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bookgazing) wrote2009-08-31 02:18 pm
bookgazing) wrote2009-08-31 02:18 pm
Eco Reading Challenge - End
It looks like I’m not going to complete the Eco reading challenge as it finishes tomorrow. I was away this weekend and my copy of ‘Planet Earth’ was a far too big to take on the train. I read two books for this challenge:
‘Captivity’ by Debbie Lee Wesselman is an in depth, fictional treatment of the ethics of keeping chimps in captivity, if they cannot be reintroduced into the wild. Fascinating questions addressed are how much human behaviour should chimps be exposed to, is it morally wrong to teach chimps sign language or a valuable way of communicating with them and should the most damaged chimps be segregated and protected from their fellow chimps. There’s also the story of the human characters attempts to establish connections and find love. I can’t recommend this enough, a really fine book.
‘Farthing Wood: The Adventure Begins’ by Colin Dann is a prequel to his well known ‘Farthing Wood series, about a group of animals who put aside their natural impulses to travel peacefully together to find a new home after their own is developed by humans. In this book the reader learns how their environment comes to be destroyed and witnesses the inevitable death of the Farthing Wood otters, the protected species that guarantees the safety of the wood.
Even if I didn’t complete the reading I did complete my eco task associated with this challenge. I stopped buying new books for the entire length of the challenge. That’s five whole months without books made form virgin paper and I also tried to cut down my book buying as a whole, even keeping away from used books.
Full disclosure – my mum continued to buy books and she did buy two books specifically because she knew I wanted them. I did buy a few books for other people (giveaways (although these were mostly good copy, used books), a couple of presents and I donated a copy of ‘Little Brother’ to a school). There were a couple of unfortunate incidents with my history book club where I didn’t check the ‘Don’t send me the editor’s choice’ box in time and ended up with maybe three random new history books. I made use of Bookmooch twice.
On the whole I think I did pretty well with this task. I also learned a bit about Eco Libris’ campaign to get publishers to use a percentage of recycled paper in their production process. I’m going to try to buy more used books and probably look for suppliers who take more care with their packaging that Amazon does (so much cardboard, so few cardboard recycling opportunities round here). I found I had quite a bit more cash to put in my savings account each month, which means my Olympic tickets/house deposit fund continues to grow steadily.
Despite all these good things I’m still really excited about being released from such a strict book buying ban, mostly because it means I can finally, finally get my own copy of ‘Flygirl’! It seemed like every week another blog was reviewing it, which kept the fires of my jealousy continuously burning. So expect to see a review of that popping up soon.
How did other challenge participants do?
‘Captivity’ by Debbie Lee Wesselman is an in depth, fictional treatment of the ethics of keeping chimps in captivity, if they cannot be reintroduced into the wild. Fascinating questions addressed are how much human behaviour should chimps be exposed to, is it morally wrong to teach chimps sign language or a valuable way of communicating with them and should the most damaged chimps be segregated and protected from their fellow chimps. There’s also the story of the human characters attempts to establish connections and find love. I can’t recommend this enough, a really fine book.
‘Farthing Wood: The Adventure Begins’ by Colin Dann is a prequel to his well known ‘Farthing Wood series, about a group of animals who put aside their natural impulses to travel peacefully together to find a new home after their own is developed by humans. In this book the reader learns how their environment comes to be destroyed and witnesses the inevitable death of the Farthing Wood otters, the protected species that guarantees the safety of the wood.
Even if I didn’t complete the reading I did complete my eco task associated with this challenge. I stopped buying new books for the entire length of the challenge. That’s five whole months without books made form virgin paper and I also tried to cut down my book buying as a whole, even keeping away from used books.
Full disclosure – my mum continued to buy books and she did buy two books specifically because she knew I wanted them. I did buy a few books for other people (giveaways (although these were mostly good copy, used books), a couple of presents and I donated a copy of ‘Little Brother’ to a school). There were a couple of unfortunate incidents with my history book club where I didn’t check the ‘Don’t send me the editor’s choice’ box in time and ended up with maybe three random new history books. I made use of Bookmooch twice.
On the whole I think I did pretty well with this task. I also learned a bit about Eco Libris’ campaign to get publishers to use a percentage of recycled paper in their production process. I’m going to try to buy more used books and probably look for suppliers who take more care with their packaging that Amazon does (so much cardboard, so few cardboard recycling opportunities round here). I found I had quite a bit more cash to put in my savings account each month, which means my Olympic tickets/house deposit fund continues to grow steadily.
Despite all these good things I’m still really excited about being released from such a strict book buying ban, mostly because it means I can finally, finally get my own copy of ‘Flygirl’! It seemed like every week another blog was reviewing it, which kept the fires of my jealousy continuously burning. So expect to see a review of that popping up soon.
How did other challenge participants do?