Editor in chief Sheherazede Goldsmith’s A Slice Of Organic Life collects over 300 pages of tips for living a more organic lifestyle. From growing your own garden to making cheese this book will get you started living a more sustainable lifestyle. Live in the city? Don’t have a the land for a cow? live in a high rise apartment building? No problem this book will show you things you can do in any setting that will allow you to green up your life.
A Slice Of Organic Life is printed on sustainably farmed tree pulp, while good, it is odd that it does not contain post consumer recycled content. The sturdy hardback comes fully illustrated with some stunningly beautiful photographs. As I turned the pages I was greeted with image after image of delicious food, or wonderful looking chickens, goats, and pigs. The book is almost a coffee table book, and can be enjoyed just for the pictures.
I was a little thrown off at first by the apparent randomness of the book. There is really no organization pattern to the book other than the three major sections of “no need for a yard”, “roof terrace, patio, or tiny yard” and “yard, community garden, or field”. After reading further I felt that the lack of organization was in fact a good thing. The book could be used as an idea starter. Pick it up, turn to any page, and you have a weekend project (or more) waiting for you to try out. There is also a handy index in case you want to zoom into something specific.
The book provides the starting point for a bunch of great ideas, from greening up your beauty supplies, to starting a political campaign, the book covers a wide breadth of topics. It doesn’t however go into much depth. You will learn a bit about starting your own bee colony, but hardly enough to keep you going through the hard time. Which is ok, the book doesn’t bill itself as a the whole loaf of organic life, just a slice. The fact that is exposes so many ways to green up your life is itself a valuable thing. Many people have no idea there are so many great ways to starting moving toward a sustainable life, A Slice Of Organic Life will open their eyes.
Goldsmith was inspired to venture down the path of an organic life when she became a mother. Like so many of us, it required some bigger implications in her own life, namely the future of her own child, to inspire her to take action. You too will be inspired to start crafting your own life in a more sustainable mold, and this book can get you started.
I was asked to comment on the book, but requested an electronic manuscript – something I ask of all publishers. They could only send me a copy of the book, but considering it was being air-mailed from the USA, I had to turn it down.
When are publishers going to offer electronic versions of books for review – so obvious, really?
Keith
Yea it would be nice to be able to sell all books like that, perhaps we could invent some sort of device that would be the “library” that would present the feel off a book, “pages” a cover etc. But would really be more like a laptop that you could load thousands of books into.
The table of contents would let you pick which book to load up and you could sit around reading it. It could even allow for fun stuff like note taking in the margins, internet access for purchasing more books. All without cutting down a single tree and without shipping millions of pounds of books all over the world.
We could even make the thing solar powered so we reduce the amount of CO2 needed even more.