And I Shall Sleep…

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Llewellyn, Richard. And I Shall Sleep…Down Where the Moon Was Small. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1966.

Reason read: to finish the series incorrectly started in December in honor of Patagonia.

Like Llewellyn’s first two novels, And I Shall Sleep… starts off with Huw and his mother’s little blue cloth, the one she “wore about her hair when cleaning” (p 1). This will become significant later, as you might have guessed.
And I Shall Sleep is the third and final book in the Huw Morgan series. When we join back up with Huw, he and his small group of Patagonians have made a new settlement in the Andes mountains. Previously Huw’s love, Lal, had decided to stay behind but early in And I Shall Sleep she changes her mind and joins Huw in the mountains. While this may seem like a good thing for Huw (since he was so infatuated with her in Up, Into the Singing Mountain), his attraction to an evasive Indio girl complicates the relationship. It doesn’t help that Huw is becoming more and more sympathetic to the Indio plight (“they were denied a land where their fathers had ridden” p 122), Interestingly enough, this new girl, Liliutro, is half sister to Lal. [Semi-spoiler alert: the inside flap reveals that mysterious Lili is able to lure Huw away from Lal so the whole time Huw and Lal are seemingly happy together I wondered when his betrayal would begin…and then when it did I regretted waiting for it.]
On the professional side, Huw’s trading company is getting bigger and bigger. He is able to travel to America and meet Henry Ford. As a businessman he grows more and more successful.

As an aside: towards the end of And I Shall Sleep I was starting to dislike Huw a great deal. There is this one curious scene where Huw has just slept with a married woman and she announces she is going to tell her husband. The next day the husband comes to Huw to inform him I know what you did and oh, by the way, you should call the police because I put my hands around her neck….”Heard it go. Told you. I’m finished” (p 308).
And then there’s the scene with the puma…and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Quote I like: right from the beginning, the very first sentence grabbed me, “Dearly touched a heart can be with proof of love from an absent one” (p 1). This set the whole stage for me.
Other quote I liked, “A pity it takes so long to reach good sense” (p 99).

Book trivia: And I Shall Sleep… is sometimes called simply Down Where the Moon Was Small.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply and predictably called “Patagonia” (p 174). Note: both titles are indexed in Book Lust To Go.

Thirty Nine Steps

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Buchan, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1996.

Reason read: in honor of my birthday I wanted to read something fast and fun.

It’s May 1914 in London, England. Scottish expatriate Richard Hannay has a troublesome visitor. That’s the first thing I would say about The Thirty Nine Steps. An American stranger has come to him with a wild tale of espionage and knowledge of a planned assassination. Because he was in the know, according to this stranger, Mr. Scudder, he had to fake his own death. He has come to Hannay to hide himself and his little coded book of secrets. However, imagine Hannay’s surprise when that same man is found with a knife so thoroughly through the heart it skewered him to the floor! Needless to say, Hannay is now on the run…with the cipher of secrets. With Mr. Scudder dead on his floor, surely he will be the number one suspect. The rest of the short book is Hannay’s attempts to hide out in Scotland, a place he hasn’t seen since he was six years old, thirty one years ago. The key to the whole mystery is a reference to “39 steps” in Scudder’s little book.

Head scratching quotes, “He had about as much gift of gab as a hippopotamus and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty” (p 22)

Author fact: Buchan was a member of Parliament and Governor-General of Canada.

Book trivia: This is another super short book, only 126 pages long. Originally published in 1915 and made into a movie several times.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1910s” (p 174). But wait! There’s more! From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Oxford – nonfiction” (p 171). It should be noted that Thirty-Nine Steps does not take place in Oxford, nor is it nonfiction.

As She Climbed Across the Table

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Lethem, Jonathan. As She Climbed Across the Table. Read by David Aaron Baker. Maryland: Books on Tape, 2007.

Reason read: February is Lethem’s birth month.

I love Jonathan Lethem’s voice. The style he writes in is so casual, so sly you feel like you need to reread the words to make sure you haven’t missed something important or at least clever. As She Climbed Across the Table is told from the perspective of Anthropology professor Philip. The story he tells you is at once heartbreaking and humorous. His girlfriend and colleague, particle physicist Alice Coombs has fallen in love with a void, a tiny black hole. The only problem with this? The void, named Lack for obvious reasons, has refused Alice’s attempts to lose herself in his depths. This “lack” of affection on Lack’s part only makes Alice desire him more. Why? Because it seems as if he (because it has to be a he for Alice to love) has a personality capable of rejection. He will devour car keys and other items of significance, but not Alice.

As an aside: When Alice repeatedly admits she loves Lack the way she used to love Philip, (but doesn’t anymore), I wanted Philip to be more rebellious. Here is he, allowing crazy, non-speaking, dopey Alice to live in the same apartment all the while refusing the advances of a beautiful and smart therapist who is practically throwing herself at him. Am I too cold blooded to think Philip should have developed more of a “screw you” spine?

Author Fact: This is not a fact per se…but, I ran into a photo of Jonathan Lethem and in it he looked sorta, kinda, somewhat like Mike Gordon from the band Phish. Not exactly like him, mind you. But, close enough to be his kid brother or something.

Audio trivia: David Aaron Baker does a great job with voice accents. The part when Philip is drunk is hilarious.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 146).

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now

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Loh, Sandra Tsing. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now. New York: riverhead books, 1997.

Reason read: Loh’s birth month is in February.

Confessional: I finished this in a day. Not because it was my favorite book but because I was home sick.

This is the story of Bronwyn Peters and her boyfriend, Paul, trying to make it in the glamorous city of Los Angeles. Be prepared. This is a very dated (1990s) story and there will be times when you want to maybe slap the sh!t out of Sandra Loh. I grew weary of the plenitude of brand-name dropping that went on (Guess?, Porche, Sanyo, Motorola, Kohler, BMW, Berber, Dolce & Gabbana, Wamsutta, Crate and Barrel…to name a few), as well as hot-now celebrity names like David Lynch, Frank Zappa, Malcolm Forbes, and Madonna…
Confessional: there were definitely times I wanted to slap Bronwyn Peters. Despite listening to NPR and identifying with a Bohemian lifestyle, Bronwyn hungers for the lifestyle of $200 haircuts and Corian counters. She even convinces her struggling writer boyfriend to buy a condo in downtown Los Angeles after they come into a modest amount of money (clearly not enough for L.A. standards). They settle on a place they obviously cannot afford for long. Bronwyn knows full well they are out of their league and yet continues to plays the game to the hilt. Bronwyn’s one redeeming quality is her steadfast love for Paul. She stands by him through temptation and failure. In the end, If you Lived Here… is Loh’s platform for bringing to the forefront L.A.’s socio-economic class structure. She uses the riots as a backdrop to her commentary on attitudes, prejudices and the simple act of just wanting more.

Lines I liked: “Feeling like Bruce Willis is some sort of Dead Something action picture, Bronwyn gripped her flashlight” (p176), and “and because there was nothing else to do, she rolled over and stole her arms around her fellow, such as he was, because his was the body that was still there” (p 221).

Author fact: If you Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now is Loh’s first novel.

Book trivia: short, short, short!

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “California, Here We Come” (p 49).

Forgetting February

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Okay, so here it is, the first week of February and I never wrote a summary for January or looked ahead to February. What is this world coming to? I’ll tell you what the what. My life has been upside down lately. Between being sick and injured I haven’t been myself lately. Not working out has left me crank, crank, cranky! Not running has unhinged my balance. Being sick for the second time this winter doesn’t help.
So even though I blew it for January, here’s a redeemer for February. Without further ado, the books I will read (or have already read) for the month:

  1.  A.D.: After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld in honor of Mardi Gras
  2. Her First American by Lore Segal in honor of immigration month
  3. I Shall Sleep…Down Where the Moon is Small by Richard Llewellyn (to finish the series started in December)
  4. Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes (to finish the series started LAST April)
  5. Beautiful Place to Die by Philip Craig
  6. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now by Sandra Loh in honor of Loh’s birth month
  7. Rocksburg Railroad Murders by K.C. Constantine (in finish the series started last month)
  8. As She Crawled Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem in honor of his birth month (an audio book)
  9. Liar by Rob Roberge (Early Review book)
  10. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (not on the challenge list; a recommendation by my sister)

Okay. So that’s a lot of books. But not really once you read my confessional: There were four that took a day apiece to read (Neufeld, Loh, Constantine, and Craig) and four more I have been reading for a while now (Llewellyn, Hughes, Roberge and Giordano). So, already a total of six are “in the can” so to speak even though it’s only early February. Clarification: I have a “new” rule for series. I’ll use the Constantine series to illustrate: I started Constantine’s series in honor of mystery month in January. When I finished the January book I didn’t wait until February 1st to start the second book in the series. True, I give myself a month to read a book but sometimes I don’t need that much time. If that makes sense.

I will be adding two more:

  1. The Path to Power by Robert Caro in honor of Presidents Day
  2. Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder (audio book) in honor of February being the month we moved to Northampton (Kidder is a Northampton author).

the Solitude of Prime Numbers

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Giordano, Paolo. The Solitude of Prime Numbers. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.

Reason read: for fun…because my sister said so.

I don’t know what it was about this book that made it so difficult to read. I must have picked it up and put it down a hundred times before I finally got to the last page. It wasn’t that it was a horribly written book. In fact, just the opposite. It was so beautiful in a haunting, painful way that I could only read it in short bursts.

Alice and Mattia are two misfit loners who accidentally find each other as teenagers at a birthday party. Despite the fact they are thrown together on a malicious dare, they develop a bond of solidarity. To quote Pink Floyd, they were “two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl” recognizing the loneliness in each other. Except, their friendship does not develop as one normally would. They remain just as singular (primary, as the title suggests) as if they had never met.

Quotes that moved me, “They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny it to coalesce at some point in time” (p 136). Someone else liked that line. It was marked in the book. And, “Every one of them had a love that had rotted alone in their hearts” (p 144).

A lot like Rob Roberge’s Liar, I found this book took me a really long time to read. As I said with Liar, it wasn’t that the story wasn’t interesting. Only that it was too lonely for words.

Author fact: Solitude is Paolo Giordano’s first book.

Book trivia: Solitude won Giordano the Premio Straga award.

 

Beautiful Place to Die

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Craig, Philip A. A Beautiful Place to Die. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989.

Reason read: February is the month in which Massachusetts became a state and Martha’s Vineyard is the “beautiful place to die”.

You can always tell when an author has either spent time or lived in the area where his or her book takes place. The details are sharper, the descriptions more lovingly told…if that makes sense. There is a care to the words. Philip R. Craig is no different. Because of the way he describes the island of Martha’s Vineyard early on in A Beautiful Place To Die, you can tell he calls it home.

Jefferson Washington Jackson is a retired Boston cop/Vietnam veteran living on the island of Martha’s Vineyard trying to forget about the bullet still lodged in his back. To keep himself occupied he is an avid fisherman, a successful gardener (does better with vegetables than flowers) and a decent cook. After a friend’s boat explodes and someone he knew was killed Jeff finds a new hobby as private investigator. Along with a suspicious boat explosion there are rumors of drug busts and murder. There are plenty of little twists and turns to A Beautiful Place to Die so even though it is a short (211 pages) read, it is entertaining.

Quotes I love (see confessional), “Librarians are wonderfully valuable people” (p 122), “Women are the gender of reality” (p 174), and “When I’m king of the world I’m going to ban pay toilets as an affront to civilization” (p 175).

Side note: When J.W. tells Zee how he came to live on M.V. it reminded me of Monhegan. Many islanders can’t afford to buy a place where they grew up. They rely on inheriting family property to stay on the island…

Confessional: I have a crush on Jefferson Washington Jackson. Consider the facts: he gardens, cooks, appreciates librarians, understands a Barbar kind of day, likes Sam Adams beer and a clean house, has a sense of humor, has the same opinion of pay toilets, and is able to survive getting shot twice in 48 hours! What’s not to love?

Author fact: According the to back flap, Philip Craig grew up on a small cattle ranch in Durango, Colorado. The Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard is quite a departure from the wild west.

Book trivia: This is book one is the Martha’s Vineyard series.

BookLust Twist: from <em>Book Lust To Go</em> in the chapter simply called “Martha’s Vineyard” (p 142). No twist there…

A.D.

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Neufeld, Josh. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010.

Reason read: Mardi Gras is held in New Orleans every February. Rather than read this in August (typical because of the date of Hurricane Katrina) I decided to twist it up a little. Just as Pearl did (see BookLust Twist at the end of this review).

Right from the very beginning you know you are in for something deeply moving and very special when reading the graphic novel A.D. (although technically it is not a novel. Novel implies fiction, right?). Neufeld starts the reader off looking at Earth from outer space. As we look down on North America we almost get a sense of the calm before the storm. On the next page the graphic orientates us to the tragedy to come as we get a bird’s eye view of the city of New Orleans. We are coming in closer. We see the city as one entity and the storm as another, as if they are two strangers being introduced at a party. As the days go by we follow the lives of seven New Orleans residents. This becomes a biography of each individual.
To me, what is incredibly sad is the emphasis on their naivete, their attitude of “this is no big deal” all because hurricanes in their corner of the world come and go. They have lived through them before. They are experts in the realm of weather. That may be true, but no one expected the levies to go…

Yes. You can read this in one day as posting this on the first implies. My recommendation? Read it several times. Read and share it. There is a message hidden in the comic.

My favorite StopYouInYourTracks quote: “At least then we wouldn’t have had to walk on top of the things I cared about the most” (Leo, on page 171).

As an aside: Neufeld wasn’t the only artist to be shocked by Hurricane Katrina. Many talented individuals expressed their grief through art. But, listen to Natalie Merchant. She wrote a song called “Go Down Moses” (on her self titled album) that addresses not only the city of New Orleans after the hurricane, but the Danziger Bridge tragedy as well. Danziger is what she was referring to when she says, “let your people cross over.” Sad.

Author fact: the author of A.D. is JOSH Neufeld. Josh, not Joshua as Nancy Pearl refers to him. He is Josh in twelve different places in the book: on the front cover, on the title page, four times on the copyright page, in the afterward, on the “about the author” page, on the back flap and three in separate instances on the back cover. Not once does the name “Joshua” appear anywhere. Call me crazy, but I think he wants to be called Josh. For more information on Josh and this project, check out this link.

Book trivia: this was a New York Times best seller. Of course it was.

BookLust Twist: in Book Lust To Go but not for the reasons you would think. You’re thinking this would be in the chapter “New Orleans” but it’s not. It’s in “Comics with a Sense of Place” (p 68).

Liar

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Roberge, Rob. Liar.New York: Crown Publishers, 2016.

Publishing Date: February 2016

Reason read: Early Review book for LibraryThing.

When I first received Liar I did what I always do when receiving an Early Review: I checked the pub date to see how long I had to finish reading it in order to write an “early” review. I was dismayed to see I had approximately three weeks. Three weeks may not seem like a short amount of time, but it is when you are already involved in four other 300+ page books. I shouldn’t have worried. Not with Liar.

This is a quick, quick read. Be prepared. The timeline jumps around a lot. But maybe that’s the point. You can’t keep the chronology straight so it’s harder to keep Roberge’s story straight. Hence, the title of the book. It’s supposed to be a memoir. Is he lying or not? Reading Liar reminded me of those picture viewers: you slide in the disc, look through the viewer to see a particular scene. Advancing the disc allows you to see another scene. When trying to describe this toy (and book) to a friend he said, “oh. You mean like a peep show?” Yeah. Like a peep show. Roberge shows you just hints of a mentally ill/bipolar/suicidal, crazy drug addled, violent/kinky sex fueled life and then quickly closes the curtain. When the curtain reopens it’s a completely different view; a little more is revealed…or not. It could be about the Titanic sinking or some other misconstrued moment in history. You never know what you are going to get. I am resisting the urge to make a timeline and “map” all of Roberge’s life events just to see how his life has played out thus far.

Confessional: there were times when I got “tired” reading this book. My attitude wavered between fascination and boredom. How many times could one read about Roberge waking unremembering in a sticky puddle of his own puke? How many “I Have No Idea What I Did Last Night” scenarios could be described in one book? There was a definite repetition of shock value to Liar and yet, yet I found myself asking what next? I needed to know how did he get through the latest debacle in his life?

 

Rocksburg Railroad Murders

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Constantine, K.C. The Rocksburg Railroad Murders. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1982.

Reason read: to “finish” the series started in December with Always a Body to Trade in honor of January being Mystery Month. Yes, I read them out of order.

Written in a much different time. When else can you have a Meet Me At the Bar kind of cop who has a priest for a drinking and gambling buddy (on the clock, no less)? Here are some other facts about Chief of Police Mario Balzic: he’s married and a father of two teenage daughters. His mother lives with him and he’s a wicked gin player. A senior in 1942 he joined the Marines fresh out of high school. As a tough but sensitive Chief of Police in Rocksburg, Pennsylvania it’s up to him to figure out who bashed in John Andrasko’s face with a soda bottle at the railway station. For Mario, this murder is personal for he’s known John since they were kids.

Quote I liked, “A man went goofy with grief, he saw to it that the victims were covered, and everybody went home to a hot shower and a cold glass of wine. What else did you do when somebody you loved got killed?” (p 181).

Author fact: Mario is a lot like K.C. in that both are military men.

Book trivia: The Rocksburg Railroad Murders is Constantine’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 31).

Do Your Om Thing

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Pacheco, Rebecca. Do Your Om Thing: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life. New York: Harper Wave, 2015.

Reason read: I first discovered Pacheco when my beloved gave me a Runners World yoga video and voila! I had found a yoga instructor I liked almost as much as my dear Roo.

Pacheco is feisty and funny, as well as knowledgeable in her practice. I was curious to see if she could write as well. And indeed, she can. For just a small taste of what you are in for when you read Do Your Om…, this is from the introduction: “This book (or, its author) understand that you will occasionally get stressed out, overscheduled, come down with the flu, or possibly dumped on your ass by someone you love with ever piece of your heart chakra” (p x). See what I mean? Feisty and a sense of humor. What follows is how to bring a sense of yogi practice to your life, in your own way. For example, everyone has heard of chakras, but Pacheco takes care to really explain them and their significance. What she doesn’t do is tell you what to do with that knowledge.

Author fact: Pacheco is the face of the Runner’s World Yoga for Runners DVD. Her teaching style is great!

Book trivia: This is not a yoga instruction book! You will not find photographs outlining a flow sequence of poses.

Checkmate

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Dunnett, Dorothy. Checkmate. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.

Reason read: I started the Lymond Chronicles in August to celebrate Dorothy Dunnett’s birth month.

If you have been keeping track, by the end of The Ringed Castle Francis Crawford of Lymond had returned to Scotland from Russia and it had been revealed he might have killed his own son. Also at the end of Ringed Castle Lymond was trying to return to Russia while still married to Philippa, but by the end of Ringed Castle it was obvious (at least to me) the relationship between them was changing. There were even hints of romance blossoming for Philippa. Maybe that was a spoiler alert for Checkmate?
Anyway, when we begin Checkmate the year is 1557. Francis Crawford of Lymond is back in France, now as the M. comte de Sevigny, leading an army against England. Despite his best efforts to divorce Philippa, their marriage continues to used as political leverage and controls his inability to return to Russia. He is ordered to fight for the French for one year before his marriage can be annulled. Imagine if we lived in that kind of society today! Philippa’s feelings for her husband continue to evolve slowly as she is still insistent on learning the truth of his parentage and lineage. It’s this dark secret that introduces the character of astrologer (“yon pisse-pot prophet”) Nostradamus to the plot. Note: Each chapter starts with a prophesy of Nostradamus in old French. It isn’t necessary to have them translated to enjoy the story. Because this is the last book in the series, Dunnett tries to put a bow on the conclusion to Checkmate. I don’t think it is giving too much away to say that one can leave the Lymond series feeling good about Francis’s future.

One detail that carried through the Lymond series was the issue of Francis’s come and go headaches and resulting blindness. I never could wrap my brain around the real cause of these debilitating migraines, especially when his mother says he doesn’t “need” them anymore.

Quotes I liked, “But the days are evil: iniquity aboundeth, and charity waxeth cold” (p 146), “The session ended when Mr. Pigault, full of his own beer, slid comfortably under the table” (p 153), and “Realization drew from him the power of movement” (p 158).

Author fact: Dunnett is also the author of the House of Niccolo series, also on my Challenge list; probably to be started a year from this August.

Book trivia: This is the sixth and final book in the Lymond Chronicles. I have to admit, I will miss Francis!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter “Digging Up the Past Through History” (p 80).

Do One Thing Different

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O’Hanlon, Bill. Do One Thing Different. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999.

Confessional: I didn’t read this book word for word, cover to cover. To say that I browsed is inaccurate. To say that I skimmed might be closer to the truth.

I like the idea of doing one thing differently. Pick a habit, any habit and you can change it according to Dr. Bill. In the very first chapter his advice is simple: identify a pattern you would like to change. It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant the offending routine. Once you have identified the pattern, scrutinize it. Analyze it within an inch of its life. Be observant and get to know every detail of what you do and just how you do it. Then, change one thing. Just one little thing. It could be how you put on your socks or how you hold a toothbrush, if that is part of the offending pattern. Just change one thing related to the pattern and you will have broken the cycle. Seems simple enough, right? Or how about this approach? Connect something negative to the offending action. Say you want to stop picking your nose (note: NOT an actual example of O’Hanlon’s). Okay, so back to the nose picking. For every time you pick you nose you must an equally abhorred task, like cleaning the hair out of the shower trap. If you hate dredging up slimy, stringy, soap-scummed hair THAT much, you will stop picking your nose. O’Hanlon’s techniques and examples of these techniques actually working are far more interesting than my description. You just have to read the book.

Up, Into the Singing Mountain

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Llewellyn, Richard. Up, into the Singing Mountain. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960.

Reason read: to continue the series incorrectly started in December (in honor of December being the best time to visit Patagonia).

Up, into the Singing Mountain takes up where How Green Was My Valley left off. Huw Morgan leaves his tiny village in Wales for a Welsh community in the Patagonian region of Argentina. Singing starts with the same imagery as Valley in that Huw is bundling a little blue cloth. I’m not sure why that sticks out in my mind, but it does. Part of the reason why Huw leaves his community in the valley is his inappropriate love for his brother’s widow. As a child living in her house (to keep her company), no one thought of any impropriety. However, as Huw grows older and his feelings for Bron become more apparent, it was now time to leave.
Huw finds work as a cabinetmaker and builds a reputation on his artistry and skill. Unfortunately, the rumor mill also finds Huw in his new Patagonian community. This time he is tied unfavorably to a widow he has rented a room from, all the  while being in love with a girl several towns over. His inability to defend himself only creates more problems and new tensions. But that is nothing compared to the threats to the community at large posed by a weakened dam and torrential rains. Add rebellious Indios and you have an adventure.

Like the last book I am finding tons and tons to quote: “Strange that a word or a look at the proper moment will change the whole cage we live in, and the places of all those perched” (p 11-12), “It takes a long, long time to lose the poison of towns” (p 20), and “To have a breath of air from the mouths of much” (p 24). I’ll stop there.

As an aside, one of my favorite teas is yerba mate. It was cool to learn where it comes from.

Author fact: after reading the Wiki page on Richard Llewellyn I was shocked to learn some of the things he claimed all his life weren’t exactly true (like where he was born).

Book trivia: not a spoiler alert, but there are some pretty violent scenes in Up, Into the Mountain. I was actually quite shocked by the violence of Lal’s father.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Patagonia” (p 174).

Do One Green Thing

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Pennybacker, Mindy. Do One Green Thing: Saving the Earth Through Simple, Everyday Choices. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010.

Reason read: curiosity.

I first became interested in the “Do One Thing” philosophy when I bought my sister a Do One Thing That Scares You book for Christmas. Okay. Confessional: I just sent the book to her yesterday and it’s not really a gift; it’s a tough love, shake-out-your life kind of poke.

Do One Green Thing is one of those books you don’t read from cover to cover and return to the library…even though that’s exactly what I did. It is meant to be referred to time and time again. It’s meant to be written in, dog-earred and memorized. Because I borrowed a library book I took notes on what “one” green thing I plan to do.

Do One Green Thing is smart. It centers of four areas of your personal life and how you can do that one green thing in regards to them:

  1. What you eat and drink
  2. Where you live
  3. How you take care of yourself
  4. How you get around (transportation)

From there the chapters are broken down into specific sections:

  1. The one green thing you can do and your options
  2. Questions one might have about the green thing
  3. The science behind why the green thing is a good thing

As you might expect, giving up drinking bottled water is the very first green thing mentioned. In giving up bottled water you have a choice, drinking tap water or filtering your own. But, isn’t bottled water safer than tap or even filtered water? There’s that question I mentioned, by the way.  Followed by the science of why giving up bottled water is a good thing. In my own life, I reuse a travel mug for coffee and I have a stainless steel water bottle. One green thing, check!

In addition to the specific sections there are other tidbits like url addresses for more information and fun illustrations. Pennybacker also includes some of her favorite “green” things like water-saving shower supplies and facial moisturizers.