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Today on our green books series we present a new book of Ed Begley, Jr., who was dubbed "the star of climate change" by Newsweek magazine . The book will be published tomorrow (Tuesday, February 19), so it's fresh from the oven (you can already pre-order a signed copy from Strand Bookstore).
Before we get to introducing the book, I would like to say that if you would like to meet Begley Jr. himself and you live in the New York area, you are welcome to an event with him at Strand Bookstore in NYC (828 Broadway on the corner of 12th st.) on Wednesday, February 20, 07:00PM - 08:30PM. Begley, Jr. will share in the event some of his ideas on how we can live green in NYC. This event is free and open to the public, and you will also be able to find there Eco-Libris stickers, as part of a new collaboration we start with Strand Bookstore.
So now that you know where you can meet Ed, it's time to introduce his new book:
Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life
Author: Ed Begley, Jr.
Ed Begley, Jr., became a star for his convincing portrayal of the obsequious, socially awkward Dr. Erlich on the acclaimed television series "St. Elsewhere," a performance which earned him an Emmy nomination. The son of distinguished radio, television, and screen actor Ed Begley, the younger Begley made his acting debut at age 17 in an episode of "My Three Sons."
Later, he worked on the college and nightclub circuit as a standup comedian and then was a TV cameraman for a short while. During the '70s, Begley returned to acting and guest starred on several series, including "Happy Days" and "Starsky and Hutch." In film, he made his debut in the Disney comedy "Now You See Him, Now You Don't," and went on to play small roles in a couple more Walt Disney comedies.
Steadily employed in Hollywood as a supporting actor and occasional lead in television and feature films, Begley has displayed a broad range of talent that has allowed him to play anything from hippies to deadly villains in a variety of genres.
When not acting, Begley is a tireless promoter of environmental causes. He has also served as the Environmental Affairs Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles and on the boards of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Environmental Research Foundation, The Coalition for Clean Air, and the American Oceans Campaign. Begley's environmental efforts have earned him awards from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Coalition for Clean Air.
As of 2007, Begley and his wife Rachelle Carson star in their own reality television series, Living With Ed, on the Home & Garden Television, focusing on their pursuits of sustainable living.
Furthering Begley’s pursuit of sustainability is his line of natural home cleaning products, Begley’s Best, "a terrific all-purpose cleaner designed to replace all other household cleaning products...made from extracts of pine, palm extract, de-acified citrus, maize, fermented sugar cane roots, and olive seeds. The ingredients are all natural, non-toxic and totally biodegradable in just 3 to 7 days."
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Published in: February 2008
What it is about: Begley Jr., an actor and a committed environmentalist, presents a do-it-yourself guide to green living that explains how to incorporate eco-friendly products and practices into one's everyday life. The book is covering areas such as the home, transportation, recycling, energy, food, gardening, clothing and furnishing. Begley shares his experiences on what works, what doesn't, and what will save you money!
From the book description: "And if you think living green has to mean compromising on aesthetics or comfort, fear not; Ed's wife, Rachelle, insists on style - with a conscience. In Living Like Ed, his environmentalism and her design savvy combine to create a guide to going green that keeps the chic in eco-chic. From recycling more materials than you ever thought possible to composting without raising a stink to buying an electric car, Living Like Ed is packed with ideas - from obvious to ingenious–that will help you live green, live responsibly, live well. Like Ed."
Why you should get it:
1. I always in favor of such guides that give you advice how to go green from first-hand experience.
2. I like the book's approach that as far as I understand is led by Rachelle, Ed's wife, which is that going green does not mean you have to compromise on quality, comfort, style, etc. Many people afraid that going green means trade-offs and this book means to show them it ain't necessarily so.
3. Ed Begley became green many years before being green became popular or even understandable. As described on therenewableplanet.com, Begley has been recycling since before many other eco-celebs were born and has owned a wind turbine since the ’80s. Even in the '90s many saw him, as his wife explains, some kind of green freak, which then may also even cost him a little bit in his career.
I think it's kind of historical justice that Begley Jr. enjoys now the fruits of being loyal all of these years to his green beliefs. I also believe that this is the exact kind of person you would like to receive advice from about how to green up your life.
What others say about it:
“Filled with sound advice and first-hand experience from someone who has been walking the walk for more than 38 years, Living Like Ed provides a wide array of practical options for anyone who wants to make his life a little-or a lot-greener. Ed Begley is more than a beloved Hollywood figure; he¹s an all-American hero, and Living Like Ed is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to becoming more environmentally savvy that light greens and bright greens alike will find themselves dog-earing for years to come.” - Treehugger.com
Enjoy the book, and if you're looking for other interesting green books, you are invited to check out our green books page on our website's green resources section.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
Bonnie Alter reports today in TreeHugger about Dorling Kindersley (DK), an illustrated publisher from the UK ("famous for its travel books, Eyewitness series and children's books"), that goes green with a new range of illustrated books, 'Made with Care'.
Four titles will be printed in this series and DK plans to take the following measures in their production:
1. The books will have no jackets, but instead they'll have featuring unbleached covers made of 100% recycled board
2. The books will be printed on FSC-certified paper.
3. Usage of vegetable inks and environmentally friendly glues.
4. theBookseller.com reports that printing will be by Mohn Media in Germany, which DK describes as "one of the country's pioneers of environmental awareness". The German location will minimise distribution distances.
The marketing of the books will also go green - it will be mainly electronic and any paper used will be either FSC-certified or recycled.
These efforts are great and kudos to DK for their efforts to make these books in a greener manner. It started, as I understand from the guardian.co.uk, from DK's willingness to avoid accusations of "greenwashing", as all of the four new books are on green subjects ('Grow Organic' - a gardening book, 'Green Babycare', 'Earth Matters' - an encyclopedia of the environment, and Make It!, which shows children how to turn old rubbish into something creative).
I hope that DK will broaden their green efforts to other books they publish as well. theBookseller.com reports that "The Made with Care initiative is the pilot scheme of a broad push towards green and ethical standards at DK. By the end of this year, the publisher will be using purely PREPS Grade 3 paper (a traceable grade), and will require that all its printers meet the ISO 14001 waste management standards and are FSC chain of custody approved."
I also hope that DK will also include in their future green plans the usage of recycled paper for the books themselves and not only for the cover. This is a significant part of any environmental initiative and paper policy in the book publishing industry, as we can see from other green initiatives in the book industry, from The Green Press Initiative's Book Industry Treatise to initiatives taken by big publishers such as Random House, Simon & Schuster and Scholastic. Another example to look at is Kedzie Press, that initiated with us the Million Tree-A-Thon initiative, which prints all its titles of our titles are printed on 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer waste paper (FSC certified), and processed chlorine free.
In any case, DK wants to stimulate a debate and open new routes for the whole book industry to find green suppliers, which I find very encouraging. All in all, it looks that Dorling Kindersley is committed to going green and we'll follow its journey towards sustainable reading and we'll report on updates from the road. We'll of course bring you also coverage of all the books on the series when they will be published.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
What's the connection between Sonny Bono (entertainer & politician), Richard Ford (novelist), LeVar Burton (actor), John McEnroe (my favorite tennis player of all times) and Ice-T (rapper & actor)?
They were all born on February 16! If you're also celebrating your birthday today - happy birthday to you too!
We love birthdays and therefore we're happy to announce a new option to celebrate a birthday of friends, family members, colleagues and anyone you care about with Eco-Libris!
Eco-Libris is offering you now to plant trees to balance out the books of your loved ones who celebrate their birthday. Not only that new trees will be planted to balance out their books, but they will also receive our stickers with a beautiful birthday card made of recycled paper.
All you need to do is to choose how many of the birthday person's books you want to balance out on our special birthday gift page, change the shipping address on the payment page to the address of the gift receiver and we will take care of the rest!
This is also a great green add-on if you're buying a book as a gift for the birthday person, especially if you're buying a green book.
The birthday cards we send are made by Doodle Greetings (see picture above of one of their cards). Not only these cards come with a beautiful design, but they are also eco-friendly - printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper and are made chlorine-free and acid free. Sounds like a good fit with Eco-Libris stickers!And of course, if it's your birthday and you want to give yourself a green present - you're welcome to balance out books with us as well! Yours,
Raz @ Eco-LibrisEco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
Australia is one of my favorite places around the world ever since I visited this beautiful country 14 years ago. That's why I was happy few weeks ago to get interviewed by Daz Chandler on Radio 2SER, a local radio sation in Sydney, and I'm even happier now on a new collaboration of Eco-Libris with a Melbourne-based publisher with the great name 'Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins'.
Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins is an independent publishing company, dedicated to supporting emerging writers and illustrators. It publishes Torpedo, a printed fiction quarterly, which is available exclusively through its site (that way the publisher can give 50% of the very modest cover price to the contributors, who thus earn royalties for their work every quarter).
Volume One of Torpedo is already available on the website and now Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins is collaborating with Eco-Libris to balance out each one of the copies sold on its website. Hence, for every copy of Torpedo that to be purchased, a new tree will be planted and the buyer will also receive Eco-Libris sticker.
Volume One features fiction from Jim Shepard, Aniruddha Bahal, Clancy Martin, Josephine Rowe, Jon Bauer, Amelia Walker, Ronnie Scott, Chris Flynn, Ruby Murray, Luke May, Neil Boyack and Bryce Wolfgang Joiner. Illustrations by Eirian Chapman, Pat Dalton & Tim Molloy. A wraparound cover by Chris Ede!
I asked Chris Flynn, who founded Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins last December what feedbacks he get on the new collaboration and here's his reply:
"The feedback has been good, ranging from disbelief to excitement. In fact we have sold quite a few copies based upon the Eco-Libris factor alone, particularly at the Artist's Market here where we have a stall. It's definitely added a dimension to Torpedo that pleases readers and I think the Eco-Libris star will definitely be in the ascendancy this year."
Thanks, Chris! And good luck with Torpedo. We're already waiting for Volume Two and for the other upcoming publications of Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins (is this a cool name or what?) - novels, short story collections, graphic novels & novella collections, all coming up in 2008 & 2009.
Cheers,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
Free stuff is always great and free books online is even greater. The New York Times reported earlier this week that HarperCollins Publishers will be offering on their website free electronic editions of some of its books on its website, including books of Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman and Erin Hunter.
The idea, explains Motoko Rich in the NYT, is "to give readers the opportunity to sample the books online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through books in a bookstore".
This step is part of a variety of online promotions that HarperCollins Publishers announced on in a news release last Monday. Two options will be offered to readers on their website - in the “Full Access” Program, a select number of titles can be seen in their entirety for a limited time, and in the “Sneak Peek” Program, readers will be able to view 20% of many new titles two weeks before their on sale date.
According to HarperCollins news release, a key component of this program is the launch of a year-long promotion of bestselling author Paulo Coelho’s books. Each month an entire book will be available for free. The first book, currently accessible, is The Witch of Portobello.
“I believe that online reading helps increase book sales,” said Paulo Coelho. “I am very pleased that HarperCollins is able to make my titles available online for my fans to read.”
Besides Coelho's book, you can all find now on HarperCollins website the following free books:
"Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy" by Mr. Irvine
"I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants" by Roger Director
"The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose" by Mark Halperin
"Warriors: Into the Wild" the first volume in a children's series by Erin Hunter
Another writer that will also have one of his books posted in the 'Full Access' progam is Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist, short story and comics writer. Gaiman invites readers of his blog to help him choosing the book that will take part in the program. You can do it on Gaiman's blog (go to the post from February 9 and click on your favorite book). The updated results can be seen on this page.
I liked what Gaiman had to say to the NYT about his participation in the program and the concept behind it: "“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too."
Gaiman gave a further explanation to the point he tried to made on his blog: "I think the point I was making wasn't so much that eventually you buy your own books, as that there's not and there has never been a simple one-to-one relationship between the books you read and way you find authors and the books you buy. It's more complicated than that, and more interesting. It's about the way that it's assumed that books have a pass-along rate, that a book will be read by more than one person. If the people who read the book like it, they might buy their own copy, or, more likely, just put the author in that place in their heads of Authors I Like. And that's a good place for an author to be."
The free electronic editions would be available only for one month and readers won't be able to download or print the books, but nevertheless it's still a good opportunity to explore some great books at no charge. If you like any of the books there, but hate to read on your computer screen, try to see if there's any bookmoocher out there who is offering this book. It's also free!
In any case, it would be interesting to see if free content will actually result in increased sales as HarperCollins is hoping to be the case here. I promise to keep you posted as soon as HarperCollins will report on the results of this new initiative.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
Eco-Libris starts this week a content partnership with Green Options. Green Options Media’s growing network of environmentally-focused blogs provides users with a broad spectrum of information on and direction for making more sustainable choices in their lives.
Launched in February, 2007, Green Options Media has grown into a leader among “green” web portals by combining news, guidance and community features for a wide audience. Both treehuggers and the “green curious” will find information they can use and people with whom they can share their journeys towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
I'm following Green Options since day one and it's very exciting for me to have this opportunity to partner and share content with one of the best green news portals on the web.
Green Options started yesterday by publishing this week's Monday green book on sustainablog. Today we're happy to bring you a post from Green Options that was written by Jennifer Lance and was published on Thursday, February 7, covering a new green children book.
There’s a plethora of wonderful children’s books on gardening, but there is always room for more! What’s This? A Seed’s Story by Caroline Mockford is a charming story about a child’s discovery of a seed and the cycle of plant life. I was lucky enough to have my six-year-old daughter read this book to me for her homework.
What’s This? A Seed’s Story begins with a bird discovering a seed one winter morning. I anticipated the bird would eat the seed, then deposit its droppings somewhere and begin the plant’s life; however, my prediction was wrong. Instead, a little girl, along with her marmalade cat, discovered it and “planted the seed carefully in a corner of her garden.” My daughter has her own garden, as I believe every child should, so I was happy to see the main character in this book also has her own garden bed. (Fellow writer Beth recently wrote about her child’s birthday garden, but back to our story…)
The girl tends to her seed, and then one day, it starts to grow. At this point during our reading, I asked my daughter what kind of plant she thought it would be. She guessed a flower, and I guessed a pea. As the plant grew taller and taller, I changed my prediction to a bean, and noticing the pole used to support the plant, my daughter thought it must be clematis.
Every day when she woke up, the little girl ran straight out to the garden to look at the plant that was growing from the seed. And one morning, when she ran outside, there, turning its head to the sun, was a magnificent sunflower.
At this point in the story, I was reminded of Melanie Eclare’s A Handful of Sunshine. Like Tilda in A Handful of Sunshine, the little girl saved her sunflower head in the fall. In What’s This? A Seed’s Story, the little girl takes her sunflower head to school, where the teacher helps her shake the seeds out gently. Too bad the teacher didn’t take the opportunity to teach the children about Fibonacci and flowers. When spring returns, all of the children in the class plant the sunflower seeds, “and when the next summer came, every child had a beautiful, smiling sunflower!”
Organic gardening with children is challenging at times, but it is also very rewarding. The fact that my daughter would guess that a plant in a book illustration is clematis shows that her plant knowledge is far superior to my own at six years of age. As spring time approaches, you can look forward to many posts on Eco Child’s Play about gardening with children.
We're very happy to update you with a new partnership - Kedzie Press, an independent publishing house based in Seattle, Washington is collaborating with Eco-Libris in a new initiative called Million Tree-A-Thon.
The goal: planting one million trees for one million books to be sold by Kedzie Press until the end of 2009.
Kedzie Press is already a green publisher - it publishes books with socially conscious and or environmentally friendly messages, as well as the occasional work of fiction. It strives to help its readers lead better lives and all of our titles are printed on 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer waste paper (FSC certified), and processed chlorine free. It means that by pledging to plant one tree for every book sold, Kedzie Press actually maximize the positive impact it already has on the environment.
Million Tree-A-Thon will start with a new book, The Green Parent: A Kid-Friendly Guide to Earth-Friendly Living by Jenn Savedge, which is jam packed with information, interviews, and inspiration to help parents become Green Parents. Eco-Libris logo will appear on every printed copy of the book, signifying that one tree is being planted for each and one of these copies. The book will be available at local and online booksellers nationwide on April, 2008 and and can be pre-ordered already from the Kedzie Press website.
Kedzie Press is looking to make a difference in their conservation efforts and inspire others to do the same. We are very excited and proud to be part of these efforts and look forward to meeting the goal: planting one million trees for one million Kedzie Press books. I'm positive that with the support of all the eco-conscious readers out there we can do it!
So buy any Kedzie Press title from Kedzie Press website (check it out, they've got really interesting green books..) and join the Kedzie Million Tree-A-Thon.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!
Today on our green books series we present a new book of Ed Begley, Jr., who was dubbed "the star of climate change" by Newsweek magazine . The book will be published tomorrow (Tuesday, February 19), so it's fresh from the oven (you can already pre-order a signed copy from Strand Bookstore).
