Your favourite fiction books with simple living characters/themes?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 12 October 2011 in meta | 19 comments

I’m having a bit of a book week here on The Really Good Life – and on Recycle This too.

Following on from yesterday’s favourite non-fiction simple living books, I thought I’d do a run down of my favourite fiction books with simple living themes – either characters who live simple lives, or who grow or make or cook real food — but I can’t think of many. So instead, I’ll tell you the few I like and then I’m going to beg, on my knees beg, for your suggestions!

(I asked this question on UK Veg Gardeners nearly a year ago and most people suggested non-fiction-with-a-narrative books that are meant to be read curled up in an armchair in winter rather than a reference text — I do like those too but in this case, I’d prefer out and out fiction suggestions if possible.)

Ok, so here are my few:

• Drop City by TC Boyle – this one certainly won’t be for everyone as it’s half about hippies, with their free love & LSD, but the other half is about life in the Alaskan bush and it’s fascinating. I now have a collection of non-fiction books about life in Alaska to read whenever I finish Drop City because I don’t want to leave that world.
• Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag – I was hesitant to include this one because I didn’t love-love-love it but it was very interesting – the experiences of some Norwegian settlers “going West” in the 1870s and their subsequent hard life as homesteaders. Apparently it’s core reading on many high school or college syllabuses in the US but it’s pretty much unheard of in the UK.
• Various post-apocalyptic speculative fiction – my guilty genre fiction pleasure — you can keep your vampires and your spaceships, I like reading about our world coming to an end ;) It might seem odd to include it on this but when humanity is all but destroyed and there is no one to delivery take-out pizza or make new ipods, people quickly fall back to simple-style living. Even if the books don’t go into lots of explicit detail about it, it’s there – and I think it’s the bit that really fascinates me, and gets my cogs working in a “what if I was in that situation?” way. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham is one of my favourite books full stop and for this sort of thing – slowly rebuilding a farm for the group’s survival, and also a lot of discussion about how society should be rebuilt. The third part of Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes deals with global warming-like flooding. John Christopher’s The Death of Grass is mostly about a journey but one happening because of the … death of grass (so no wheat etc or grazing land for animals) – it makes me want to run out and grow potatoes!

…And that’s it, that’s all I can muster — so please, please, please have you got any suggestions I can add to my to-read pile? This winter might be another long, cold one so I need plenty of fireside entertainment :)

My ten favourite simple living/growing/cooking/making books

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 11 October 2011 in cooking, Featured, growing, making, wild food | 5 comments

(Inspired by book-aholic buying behaviour this month, I’ve decided to have a bit of a book-themed week both here and on my recycling site, Recycle This.)

Despite living on the internet & using it/blogs for most of my day-to-day info, I’ve got quite a few simple living related books and as you might expect, some are better than others. Some were chosen after careful research, others randomly picks from charity shops & the like – but as is often the case, there is little correlation between that and which are the better books!

Here, in no particular order, are some of my favourites:

• The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour – this is a great overview book of so many different things. It’s admittedly more aspiration than practical for me at the moment – and because it covers so many different areas, it doesn’t feel like the most practical book anyway (it doesn’t have space to go into detailed how-tos/trouble-shooting on each different topic) but it’s still very useful. If I was fleeing to escape the zombie hordes*, this is probably the non-fiction book I’d grab.

Growing

• The Vegetable & Herb Expert by DG Hessayon – my first veg growing book and the one I keep going back to over & over again. Not hugely detailed on each type & some bizarre comments about only eating chillis if they’re part of “your heritage”, but very clear, with lots of pictures (very useful when troubleshooting pests/diseases) and packed with useful info.
• Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom – this book is almost the opposite of the Hessayon – lots of detail but not anywhere near as easy to dip into and few illustrations. I like them together but would struggle with the Larkcom on its own.
• The Edible Container Garden: Fresh Food from Tiny Spaces by Michael Guerra – I was a little disappointed when I got this as it includes a lot of whitespace, big pretty rather than purposeful pictures and a lot of general overview text — but the 30 pages on “what shall I grow?” made the book worth it – very useful reference information about varieties, pot depths etc. I would recommend it to anyone who grows more than just the basic herbs in containers – but try to find a secondhand one so you don’t resent paying for the padding.

Charity shopping haul: books! books! books! and yarn

Posted by louisa on Monday 10 October 2011 in charity shopping | 3 comments

I seem to go through splurging fazes – spending a lot of money in one particular spending category each month. Last month it was clothes, the month before it was crafts and the month before that was eating-out/take-out food. This month, it’s looking like it’ll be books.

As I’ve said before, I love books but have bought surprisingly few for me this year – and I think that’s what inspired me to buy eight books in the first eight days of October! I think, for the sake of our bookshelves & my purse, I shouldn’t keep up that rate all month!

Two were new & full price (a rarity for me), two were second-hand from Amazon and the other four were charity shop finds from Saturday. We had the good fortune of going to the charity shops in Shipley just a couple of days after someone with similar reading tastes to us had a clearout – the shelves were full of interesting non-fiction books, half of which we had and the other half spiked our interest.

I got:

“Waste” by Tristam Stuart, a book about innovative (but often long standing) solutions to food waste, a little guide to woodworking with some easy project how-tos (I have a big encyclopedia on the same topic but this looks more immediately practical) and for fun, since I’ve been reading a lot of factual stuff lately, “World War Z” by Max Brooks which was amusing filed in the non-fiction section (it’s presented as a non-fiction oral history but is about the Zombie War, which, you know, hasn’t happen [yet]. I spent yesterday afternoon reading it and so far, would definitely recommend it to post-apocalyptica fiction fans). The books are all in really good condition but the charity’s “please give this back when you’re done” stickers were really annoyingly sticky and I’ve dented the front of “Waste” and “World War Z” by trying to peel them off. Grr.

At another shop, I picked up a little book about growing fruit:

I have a couple of dedicated books about vegetables but none about fruit, just the odd reference in more general books. This one isn’t the most comprehensive encyclopedia ever but has already answered a couple of questions I had about soft fruit bushes, so I think it’ll be well worth 50p.

I also made two craft purchases while I was out:

1000g of navy Guernsey, 100% wool yarn for £5. Not sure what I’ll use it for yet but it’s such a novelty to find enough wool for an entire project in a charity shop – and at such a bargain price too. According to the British Breeds website, their 5-ply usually retails at £5.50 per 100g ball!

I also took a chance on a squished-but-otherwise-brand-new “funky cord kit” – essentially two foam circles and some cotton threads designed for making friendship bracelets and the like.

It’s a kids’ kit but I’m a big kid who like playing about with thread so I’ll have fun trying it for 20p :)

Have you been charity/thrift/op shopping recently? If so, any good finds?

October mini-goals

Posted by louisa on Monday 3 October 2011 in goals | 2 comments

After meh-ness and illness in September, I’m keen to get achieving again in October. I’m thinking of even having a proper scheduled week off work too – it’ll be my first full proper non-ill week off since last October and like I did last year, I’ll hopefully tick some things off my annual goal list before it’s too late!

• 1. Design & make a (wooden) laundry hamper to fit the exact space available in the bedroom
• 2. Make a cushion for the new shoe bench in the porch (broken into sub-parts so I can tick off as I go!)
  1. measure & buy foam to size or research & source a filling alternative
  2. source fabric
  3. put together into a cushion
• 3. Do the final-final-final snagging in the bathroom. It’s about two hours work but I can’t get motivated to do it. We started renovating the bathroom on the last day of February. I think it’s about time it was finished once and for all!
• 4. Get my company accounts & personal tax stuff for 2010-2011 finalised, signed off and paid. (This is mostly a work thing but on here because a. I really need to do them so I can pay the tax before the start of January deadline & avoid a fine and b. we want to change our mortgage on our house before the end of the year too, which should save us a lot of money in the long run.)
• 5. Batch cook at least two (x two servings) meals for the freezer — and John will probably make the same amount. We rather depleted our homemade ready meals supply while I was ill so it’ll be good to build it back up again.

And not exactly a simple living goal but something John & I are doing:

• 6. Draw a self-portrait, and a portrait of the other person, every day.

Do you have any mini goals for this month?

My kindling cutting “helpers”

Posted by louisa on Sunday 2 October 2011 in chickens, wood stuff | 3 comments

I had some company while cutting the kindling this morning.

Lily was taste-testing each stick as it came off the axe.

“Mmm, bit of a woody flavour.”

And a few minutes later, after Lily had gone into a sulk because she’d heard the fake camera click of my phone (she HATES all cameras for some reason), Lime the chicken came to see what was going on too — the first time she, or any of the chickens, have visited the top level of the garden, which is three flights of stairs away from the chicken coop/run.

She watched me chopping some kindling for a bit but she was more interested in John cutting wood in the woodstore though and spent ages stood behind him, head cocked to one side and making the occasional clucking noise, as he sawed up some logs. She seemed to have no interest in any of the many edibles on that level, just wondering what us crazy humans were up to. :)

(Appalling camera phone pics, sorry for the quality.)