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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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