Pardon My French

Eco-Reading Challenge

I must be crazy to join a reading challenge at the moment, but then again I don't think I've really marketed myself as the most logical of people so no one should be surprised.

My e-friend Chris over at book-a-rama is hosting an environmentally-themed reading challenge in honor of Earth Day and I've decided to join. The rules are simple enough: pick 5 books with an environmental theme, read them in 5 months, and post your reviews to the blog. She's also asking people to commit to acts of green reading -- changing our reading habits in ways that will positively impact the earth.

I'm going to ponder my options for acts of green reading, but the very first one is to only choose books I already have just sitting on my bookshelf. I have this very large stock, see, and I need to just go ahead and read them already. So that's one. The other one is to make a formal attempt to pry myself away from the computer and spend less of my scant free time in the evenings reading status updates on-line and more time reading actual print magazines and books that I already have. If I have to, I'm going to ask my husband to hide the power cord (but he says he wants to see it in writing first. He's a smart fella and learns fast). Not sure this really counts as a 'green' act but it needs to happen and I'm going to use the challenge as motivation.

Here are the books I've got so far:

In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore. I'm really looking forward to this one.

Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop, in honor of my good friend who has just started beekeeping.

Voyage aux pays du coton by Erik Orsenna. I bought this one for my husband a few years back and it seems interesting.


I've still got two slots left. One of them will more than likely go to a book on gardening and the other one might be filled with A Silent Spring, something I've been meaning to read for ages but have never gotten around to.

Come on and join the fun!