Books are important for the mind, heart, and soul and along our life journey, we have collected shelves of books that have really helped or inspired.
These are some of the books we continually refer back to when needing clarification or motivation along our simple living journey.
Yes, I know you can Google etc. these days ,but you know what I enjoy holding a book, making notes in margins and highlighting content while either sitting in garden or by the fire.
You can buy new from your local bookstore, pick up second hand copy or borrow from Library ( but don’t write in those ones margins ! )
And at this time of year, and particularly this year with many people looking for a ‘new normal lifestyle’, they make great presents.
These books are a selection of general simple living ones … we also own many, many books on specific topics, like chickens, goats, herbalism, vegie growing, handcrafts….
- How to Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson: Looking to history, literature, and philosophy for inspiration. This is one of Pete’s favorites.
- Family Guide to Waste-Free Living by Lauren and Oberon Carter: gives you all the information, advice, budget-friendly recipes, and projects you will need to start reducing waste in your life.
- The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Adam Grubb and Annie Raiser Rowland: A guide to spending less while enjoying everything more – a leisurely guide to a life that both makes sense, while indulging the senses; how to live lightly but luxuriantly.
“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.”
– Emma Thompson
- Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn: How one family changed their world from their own backyard. Disillusioned with their lives, they decide this is how to break the cycle of too much work and too little time for doing the things that are important, like spending time with their son. especially resonated with us , as we had Nick also campaigning for homeschooling.
- Backyard Self-Sufficiency by Jackie French: If you want a ‘self-sufficient ‘ garden, Backyard Self-Sufficiency is the necessary book to get it started. This the first book I read, oh about 25 years ago and was hooked by the opening line ..” Once upon a time… “
- Radical Homemakers by Shannon. A. Hayes: About men and women who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centred their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change.
I guess I’d already been heading down this road when I picked up this book, but Radical Homemakers confirmed for me that there is freedom in domesticity. Hayes convinced me that it’s possible to change the world through the choices we make in our homes. Homemaking can, in fact, be a political and ecological act. I have to admit for me this is a choose a chapter book, I have yet read it from start to finish.. and maybe I don’t need to.
“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Grown & Gathered by Matt and Lentil Pubrick: Growing, gathering, nurturing, and cooking your own food.
Down to Earth; a Guide to Simple Living by Rhonda Hetzel: Rhonda encourages readers to find the pleasure and meaning in a simpler life. In this and her second book The Simple Home, she shares loads of practical information, recipes and tips she has gathered on her own journey.
RetroSuburbia by David Holmgren: The downshifter’s guide to a resilient future, this manual shows how you can downshift and retrofit your home, garden, community and, above all, yourself to become more self-organised, sustainable and resilient as we head into an uncertain future. This is not a read in bed book.. it is tooo heavy, but jammed packed with information on just about everything for a simple living journey.
So go on, get a cuppa or a glass of your favorite drink ( maybe drop of home brew ) turn off the TV and read…..
