Scan barcode
A review by eberico
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide by Scott Kellogg
3.0
There are a few things I could say about this book.
First, it provides a wealth of information that goes far and above most of the other books of this type that I've encountered. This is both good and bad. It's good because there are people out there who are willing to tap into their apartment building's plumbing to install a grey water system that requires lots of bathtubs or other water storage and cleaning containers. There are people who want to compost their own poop. I am not one of those people - which means that a lot of this book was irrelevant, if not overly self-righteous. But then I guess the things I do want to do - compost, collect rainwater, grow a more effective garden - might be seen as irrelevant and overly self-righteous, so I take my own critiques with a grain of salt.
Second, if you can deal with the information overload and the long discussion of 'humanure', I think this book is well worth checking out from the library. It would be a great reference piece for a coop or collective to have on hand, but I'm not sure your average person wanting to green up their lifestyle will find much of it of use.
Third, maybe it was just the edition that I had, but the book was rife with typographic errors, strange choices in font, and layout issues that made it difficult to read. Instead of putting the marginalia on the periphery of the pages, these materials run down the center of each page, often stretching over multiple pages. Some pages contained large-ish fonts and justified text; on others, the text was smaller and more readable. The introduction and first chapter could benefit from working with a copy editor and graphic designer to catch the places where what I assume are proprietary characters make the text difficult to read. Other sections refer to illustrations or charts that aren't included in the book. I don't mean to be a jerk about these things - but if you want your work to be taken seriously, edit edit edit!
First, it provides a wealth of information that goes far and above most of the other books of this type that I've encountered. This is both good and bad. It's good because there are people out there who are willing to tap into their apartment building's plumbing to install a grey water system that requires lots of bathtubs or other water storage and cleaning containers. There are people who want to compost their own poop. I am not one of those people - which means that a lot of this book was irrelevant, if not overly self-righteous. But then I guess the things I do want to do - compost, collect rainwater, grow a more effective garden - might be seen as irrelevant and overly self-righteous, so I take my own critiques with a grain of salt.
Second, if you can deal with the information overload and the long discussion of 'humanure', I think this book is well worth checking out from the library. It would be a great reference piece for a coop or collective to have on hand, but I'm not sure your average person wanting to green up their lifestyle will find much of it of use.
Third, maybe it was just the edition that I had, but the book was rife with typographic errors, strange choices in font, and layout issues that made it difficult to read. Instead of putting the marginalia on the periphery of the pages, these materials run down the center of each page, often stretching over multiple pages. Some pages contained large-ish fonts and justified text; on others, the text was smaller and more readable. The introduction and first chapter could benefit from working with a copy editor and graphic designer to catch the places where what I assume are proprietary characters make the text difficult to read. Other sections refer to illustrations or charts that aren't included in the book. I don't mean to be a jerk about these things - but if you want your work to be taken seriously, edit edit edit!