A helpful, well-written guide to making the most of recycling and composting.
A manual delivers an explanation of what happens to household recycling and describes how to reduce waste.
In this green living book, Goldstein takes readers through the process of recycling common household products and provides strategies for maximizing recycling efficiency and reducing overall waste generation. The guide explains how recycling moves from a curbside bin to a sorting facility and the likely paths that paper, metal, glass, plastic, and food waste will follow. The author addresses the challenges created in recent years by “China’s decision to stop buying trash and recyclables from North America and Europe” as well as the problems of contamination and inefficiency that limit the broader adoption of recycling practices. The book’s perspective is shaped by the fact that Goldstein lives in Seattle, which not only has a robust recycling program, but also offers municipal pickup of compost. The author is aware that such services are unavailable to most readers and supplies suggestions for private services and DIY alternatives to accomplish the same goals. While the work was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, an afterword addresses ways in which public health measures limit the feasibility of some of the manual’s suggestions, though Goldstein urges readers to continue to search for ways to reduce the impact of their consumption. A bulleted list of highlights ends most chapters, and readers are encouraged to visit the author’s website for printable versions of the worksheets included in the guide. Goldstein is a knowledgeable writer and does a good job of coherently explaining the often complex world of solid waste. In a largely judgment-free manner, she explains the challenges and tradeoffs of different approaches to recycling and presents solutions for readers who are trying to limit their waste within real-world constraints. There is occasionally a touch of wishful thinking, as in the suggestion that switching to a smaller garbage can “might encourage your neighbors to wonder why your garbage bin is smaller than theirs.” But even readers who do not find themselves discussing waste management with their neighbors will find the book useful and informative.
A helpful, well-written guide to making the most of recycling and composting.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9995956-4-0
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Bebo Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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