Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Everything Green Living Book


About three weeks ago at my local Barnes and Noble I quite by accident stumbled across this book and wow am I ever happy I did! The Everything Green Living Book is a thorough guide with oodles of pertinent information, but it is written in a very easy to understand voice making it a fantastic resource for not only a beginner but an expert looking for a few new tips or tricks. The cover caught my eye immediately, due to the words Green Living, and as I continued to visually scan it, I noticed the recycling symbol in the upper left corner. This book is printed on 100% post consumer waste paper. Hooray! I was intrigued and began to flip through.

There are twenty chapters, 277 pages of jam packed information, covering everything from the world as it stands now through how to be environmentally responsible even when we die. The foreword is written by Christopher J. Maron, Program Director of the Adirondack, NY Nature Conservancy and he encourages adopting our own conservation ethic. Flipping the page, prior to even viewing the Introduction, there is a list of Ten things each person will take away after pouring through this book and the final one caught my eye “If you take an ecovacation, you’ll be helping the environment while supporting a local economy and having a great time.” Again, this piqued my interest but I was determined to read through the Introduction before going back to the table of contents to scan for the chapter containing information on ecovacations.

Upon reading the Introduction I chuckled as it clearly states “Many people may be surprised at what topic piques their interest.” I was not as much surprised as I was curious what advice this book would include for taking an ecovacation so as I completed the Introduction, I flipped right over to Chapter Thirteen, Vacations and Travel. The thirteen pages in this chapter review terms, pros, cons, how to do it, parks (in the United States), souvenirs, festivals and stay-cations. Included are questions, facts, tips and alerts in separate little boxes to punctuate the information. This format is true for all the chapters and not only does it make the book extremely easy to navigate but helps to hone in on specific bits of information within each larger category as well.

The end of the book includes three Appendix sections including resources (books and websites), a glossary of terms and finally a quiz to determine our own footprint. After completing reading the section I was most interested in it was clear that the level of available information could not be matched in any of the other books I owned and I went back to the beginning to read through the entire book in just two nights! When I came to the very end my brain was buzzing with such a great feeling I was truly inspired -- this book is one of the reasons I started writing this blog, researching local groups and decidedly becoming more involved in maintaining the environment around me. For all of these reasons and more I recommend that everyone check this book out (as a side note I checked with my local library to see if it could literally be checked out however the network of libraries that includes my town does not carry this particular title however I strongly encourage everyone to look into that in their own area as a greener option).

With all of this in mind I am bestowing a Five Green Leaf Rating on this wonderful resource material!

To purchase the title you can either click on the cover image above and be taken to Barnes and Noble online or feel free to check out the Adams Media associated website where the book can be purchased direct.

Please note the cover photo is not stolen from the internet but is my own book which I scanned in.

5 comments:

High Desert Diva said...

Sounds like a great book...thanks for the review & recommendation.

Expressions By Devin said...

Sounds like a awesome book.I am going to have to go and get it.thanks for the review and and telling us about it:0)

Judi FitzPatrick said...

Excellent review - sounds like a great book to own.

Thanks for sharing it with us all.

Peace, Judi

Bridgete said...

Awesome! I'll be getting this soon.

Kim Caro said...

sounds like a good read :)