A review by finesilkflower
How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew by Erin Bried

2.0

** SKIM ALERT: Take this review with a grain of salt. I only skimmed the book. ** This is sort of a reference book, not the type you read cover to cover. I really like the premise: realizing that grandmas who lived through the Great Depression are an excellent resource of frugal and environmentally sound skills and wisdom, the author interviewed a bunch of them and filled this book with household how-to's based on their knowledge. The topics are definitely things I really want to know (how to properly iron, gardening tips, etc.) and the grandmas' quotes and life lessons sprinkled throughout are great. I do wish the author would get out of her own way a bit and let the grandmas speak more; she puts her own modern spin on most of the tips, and they come out sounding cheesy and instantly dated in a very women's magazine-y way. The other problem with this book is that there are almost no diagrams or illustrations, but most of the tips that I read could really have benefited from them. "How to tie a scarf" in words alone is unnecessarily hard to follow. Or they're just poorly explained? Because I feel like I DID want to know a lot of the stuff in this book, but reading the section on it, I didn't feel like I knew it any more than I did before.