Bookbag 6-18

Let’s take a look at what I’ve picked up from the library recently.  Most of them are books that I selected via our library’s online portal and picked up when they came in.  A few I just chose because they looked good at the library!

The Rustler – Ok, this is a straight up romance novel.  I enjoy well written historical romances that are high on the “romance” and light on all the descriptive bedroom passages.  Linda Lael Miller is an author I enjoy.  Her characters are well rounded and engaging, the stories move along, the are well historically researched and you actually believe the romance.  It was a fun read.

Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness – This is one of those books I thought looked interesting when I saw the title on the library website but that disappointed me when I received it.  I thought it would be more of a “how to” type book–instead it was more of a memoir or autobiographical book about the author’s experiences.  Once I realized that (from just flipping through it) I didn’t even bother reading it.  It might be a wonderful book–it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

Pickled-If you don’t know about my love of home food preservation, well, you obviously haven’t been reading my blog for very long!  I tend to pick up any canning/preserving book I come across at the library just to check it out.  The book was very pretty, and had some interesting sounding recipes, but nothing that I was particularly moved to try.  This one falls into the “fun to flip through, don’t need it for my home library” category.

The Book of Herbal Teas-I keep reading about herbal medicine, although I’ve only incorporated a few things into my family’s life.  This book is a bit older (’96) and is about making teas from herbs for both pleasure and medicinal benefits.  If you have never read anything on herbal medicine this book gives you a gentle start.  For me, having read an purchased a bunch of books previously, there wasn’t anything particularly new.  Again, fun to flip through, not one I’m planning on purchasing.

First Steps in Winemaking-I’ve been making wine from kits for about a year now.  The kits are pretty foolproof and make great wine.  Now that I’ve got the basics down I’m interested in branching out into more homemade wine.  This book is older (’94) which in this case is beneficial, as it does NOT assume you’ll be using a prepurchased kit.  That means it goes into far more detail about the equipment needed etc.  It also has 130 recipes, arranged in order of the months that the ingredients or fruits are available.  Isn’t that clever?  This is a book that I’ll be getting for my personal library–especially since I can order it used from Amazon for about $4 (that’s with shipping)

Home Brewing: Self-Sufficiency-I ordered this book thinking it was about winemaking, but actually it is about beermaking.  I don’t drink beer much and Yankee Bill thus far hasn’t been interested in trying beer so I just flipped through and sent it back to the library.

The Front Yard Forager -An interesting and useful book about foraging in more urban (or suburban) enviorments.  It was well written, informative and contained not only info on the plants but recipes to use them.  I enjoyed reading this book and learned about some new edibles.  I won’t necessarily buy this book, but I may take it out again in the future and look through it again 🙂  I do that sort of thing.

Unscrewed: Salvage and Reuse Motors, Gears, Switches, and More from Your Old Electronics-I thought Bill might find this book interesting, but he really didn’t look at it.  Buddy on the other hand found it FASCINATING.  It is full of black and white photos showing you various electronics taken apart and then with suggestions on what types of things the pieces could be used for (but no directions for projects using them).  So far Buddy has taken apart a CD Player, old video game controller, an old broken breadmachine I was going to thrown out. . . you get the idea.  I had to make a rule that he couldn’t start taking things apart without asking permission first (or else I was afraid he’d take apart his alarm clock or other useable items in his room!).  The good thing is that folks are happy to give you broken items that he can take apart.  The bad thing is it takes up space and can be messy.

Buried Treasures: Tasty Tubers of the World (Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guide)-I never knew there were so many odd edible tubers out there.  Quite a few of them are not available in my climate.  I skimmed the book, read a bit about tubers that are more local to me and called it good.

Artisan Cheese Making at Home-I’ve already purchased 2 cheesemaking books for my home library, so although this one was informative and very attractive, I won’t be purchasing it.  It seemed to have more advanced hard cheeses in it, so in the future I may be interested, but I should get some basic experience beyond yogurt before considering it.

Living Off the Land: Tracking, Building Traps, Shelters, Toolmaking, Finding Water and Food-I’m not really into the whole “I’m stuck in the woods with nothing and need to survive” type of thing, which is most of what this book was.  When Buddy is older I’m sure he’d find something like this interesting (as a Scout and all), but I quickly realized it wasn’t what I wanted to read and tossed it back into the library bag.

The Backyard Homestead Book of Building-There were a lot of nice projects in this book.  The intro had general information on tools, supplies and techniques for building, then the rest was projects arranged by “topic” (ie garden, food harvest/preservation, storage, animals).  The projects were well laid out and the directions seemed, at least from just reading and not from trying them, to be quite clear.  There were also a LOT of projects, from simple things like plant supports to unusual items like a homemade smoker and finally much more complicated projects like chicken coops and sheds.  If you are interested in DIY projects and woodworking of a homestead bent, I do recommend you check out this book from your local library or else take a look at it in the bookstore and see if it will meet your needs!

note:  The Amazon links provided are advertising links–so if you happen to buy anything while you are at Amazon then I get a very small advertising fee.  However this does not increase your cost at all.  Just so you know.