contribute to its preservation.

Dr. Suess' The Lorax Project

 I've mentioned the book The Lorax on this blog quite a few times, but I have a confession to make. We never owned the book up until today. We have, however, borrowed it from the library dozens of times over the past six years or so. But my brother gave me a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble for my birthday, and I spent hours online the other night choosing books. 

The books came today, and attached to my new copy of The Lorax is a sticker that says it is printed on recycled paper (yay!) and mentions something called The Lorax Project.

This is what the back of the book says: On Earth Day 2008, Conservation International, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and Random House will launch The Lorax Project, a multifaceted initiative designed to raise awareness of environmental issues and inspire earth-friendly action worldwide by passionate individuals of all ages. 

It says to visit www.theloraxproject.com, but as of right now the link doesn't work. I suppose it will work by April 22nd (Earth Day), but I'll be checking frequently and if it works before then, I'll let you know.

I'm hoping that whatever The Lorax Project turns out to be, it's something that I can share with my boys. They love Dr. Suess, and I've been looking for ways to get them more interested in environmental concerns. I'd love it if eventually they took this on as their own concern, and not just something that their mom does and they join in once in a while. 

Green Reading for Read Across America Day

Today is Read Across America Day which is celebrated every year on the anniversary of Dr. Suess' birthday. Dr. Suess was a tree hugger, you know. 

In honor of Dr. Suess, who we love in our house, I've compiled a list of some of the books that I've read that have something to do with being green. Maybe you'll find something here to read. There may be better books out there - I've got a whole list of ones I want to read, but these are the ones I've read that have inspired me.

• The Lorax - Dr. Suess - a classic
  
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver - lots of great inspiration about organic food, the local food movement, and lots of information about how the growing of food works (or doesn't work) in our country
  
• How to Rescue the Earth without Worshipping Creation - Tony Campolo - A Christian perspective on why we should care for creation
  
• Silent Spring - Rachel Carson - this 1962 book is given credit for starting the environmental movement in the US
  

Even if you choose not to read something about green today, read something. And if you've got children read to them tonight (especially if you've got The Lorax).

Another Piece to the Puzzle

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book has got me thinking about organic food (which I have been buying some, but not all, in the past few months), sustainability, small farms, shopping locally, growing a vegetable garden this summer, and it's got me thinking about a lot of other things, too.

This is another part of the whole green puzzle that my family and I are putting together. I've been focusing on recycling and conserving energy over the past few months. Now I feel called to incorporate buying as much local, organic food as I'm capable of and starting a vegetable garden this summer. 

When I asked my five year old what kind of vegetables he would like to grow in a garden this summer, he said he wanted to grow a carrot tree. Both he and I have a lot to learn about growing food, but I'm looking forward to learning about it with both of my boys and my husband. 

It's two days until the new year. I'm thinking 2008 is going to year of a lot of new experiences for us.

Dr. Seuss was a Tree Hugger

I just finished reading my five year old The Lorax. I love, love, love that book. It is such a gentle introduction for a child on the importance of caring for the earth and yet a pointed lesson for the adult who reads it to the child.

I love what is said near the end:

"But now," says the Once-ler,
"Now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.

Thanks Dr. Seuss, for helping me to teach my kids at a very young age to care a whole awful lot.