Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin
Previous
Next

All Nonfiction Coverage

Filter by genre
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Are you ready for summer?

Review by bookpagedev

If you’re looking for tips on packing the perfect picnic basket or a refresher on how to play croquet, you’re in luck. Need to repair wicker furniture or perhaps build a lean-to? You’re all set: Suzanne Brown’s Summer: A User’s Guide lives up to its name. Brown has created a go-to book that surely will delight domestic divas, as well as hapless sorts who fantasize about creating the Perfect Summer Experience but aren’t sure how to go about it. The author’s voice is a friendly one; for the most part, she pulls off delivering suggestions and instructions without sounding patronizing, though the text does get a bit precious here and there (margaritas are sunshine in a glass and Reefs are the Rolls Royce of flip-flops. ). Overall, though, Brown seems earnest in her mission: She’s summered at lovely spots up and down the East Coast, and she wants readers to have as much fun and create as many delightful memories as she has.

Summer features page after page of color photos of enticing summer foods, wholesome activities and idyllic scenes. In addition, the how-to sections use helpful step-by-step line drawings to aid in identifying animal tracks or making a beach-towel pillow. No detail goes unshared: there are recipes for food and drink, music and movie playlists, and gardening tips. Essays offering a historical perspective on everything from baseball to toasting marshmallows are enlivened by the author’s personal musings and ensure that the book can be enjoyed as a cover-to-cover read as well as a reference guide.

If you’re looking for tips on packing the perfect picnic basket or a refresher on how to play croquet, you’re in luck. Need to repair wicker furniture or perhaps build a lean-to? You’re all set: Suzanne Brown’s Summer: A User’s Guide lives up to its name. Brown has created a go-to book that surely will […]
Memoir

Living deliberately and debt-free

Review by Abigail Dalton

When Ken Ilgunas went into one of Duke University’s busier parking lots to live deliberately, as that slightly better-known writer Henry David Thoreau did more than 100 years ago in Concord, Massachusetts, it’s entirely possible he was unaware of the potential for memoir in his unconventional living arrangements. It is our luck, then, that with a professor’s encouragement he put pen to paper, and provided us with the interesting narrative that is Walden on Wheels. Here, Ilgunas writes about his descent into debt (which, like many students, he accumulated easily and thoughtlessly), as well as his journey out of the red and into the black.

Ilgunas’ story is both conventional and unconventional; encumbered by $32,000 in student loans, he realized that in order to live the life he wanted, he would need to pay the money back, and quickly. But unlike so many of his Millennial counterparts (at least the ones that can find jobs), he knew he wasn’t cut out for an office-bound life which would leave him with a steady salary but little of what he calls “adventure.” Saddled with both debt and a desire to live a “wild” life, he began a series of unconventional jobs in Alaska and Mississippi, and eventually found himself in a graduate program at Duke, living out of a van in order to save on housing costs and to stay out of debt.

Though the first part of Walden on Wheels recounts Ilgunas’ less than enthralling college years and his almost indifferent accumulation of debt, his story gains momentum as he describes his own wilderness adventure that constituted his early jobs, and the sources of income that enabled him to pay off that debt in an impressively short period of time. As a wilderness guide, line cook and janitor, he committed himself to the idea of hard work as a means of economic—and in turn, personal—freedom. After years of the kind of labor most people wouldn’t consider, he emerged debt-free, and entered a graduate program to live a life of the mind.

While Ilgunas’ time in his red van on Duke’s Mill Lot consumes fewer pages than his title might suggest, it is in his “Walden on Wheels” that he manages to fully articulate his philosophy of living, and why he felt compelled to pay off his debt so quickly when others of his generation might be fine with decades of repayment. Though few among us would be willing to live in such cramped quarters for a year with little change in diet or recreational spending (by the end of the book I wondered if he wasn’t entirely put off of peanut butter), many would do well to take to heart Ilgunas’ message of living simply to avoid lives borne of necessity rather than passion. It may meander at times, but Walden on Wheels is a worthwhile manifesto for those debt-saddled Millennials who may see only one path forward.

When Ken Ilgunas went into one of Duke University’s busier parking lots to live deliberately, as that slightly better-known writer Henry David Thoreau did more than 100 years ago in Concord, Massachusetts, it’s entirely possible he was unaware of the potential for memoir in his unconventional living arrangements. It is our luck, then, that with […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Power via power tools

Review by bookpagedev

As the title promises, 52 Weekend Makeovers: Easy Projects to Transform Your Home Inside and Out is a DIYer’s delight. Projects range from painting trim to de-cluttering the laundry room to building a barbecue-ready patio. The introductory section provides a list of must-have implements for indoor and outdoor work, plumbing-kit recommendations, and more. Step-by-step instructions are accompanied by large, close-up photos that should instill confidence, even in tile-grouting or shelf-installation novices. 52 Weekend Makeovers has sidebars galore, including the preemptive What Can Go Wrong and Safety First, and the acquisitiveness-inspiring Cool Tools. Readers who like comparing the shortest vs. the quickest route on MapQuest.com will appreciate the Do It Right vs. Do It Fast options. This book doesn’t focus solely on building how-tos, though; it addresses color, design and style as well. In the wainscot chapter, several photos illustrate what beadboard might look like in a cool-hued bathroom or a sunroom with a built-in bench. However, no matter how clear the photos are, or how simple the instructions seem, take this to heart: Preparation is key to the success of any job. . . . And don’t forget to call for help when you need it.

As the title promises, 52 Weekend Makeovers: Easy Projects to Transform Your Home Inside and Out is a DIYer’s delight. Projects range from painting trim to de-cluttering the laundry room to building a barbecue-ready patio. The introductory section provides a list of must-have implements for indoor and outdoor work, plumbing-kit recommendations, and more. Step-by-step instructions […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Ponder first, decorate later

Review by bookpagedev

Sharon Hanby-Robie, QVC’s home decor expert and frequent on-air personality, shares her 30 years of interior design expertise in Decorating Without Fear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Home You Love. She recommends a personal, thoughtful approach: Your home should tell the story of your life. . . . I want you to learn to trust your instincts and follow your heart. The book’s language may veer into clichŽ territory, but Hanby-Robie’s principles are sound: Before embarking on a design project, it’s wise to consider which styles are appealing and appropriate, how the rooms function, where the light falls and other essentials. She offers suggestions for making rooms more efficient, as well as techniques for rendering challenging areas (ceiling too tall? space too open?) more livable. And it’s refreshing that the loads of color photos including plenty of before-and-afters are of livable, not-too-fancy rooms, rather than the shots of palatial homes and fussy furniture found in many interior design books.

Reading Decorating Without Fear does require commitment: The text is plentiful, but so is the good advice. And isn’t it better to spend more time sussing out what works now, rather than scraping off an unfortunate wallpaper choice later?

Sharon Hanby-Robie, QVC’s home decor expert and frequent on-air personality, shares her 30 years of interior design expertise in Decorating Without Fear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Home You Love. She recommends a personal, thoughtful approach: Your home should tell the story of your life. . . . I want you to learn to […]
Social Science

Is less the new more?

Review by bookpagedev

It used to be that more was better. Industrialization, urbanization, specialization and capitalism made people wealthier, healthier and happier. But where are we now? In his new book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben poses the controversial theory that economic growth and industrial expansion just aren’t as good for people as they used to be. While the Industrial Revolution gave birth to widely dispersed wealth and a new middle class, McKibben cites statistics that suggest around 80 percent of us are poorer today than we were five years ago, relative to the cost of living.

And we’re unhappier, too as measured by statistics on depression and surveys that ask people point-blank if they’ve considered suicide. Many people feel unconnected to family and neighbors. Bigger houses help us live out TV-generated fantasies of the American dream, but they also make us more lonely. We eat cheap corporate junk that was trucked in from over a thousand miles away. And the accumulation of greenhouse gases a direct result of unchecked growth threatens the very survival of our planet.

If more money, more acres and more cheap tortilla chips are no longer the secret to happiness, what is? Farmers markets, as they symbolize the kind of future McKibben would like to see. Such markets provide an outlet for small-scale, organic, non-corporate farmers offering food that hasn’t grown tired in its journey from California or Florida. And they provide an opportunity to connect with other people, the beginnings of community. Most of all, they provide a business paradigm that unhooks people from a system of reckless growth.

In short, McKibben thinks we need another kind of bottom line that doesn’t just measure profit, but also measures fulfillment and a sense of connection. He notes in his first chapter that two birds named More and Better used to roost together on the same tree branch. But these days, McKibben writes, Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. That changes everything. Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

It used to be that more was better. Industrialization, urbanization, specialization and capitalism made people wealthier, healthier and happier. But where are we now? In his new book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben poses the controversial theory that economic growth and industrial expansion just aren’t as good for […]
NonfictionMemoir

Pick yourself up and dust yourself off

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

In the summer of 2005, Mardi Jo Link’s broken-down life bore no resemblance to the happy-go-lucky farm life she’d wished for—and read about—as a girl. Instead, her marriage has just unraveled, her soon-to-be ex-husband is living across the street, her bank account is “practically uninhabited” and her three sons are confused, angry and sad. Flying in the face of such brokenness, however, Link steadfastly claims her “sons, the debt, the horses, the dogs, the land, the century-old farmhouse, the garden, the woods, the pasture, and the barn.”

Over the course of one harrowing year, Link struggles to keep her family and her farm together any way she can. In Bootstrapper, her riveting recollection of her year of living raggedly, she details not only her family’s descent into the ravages of near-starvation, the loss of beloved farm animals and the necessity of killing their own livestock for food, but also the slow, moment-by-moment ascent into a life marked by the hope of a new spring, the wonders of nature and the miracle of love and passion. At the beginning of the book, she realizes that she and her sons are one step away from losing everything. In fact, just two months after she sets out on this journey alone, her beloved horse, Major, is hit by a car. As Link cradles his head and watches his life slip slowly away, she feels a devastating loneliness. Yet she also recognizes the “limitless space of the human heart” to hold love and eventually to conquer that loneliness.

The lessons her family learns sometimes come at odd times. Once, as Link and her oldest son, Owen, are driving down the road, a wild turkey flies into the car’s windshield. She has him stop the car, not to inspect for damage but to see whether or not the turkey is dead so they can take it home for dinner. Link realizes that she has begun to “look at nature in a brand-new way—as something to eat.”

Eventually, glimmers of grace begin to peek through the holes in Link’s ravaged life. At one point she pauses to recount their victories from the past year, which include “standing among prize-winning zucchinis, looking up at the stars during a winter campfire in the valley, decorating our Christmas tree, triumphing over thundersnow, ordering chickens from a catalog.” She also receives an unexpected call from Pete, the contractor who’s remodeling her house, and launches out on a new life with him.

Hilarious, wrenching and heartwarming, Link’s poignant memoir chronicles one woman’s determination to discover meaning and wholeness in the midst of brokenness. It’s almost as if Cheryl Strayed had stayed down on the farm instead of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

In the summer of 2005, Mardi Jo Link’s broken-down life bore no resemblance to the happy-go-lucky farm life she’d wished for—and read about—as a girl. Instead, her marriage has just unraveled, her soon-to-be ex-husband is living across the street, her bank account is “practically uninhabited” and her three sons are confused, angry and sad. Flying […]

Want more BookPage?

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Nonfiction

All Nonfiction

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features