Recommnedation on a guide with the best green books to read this summer

Summer is almost here (maybe already here, depends where you live..), and nothing like a good green book to chill a hot day.

Which green book fits summer the best? SmartPlanet's team chose ten of the hottest eco books of the season, from ethical wedding and green beauty guides to eco getaway listings and tips for recycling rubbish.

This guide includes green books such as How Green Are My Wellies?, by Anna Shepard, Ecoescape 2008, by Laura Burgess and more. You can find the SmartPlanet's guide at http://www.smartplanet.com/news/household/10001230/10-great-green-books-for-summer.htm.

The guide also reminds that you can always green up these books by balancing them out with Eco-Libris, as well use swapping books sites such as BookCrossing and greenmetropolis.com. We definitely support both recommendations!

And last word - thank you to all the dear people who sent their congrats for my beautiful new baby girl - Shira (see photo below)! Shira is already doing her first green steps and I can't wait to read her a green book :-)

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

The BookCrossing adventures of Michelle Slatalla

Michelle Slatalla is one of my favorite writers at the New York Times and it's always a delight to read her column Cyberfamilias every other Thursday (Fashion & Style section).

Last week I was in Chicago, so I missed her column, but I looked for it today on the NYT website and was very happy to find another great Cyberfamilias story, this time on her BookCrossing adventures.

I wrote few months ago about BookCrossing and recommended this great free book club. Michelle Slatalla also got into it and tries to see how it actually works - who will take the books she releases to the wild and where she can hunt some books.

One thing I learned from the article was that I can find on YouTube some videos documenting book releasing into the wild around the world. Here's one example to what you can see there:




So check out 'Love That Book? Then Set It Free' and don't forget to experiment some book swapping of your own.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

releasing books at BookCrossing.com

BookCrossing.com is a great way to exchange books - it's creative, fun and eco-friendly.

It is the world's biggest free book club and more than that, it's a community of book lovers who are willing to share with others great books after they have read them, instead of just putting them back on their shelves. The goal of BookCrossing as they write it on their site is to make the whole world a library". Well, they already have 577,368 members and 4,122,405 registered books, so they're on the right way!

So how it works? they have 3 simple steps:

1. Read a good book

2. Register it on their website (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book.

3. Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records a journal entry for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it.

We, at Eco-Libris love the concept of BookCrossing. We think that it's a great way to maximize the usage of books that are already printed and hence decrease the need in more printing. Therefore, more people using BookCrossing means less trees will be cut down and we're definably for it!

We try to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, so we joined BookCrossing, with a unique promise: we will balance out every book we release and put our sticker on the sleeves of each one them! So far, we released 7 books to the wild (well, actually in NYC). It was really fun and I felt great putting the books in the subway or in a phone booth hoping that someone will find and enjoy them. And actually someone did! I was very excited to hear that one of them ('We were the Mulvaneys' by Joice Carol Oates) was already been hunted.

We'll continue to release more books this weekend. The books are by the way second hand books and we try to choose interesting ones.. so, this weekend, again in NYC, there will be 3 books that will be released by me - check out this link for more details on them.

I am not sure yet where I'll release them, but open your eyes and if you see a book sitting by itself with a note saying 'I'm not lost' and a sticker of Eco-Libris - that's one of our boys!

I'll keep you posted after I'll release them and of course, don't forget to check out and join BookCrossing.

have a great weekend,
Raz