Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Keep America Beautiful!

Keep America Beautiful is a nonprofit organization that works to "build and sustain vibrant communities that are socially connected, environmentally healthy and economically sound." Click here to learn more.

Sounds good to me!

In honor of Keep America Beautiful month, our main floor display is dedicated to books that help us live as "green" as possible. Check them out today...help save the Earth!

50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth by John Javna: is an updated version of the revolutionary 1990 bestseller and it's as innovative and groundbreaking as the original version. The authors have teamed up with 50 of America's top environmental groups, who each focused on one issue and provided a simple, step-by-step program that will empower you to help save the planet.

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner by Fred Pearce: Pearce takes inventory of everything in his home and then sets out to track down how every item, even the most mundane, was produced and distributed. It’s an eye-opening account, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world’s more than six billion inhabitants have on our planet—and of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living by Trish Riley: In response to the growing concern with global warming and environmental awareness, Riley's guide to "green" living discusses the concepts of sustainable living and includes practical suggestions, tips, and techniques for reducing your carbon footprint.

High Tech Trash by Elizabeth Grossman: although expected to be an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants, the Digital Age has proven to be a major contributer to the toxic materials in our environment, due to their makeup of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, as well as other harmful ingredients.

You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet by Thomas Kostigen: Kostigen, an environmental journalist takes the readers on a tour of his visits to vulnerable places throughout the world to show how our choices leads to melting polar ice caps and the destruction of the rainforests.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Keep America Beautiful!

No comments:

Post a Comment