Unstuffed: Summer Reading

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Summer Reading

A few of my summer reads:

Coop

This Life Is in Your Hands

On the Banks of Plum Creek

Sepp Holzer's Permaculture

Botany in a Day

Game of Thrones

Any suggestions for what else I should add to my reading list?

9 comments:

Liz said...: Hey Amber - hope you're having a great summer!

I finished 'See You In A Hundred Years' by Logan Ward, a few weeks ago. Loved it.; July 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM
Amber said...: Thanks for the suggestion Liz! I'll add that to my library list. Sounds a little like the book I read recently, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology. I really enjoyed it.

Best summer wishes to you too!; July 18, 2011 at 10:04 AM
TechChik said...: I love books! Unfortunatly, I mostly only have time for audiobooks while I'm on the bus (and knitting). Some of my favourites are:

- Ken Follet (Pillars of the Earth, World Without End)
- Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Mists of Avalon, Priestess of Avalon, Lady of Avalon, The Forest House)
- James Herriot (his entire All Creatures Great and Small Series - think Laura Ingalls Wilder, if she were a vet in the 1920's)
- Francis Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess, The Secret Garden)
- Evelyn Anthony (All the Queen's Men); July 18, 2011 at 2:55 PM
Amber said...: Yes! Crocheting with an audiobook is one of my favourite winter activities.

I had the Pillars of Earth suggested to me a few times now. I guess I should check it out.

I LOVE Mists of Avalon. I must have read it a dozen times since the first time when I was 14. But you know, I've never read any of her other books. I should.

I read a few Herriot books back in the days when my folks had a horse farm. It might be nice to revisit them.

I'm so glad you included the FHB books! I reread the Secret Garden as an adult and really liked it.

Haven't heard of Evelyn Anthony before but wikipedia tells me she is popular and prolific and I like historical novels!

This is great. I've got a good list that will keep me busy for quite some time. Thanks everyone!; July 19, 2011 at 8:59 AM
Susan said...: The River Midnight, Lilian Nattel
This book is historical fiction about a group of 'vida hayas' or wild women growing up in a traditional jewish village in Poland in the late 1800's. Midwife herbalists, country living, small town and big city politics, men vs women issues.
Wonderfully written, hard to put down, impossible to forget!; July 19, 2011 at 9:46 AM
Amber said...: Artizan, that book sounds right up my alley! Thanks. :); July 19, 2011 at 1:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Is that beach in Ottawa?
Is that our hat?; July 19, 2011 at 3:47 PM
Amber said...: Anon, yep, the beach is on Petrie Island. First time I've been there. It's really nice, and they've got a really lovely wetland area with trails and signs marking significant flora!

And yes, I got the silly green hat at Valoo Vilaage. :); July 20, 2011 at 10:35 AM
TechChik said...: I've read / listened to The Mists of Avalon half a dozen times too. ;)
It's only one of the series though - you should check out the others if you loved it.; July 20, 2011 at 6:25 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali