An Ode to Secondhand Book Shops

Immediately, I smell the smell
of books, old and musty.
I breathe it in and exhale
And move slowly forward.
It's an adventure! A treasure hunt!
A slow meandering through a labyrinth,
Shopping basket clutched in hand
And growing ever heavier.
So many books, so many worlds,
So many possible choices.
Bestsellers of yesterday share space
With bestsellers of yester-year, or yester-decade,
That knock covers with little-known treasures
Once rescued from the bargain bin.
Fellow book lovers, fellow treasure hunters,
Roam the aisles. Sidestep them neatly
While remaining focused. The books are calling.
Finger a few spines, read some blurbs,
Weigh the book in your hand and decide.
Back on the shelf or into the basket.
I deliberate, add up sums,
And regretfully have to put some back.
Up to the counter, and watch as they're totaled.
I cringe but reach for the wallet and pay.
After all, they're used. They're cheap(er) and
They're good for the environment
And good for you.

Read an eBook Week

March 8-14, 2009 is Read an E-Book Week. There is something to be said for the feel of a physical book in your hands. I love the smell of books and that is, unfortunately, something that no ereader has been able to replicate. But I discovered the great world of ebooks years ago and found, interestingly enough, I like them.

I am the very satisfied owner of a Sony Reader which perpetually lives in my bag and at any one time holds 300+ short stories, novellas, novels, and non-fiction books. In my mind, the Reader has more than paid for itself by allowing me to start another book immediately after finishing one on my train ride to work.

Ebooks also have a much lower carbon footprint than a traditional dead-tree version. A paperback book uses energy to produce the raw materials needed to print the book (paper, ink, glue), and then the actual energy used to assemble the book. Then there is the energy used to transport the books to the store, the energy the consumer uses to drive to the store and back, and if the books are not sold, the energy to send them back to the publisher to be pulped. The necessary energy increases with a hardcover book. An ebook, however, saves the vast majority of all that. Yes, it uses electricity - you need it to read the darn thing! - but I can order it at home, download it, and start reading immediately. An ebook cuts out raw materials, production, and transportation.

Ebooks are still very much a niche market but a growing one. More publishers are experimenting with electronic books and many authors have used the medium to publicize themselves, sometimes giving away free copies of their books in electronic format.

Read and E-Book Week is a great way for readers to experiment with ebooks themselves. There are number of websites that have collections of ebooks available for public consumption free. The most famous of these is Project Gutenberg, which is a collection of public domain books. But if you aren't interested in classics, there are also ManyBooks and Feedbooks which house both public domain books and contemporary books published under a Creative Commons License.

While not everyone will be a convert, how will you know if you like ebooks or not if you never try?

Fam Sanctuary

Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food by Gene Baur

Book description: Leading animal rights activist Gene Baur examines the real cost of the meat on our plates -- for both humans and animals alike -- in this provocative and thorough examination of the modern farm industry.

Baur has written a book that is part memoir and part exposé of the factory farm system's treatment of animals. It is short but packs a lot in. Not unexpectedly, the author has frequent forays into "preachiness" which if you are not of a like mind can get tiring. (To be honest, it can get tiring even if you are.) Unfortunately, I doubt that many who are not like-minded will ever read this book.

Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian. I am not a vegan. While this book made me carefully consider veganism, in the end I decided against it but vowed to buy my eggs and dairy carefully to minimize my support of factory farms.

Confined animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) are one of the truly despicable inventions of the industrialized agricultural system. It is absolutely appalling and the fact that the USDA not only subsidizes it but encourages it infuriates me. Animals are sentient beings. They feel pain, fear, loneliness, and anger as well as happiness. Anyone who has ever owned a pet can tell you that. Yet, for some reason, because these animals are used for food they do not deserve the basic dignities that should be their right.

Treat a dog or a horse the way pigs are treated and the Humane Society is called. Yet here are billions of animals who give their lives so that we may eat in the manner we want and we treat them not with respect, but without thinking at all. Humans have become so far removed from the food supply chain that it is very hard to connect what is on our plates to what occurs on the farm. The idyllic picture of the family farm, cows peacefully grazing in the field next to the vegetable garden, is unfortunately no longer the norm. Through careful advertising, though, largescale agriculture tries to perpetuate that image.

It has been said that if slaughterhouses were made of glass most people would stop eating meat. But due to the high security around such places (and other aspects of CAFOs) most will never see how the cows that became that hamburger died. My coworker had the misfortune to wander onto the kill floor of a slaughterhouse. She is now a vegetarian.

Why did I decide to not go vegan? I have known what occurs in CAFOs and in slaughterhouses for a long time. Nothing in this book shocked me, though it did touch me. I did not become vegetarian for moral reasons. I have no problems with killing invasive species that are damaging the environment. I do have a problem with the way we treat animals in this society. If every farm in the country was Polyface Farm, I might even eat meat again, but unfortunately they are not. There were some American Indian tribes that thanked the spirits of animals before they were killed because the animals gave their lives so the people could live. Perhaps we should return to that mentality. The sheer waste that occurs in industrial agriculture should make every environmentalist outraged -- not least, the waste in lives that are thrown away as acceptable losses to the system, and never even make it into the food supply.

Stirring It Up

Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirsberg

Book description: Gary Hirsberg is the founder and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, a company that proved it was profitable to operate sustainably. Hirsberg outlines his own journey in Stirring it Up and highlights other success stories, from Wal-mart to Patagonia, of companies who have embraced a sustainable product, production supply chain, work environment, and culture -- and made it profitable.

I scoffed when I reached the section where Hirsberg points to Wal-mart, the most hated of retail giants, as an example of a company that was working to "save the world." It took me a while to reconcile my view of Wal-mart -- the blight upon rural America and destroyer of the small mom-and-pop stores -- with the Wal-mart Hirsberg described. I had to remind myself there were two sides to every coin. I still find it very hard to believe that Wal-mart's journey to being green was motivated by anything other than . . . well, green, as in money.

And it is true -- being green can save you money. It goes back to the three 'R's of environmentalism we memorized all those years ago. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Those were the tenents of the do-it-yourself environmentalism. Unfortunately, the first two seem to have been forgotten. They were unpopular in that they reminded us of the need to change our gluttonous and spoiled lifestyles. But, as Hirsberg showed with examples throughout his book, reduce and reuse can sure conserve more than just raw materials. For a business, the bottom line is hugely important.

While I am a believer in green business, I doubt it can save the world because it ignores one of the root causes of most if not all environmental problems: consumption. Green business is still firmly rooted in the capitalist framework and in the free market economy. The belief that the free market can fix everything is somewhat of a sacred cow in the United States. I agree that the market is a very powerful entity but do not think it is the answer for all the ills in the world, mainly because the free market without government intervention will most likely not take into account the externalities into the price of the product. And the free market is still based on consumption. Whenever we buy something from the store, we are directly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, and landfill waste. Buying "green" should also mean buying less, and reusing what you can (either yourself and giving to others) in addition to recycling.

Still, overall, a great thumbs-up to Hirsberg and other green business entrepreneurs out there.

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Book Description: In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not one but fifty-five schools--especially for girls--in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit. (from back cover)

I picked this book up on a whim before it made international best sellers lists and won the Kiriyama Prize, among other awards. It sat collecting dust for a little bit as I read another I had bought at the same time. I then sat down with Three Cups of Tea and I was blown away. The story of Mortenson's struggle, determination, and eventual successes held me captive and gave me hope that the world can be a better place for our children, and our children's children. After reading, I donated money to Mortenson's non-profit, The Central Asia Institute. CAI is my charity of choice now.

Mortenson's story proves that one man can make a difference in the world. He has dedicated his life to building schools in one of the most violent and dangerous regions of the world because he believes that education can truly improve the lives of people. This is something I believe myself, and I greatly admire Mortenson and others like him for promoting peace, alleviating poverty, and providing the chance for a better life through education.

This is a book that I believe everyone should read. In the world we live in full of prejudice, violence, and hate, a story of one man who set out to change the world for the better -- and did -- is a story that should be told often and shared as much as possible.