Have you SEEN how many GREEN books are out there these days? A quick search on Amazon.com came up with 1,480 and that was just from searching "green living."
I love books. Addicted to them is probably what you'd say if you saw the collections of children's books in our house. Our weekly trip to the library always leaves me bringing home GREEN books on top of my usual travel, garden, cooking or art selections. I can't say I have time to read every page - I've become more of a skimmer (apparently this has transferred over to some of my email reading practices as I realized today - apologies to the Fine Homes Director at Prudential CT Realty I've been working with on my new listing!)
(Whoops - how did Retiring Abroad get in there? :) )
So which books would I recommend for you to flip through as you're grilling up those veggies on the grill? (Because I imagine that we all grill in flip-flops, with a book in one hand and a glass of vino in the other?)
This week I'm reading GREEN $ENSE FOR THE HOME - Rating the Real Payoff from 50 GREEN HOME PROJECTS by Eric Corey Freed & Kevin Daum. It's so new at my library I was the first one to borrow it! First of all, it's divided into 3 sections: 16 green home projects you can do today, 21 green projects you can do tomorrow, and 13 home projects you can do when building new. I like this book already! It has a ton of information, and lots of resources. I especially like the rating system they use for each project, telling you the overall rating in dollar signs, level of difficulty, energy savings, global warming reducing, resource conservation, water saving, and health improving. It makes it really easy to flip through and find the projects with the highest overall dollar sign ratings and the lower degrees of difficulty! It also has helpful "Do the Math" sidebars - I love it when someone else does the math for me :)
I also read The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers, although I didn't get as excited about it because it didn't bring me much new information.
Other books I did find entertaining: Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life by Ed Begley (I wrote about him before - I think we'd be pals!) Gorgeously Green 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life by Sophie Uliano, and her accompanying book Gorgeously Green Diet How to Live Lean & Green. I liked her style of writing and her sense of humor, which is sometimes missing when it comes to this topic!
Love the organic & green cookbooks out there. One of my faves is the Big Green Cookbook: Hundreds of Planet-Pleasing Recipes and Tips for a Luscious, Low-Carbon Lifestyle by Jackie Newgent. This is where I found the amazing French Kissed Watercress Salad Recipe. Did I mention it's amazing? It's so good I'll post about it soon!
At the top of my TO READ list is Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home & Planet -- One Room at a Time by Beth Greer. A book about reducing toxins & possibly harmful chemicals in your home, the place that is supposed to be your safe haven, well, that's my kind of reading. It might even make a nice house warming gift for my environmentally-minded new homeowners!
I hope you pick up a GREEN read over the summer, and let me know if you enjoyed it!
I love books. Addicted to them is probably what you'd say if you saw the collections of children's books in our house. Our weekly trip to the library always leaves me bringing home GREEN books on top of my usual travel, garden, cooking or art selections. I can't say I have time to read every page - I've become more of a skimmer (apparently this has transferred over to some of my email reading practices as I realized today - apologies to the Fine Homes Director at Prudential CT Realty I've been working with on my new listing!)
(Whoops - how did Retiring Abroad get in there? :) )
So which books would I recommend for you to flip through as you're grilling up those veggies on the grill? (Because I imagine that we all grill in flip-flops, with a book in one hand and a glass of vino in the other?)
This week I'm reading GREEN $ENSE FOR THE HOME - Rating the Real Payoff from 50 GREEN HOME PROJECTS by Eric Corey Freed & Kevin Daum. It's so new at my library I was the first one to borrow it! First of all, it's divided into 3 sections: 16 green home projects you can do today, 21 green projects you can do tomorrow, and 13 home projects you can do when building new. I like this book already! It has a ton of information, and lots of resources. I especially like the rating system they use for each project, telling you the overall rating in dollar signs, level of difficulty, energy savings, global warming reducing, resource conservation, water saving, and health improving. It makes it really easy to flip through and find the projects with the highest overall dollar sign ratings and the lower degrees of difficulty! It also has helpful "Do the Math" sidebars - I love it when someone else does the math for me :)
I also read The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers, although I didn't get as excited about it because it didn't bring me much new information.
Other books I did find entertaining: Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life by Ed Begley (I wrote about him before - I think we'd be pals!) Gorgeously Green 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life by Sophie Uliano, and her accompanying book Gorgeously Green Diet How to Live Lean & Green. I liked her style of writing and her sense of humor, which is sometimes missing when it comes to this topic!
Love the organic & green cookbooks out there. One of my faves is the Big Green Cookbook: Hundreds of Planet-Pleasing Recipes and Tips for a Luscious, Low-Carbon Lifestyle by Jackie Newgent. This is where I found the amazing French Kissed Watercress Salad Recipe. Did I mention it's amazing? It's so good I'll post about it soon!
At the top of my TO READ list is Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home & Planet -- One Room at a Time by Beth Greer. A book about reducing toxins & possibly harmful chemicals in your home, the place that is supposed to be your safe haven, well, that's my kind of reading. It might even make a nice house warming gift for my environmentally-minded new homeowners!
I hope you pick up a GREEN read over the summer, and let me know if you enjoyed it!
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