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WATERLOG by Roger Deakin. Our next meeting to discuss this book is on April 16th at 8PM for venue contact postie@transitionnewtonabbot.org.uk PLEASE join us. |
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| Previously at the Book Club: |
THE WAY of IGNORANCE by WENDELL BERRY
 This is a collection of essays in which Berry talks about what it looks like to live in modern day America, both how it ought to look and how it usually does look. The topics range from animal husbandry and harvesting forests for logging, to political and theological reflection. Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays
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| FLIGHT BEHAVIOUR by BARBARA KINGSOLVER. On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged? “Flight Behaviour” is a captivating, topical and deeply human story touching on class, poverty and climate change. It is Barbara Kingsolver’s most accessible novel yet, and explores the truths we live by, and the complexities that lie behind them. link to an interview with the author on ‘Open Book’ on Radio 4 recently. Mariella Frostrup discusses ‘Flight Behaviour’ with Barbara Kingsolver : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p9gk0 |
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Our last two reads in 2012 were ‘The Stream’ by Brian Clarke. This novel follows the dramatic events that result when creatures able to act by instinct fall victim to a man-made environmental disaster. The author has been awarded the BP Natural World Book Prize for the year 2000, presented at a ceremony at the Natural History Museum, London. ‘BAD PHARMA’ by Ben Goldacre |
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Sea Room by Adam Nicholson |
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 Surviving and Thriving on the Land – Rebecca LaughtonThis book is a virtual tour of the world of contemporary smallholding. The conclusions which emerge are gold-dust for prospective and actual smallholders, while for the rest of us the book is a fascinating insight to a way of life which will become increasingly important in the future. –Patrick Whitefield, author of The Earth Care Manual and How to Make a Forest Garden. An invaluable and inspiring guide to anyone who seeks to return to their hard-working roots. A rich resource upon which to reflect. Henry Thoreau would have been proud of the analysis. –James Crowden, author of Ciderland and In Time of Flood. It s a dream come true when you finally get a piece of land or join an eco-community, and start to plan your sustainable land-based enterprise; but all too often the dream is spoiled by lack of money, stress, exhaustion and poor time management, and your work and future plans can dissolve into discord, illness and poverty. Smallholdings provide food, home, fuel and employment for those who run them, and local, seasonal, often organic and ethical food and timber for an expanding market. Surviving and Thriving on the Land looks at ways in which projects can be designed that care for the people involved in them as well as the earth that they are trying to protect. If land-based ecological projects are to offer a realistic solution to the problems we face in the twenty-first century, it is imperative that they should be sustainable in terms of human energy. This book offers a framework, backed up by real life examples, of issues to consider when setting up a new project, or for overcoming human-energy-based problems in existing projects. |
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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable The term Black Swan originates in the belief that there was no such thing – an impossibility. Then explorers discovered Australia, where they found a lot of Black Swans. So now the term has come to mean an event that actually happens that was previously not thought possible.The Black Swan’s central premise is that man has a tendency to hang onto simplistic explanations to explain away rare, often catastrophic events. We fit such events into the theory, and walk away feeling pleased with ourselves – we’ll never be caught out that way again, because we can now predict and contain the effects of such an event. Taleb recommends that instead we must try to see world as realistically as we can, and not to try to predict the future too exactly. We must be agile enough to cope with unexpected disasters, and to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. This is contrary to our nature because we evolved in a relatively predictable world with comparatively few extreme events. We now live in a world where extreme events (outliers) are so common as to be almost expected.The book is stuffed with excellent examples of comical examples our arrogance at interpreting events, and over-confidence in our judgement. One of the most startling is that punters don’t get better at predicting winners if they are given more information. They become worse, but more convinced that they are right.Taleb presents two imaginary characters to illustrate the Platonic, lazy-thinking side of our natures (Dr John) and the nimble, realistic side (Fat Tony). He illustrates ‘bad’ and ‘good’ thinking by an ingenious example. A coin is flipped 49 times – heads every time. Dr John and Fat Tony are asked to predict the 50th flip.Dr John: “Statistically, the chances are still 50:50. I can ignore the unlikely past results, and focus on the next.”Fat Tony: ” The coin is fixed. And guess what? The 50th flip will be heads too.”The trouble is, Taleb is such an annoying writer. Self-belief and self-righteousness gush from his pen. But just when you are ready to write him off as just another wise-guy, he comments in passing (in this, a book written just before the credit crunch) that the next Black Swan might be as a result of the world banking system being so widely, dangerously linked….maybe he is worth listening to after all. |
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Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives by Carolyn Steel Whatever its mercurial promise of bright lights, shared experiences and multicultural exoticism, the city can be an isolating place. However: everyone’s got to eat – and therein lies the opportunity both for life-enhancing human engagement and for equally life-sapping process-led commercialism. Carolyn Steel’s book, which interprets the city through food, highlights both the despair and the hope implicit in the idea of the city. By her clever tracing of food’s journey from land to urban table and thence to sewer, Steel makes us reflect on past and present social satisfactions and injustices which our most basic human need can inspire.Contrast the image of joyless contemporary supermarket shoppers – strip-lit lone prowlers debating forlornly with themselves about which highly packaged factory offering to microwave tonight – with the heady possibility of outdoor urban market-goers discussing food, tasting and learning. It’s clear which one we’d all rather participate in, and yet Steel urges us not to be misty-eyed about the turn of the 21st century emerging market culture either. London’s Borough Market is described as `food tourism’ – laudable, but not affordable – a middle class aberration rather than a sustainable way of life for most of us. This typifies Steel’s approach to her two-pronged subject: she is not afraid to slaughter sacred cows in her search for authenticity and meaning. This search takes her from London to the Middle East, from high flown ritual to domestic minutiae and from the mediaeval dining table to McDonalds without exhausting or overwhelming the reader.As I read through Steel’s journey, many similar food-inspired conflicts on the despair/hope axis spring to mind and make me feel at once revolutionary and impotent. Growing food locally could be such a positive collective activity, but the space to do it is scarce and prohibitively expensive. Selling and shopping for that food could rekindle the relationship between city dwellers and those who work the land, but the supermarket has become an unthinking way of life. Cooking and eating food are two of the few remaining ways in which urbanites can be hospitable, trusting and generous. But Steel’s vivid descriptions of ancient cookshops and taverns offer a far richer vision of city-dwellers bawdily conversing over shared fare than Wagamama’s ubiquitous but uneasy shared benches can ever do. Minimising waste is surely essential (and creative!) if we are to optimise increasingly meagre global resources. But as Steel points out, we currently throw away a shocking 30% of the food we buy. The massive reversals required in existing supply chains, educational priorities and even basic social interactions in the city are horribly daunting. One cannot but feel that a pan-national crisis will be the only possible trigger for a new, sustainable food market.Steel’s concluding chapter tenders myriad ideas, both utopian and pragmatic, about bottom up behavioural change and top down political leadership on food that might seek to avert such a crisis. Whilst her book is certainly a campaigning one, it is also realistic and discursive and not given to promulgating slick solutions to complex agricultural and societal problems. Potential readers will know that there are already a host of excellent polemics about contemporary food culture (Shopped, Fast Food Nation et al) and an equal canon about cities. What Carolyn Steel’s book achieves is to bring these two axiomatic subjects together for the first time with a hugely enjoyable melee of academic care, passion and a jocular, accessible style. You feel like you would like to have her round for dinner to discuss further. And she would probably accept… |
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 The Dispossed by Ursula le GuinQuite conceivably the best SF novel ever written – if that phrase means anything at all. There are two different achievements in this novel. Firstly, it is a superb portrayal of the mind of a scientist, showing the slow conceptual struggle towards a new idea (instantaneous communication). Worth reading just for that. The second achievement is that UlG explores the balance between the individualistic and collectivist strains in all societies. The device that she uses for this is a world (Urras) much like earth which contains mixed economies and socialist states around which orbits a moon (Annarres) containing an exiled colony of anarchists. The protagonist, Shevek, is a physicist on Annarres who becomes aware of the constraints of the anarchistic society and journeys to Urras. Here he sees the limitations of state power, whether capitalist or socialist. The superb, and vitally important, narrative structure that is used is Shevek’s concept of simultanaeity: the novel intertwines two narratives (Shevek’s experiences on Annares and his decision to leave, and Shevek’s experiences on Urras and his decision to leave) which allows UlG to raise the problems with both types of system simultaneously. This is not a political rant (or Rand, perhaps) but a story about an enquiring mind. And yes, it does have characters. It does what SF is supposed to do: it frees us from the tyranny of present fashion. |
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 The Moneyless Man, a year of freeconomic living by Mark BoyleImagine a year without spending or even touching money. Former businessman Mark Boyle did just that and here is his extraordinary story. Going back to basics and following his own strict rules, Mark learned ingenious ways to eliminate his bills and flourish for free. Encountering seasonal foods, solar panels, skill-swapping schemes, cuttlefish toothpaste, compost toilets and – the unthinkable – a cash-free Christmas, Boyle puts the fun into frugality and offers some great tips for economical (and environmentally friendly) living. A testament to Mark’s astounding determination, this witty and heart-warming book will make you re-evaluate your relationship to your wallet.Mark Boyle founded the ‘freeconomic’ movement in the UK. An economics graduate and former business director, his website (justfortheloveofit.org) receives 30,000 hits a day and has become a hub for community sharing with over 10,000 members. He is a columnist for the Guardian and Ethical Consumer magazine.Author’s proceds donated to charity to set up the world’s first Freeconomic Community.”Essential and enjoyable reading. The fascinating story of an important social experiment, told with humility, insight, and great humour.” Chris Cleave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Other Hand and Guardian columnist”Living with less need not be austere and miserable; rather it left Mark Boyle leaner, more skilled, and, ultimately, wiser. This is the greatest lesson of this inspirational book.” Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Hanbook and founder of the Transition Movement”It’s not difficult to admire the philosophy and the infectious home-spun and passionate tone of this book.” Benedict Allen, TV survivalist and author of The Faber Book of Exploration |
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 Find Your Power by Chris JohnstoneThis book describes how to strengthen your ability to bring about positive change in your life and our world. Drawing on insights from addictions recovery, positive psychology, storytelling and holistic science, it includes proven strategies for improving mood, building strengths and increasing effectiveness. Chris says, “My book Find Your Power- a toolkit for resilience and positive change presents strategies and insights that help us in the journey of making things different”.Do come along and join us, even if you don’t manage to read the whole book. All welcome. www.chrisjohnstone.info/book.htm |
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 The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate PickettWhy do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: – How almost everything – from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy – is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is – That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them – including the well-off – How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world. |
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 Soil not Oil by Vandana ShivaClimate change will dramatically alter how we live and is already affecting the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. In Soil Not Oil, bestselling author Vandana Shiva connects the food crisis, peak oil, and climate change to show that a world beyond a dependence on fossil fuel and globalization is both possible and necessary. Bold and visionary, Shiva reveals how three crises are inherently linked and that any attempt to solve one without addressing the others will get us nowhere. Condemning industrial agriculture and industrial biofuels as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shivas champion is the small, independent farm. What we need most in a time of changing climates and millions hungry, she argues, are sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. Calling for a return to local economies and small-scale food production Shiva outlines our remaining options: a market-centred short-term escape for the privileged, which will deepen the crisis for the poor and marginalized, or a people-centred fossil-fuel-free future, which will offer a decent living for all. |
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 Local food, how to make it happen in your community by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob HopkinsMany people already buy their vegetables as locally as possible, eat organic and seasonal food when they can, and are perhaps even getting to grips with managing an allotment. However, with current economic pressures and mounting concerns about climate change and peak oil, there is a growing feeling that we need to do more to reduce dependence on the global market.Local Food offers an inspiring and practical guide to what can be achieved if you get together with the people on your street or in your village, town or city. It explores a huge range of local food initiatives for rebuilding a diverse, resilient local food network – including community gardens, farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture schemes and projects in schools – and includes all the information you will need to get ideas off the ground.Drawing on the practical experience of Transition initiatives and other community projects around the world, Local Food demonstrates the power of working collaboratively. In today’s culture of supermarkets and food miles, an explosion of activity at community level is urgently needed. This book is the ideal place to start. |
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He challenges the doctrine of economic, technological and scientific specialization, and proposes a system of intermediate technology, based on smaller working units, communal ownership and regional workplaces, utilizing local labour and resources. |
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The Carbon Fields by Graham Harvey  It ranks as one of the great secrets of our time. A simple and elegant solution to some of the world’s most pressing problems – rising food prices, increased carbon emissions and the health crisis. The answer is here for us now if we’re bold enough to take it. No breakthroughs are required, no “fad” diets. There’s no need to throw away the car keys or give up real butter and juicy steaks. So why haven’t we been told about this great natural gift?Award-winning author Graham Harvey investigates the murky world of food and farming and reveals how global corporations have hijacked Britain’s most basic source of life and health. This book explains how globally-traded grains have been used to promote global warming, obesity and ill-health. It shows how – by reclaiming our greatest natural asset – we can put ourselves and the nation back on the road to health and prosperity.This book will surprise you. You’ll wonder how something so vital to your health and well-being can have been kept hidden. But once you know you’ll be in a position to act. You can use your power as a citizen and consumer to reclaim this stolen treasure. At this time of threat and uncertainty our country needs it as never before. |
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Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart  - ‘Reduce, reuse, and recycle’ urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, this approach only perpetuates the one-way, ‘cradle to grave’ manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place.Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we consider its abundance not wasteful but safe, beautiful and highly effective. Waste equals food. Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new – continually circulating as pure and viable materials within a ‘cradle to cradle’ model.Drawing on their experience in redesigning everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved in making anything can begin to do so as well. |
Transition Newton Abbot
including Newton Abbot, Kingsteignton, Kingskerswell and surrounding villages
Roger Deakin set out in 1996 to swim through the British Isles. The result a uniquely personal view of an island race and a people with a deep affinity for water. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain. Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicude on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, he discovers just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully-dressed fellow citizens. Encompassing cultural history, autobiography, travel writing and natural history, Waterlog is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer’s right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be given your own remote islands? Thirty years ago it happened to Adam Nicolson. Aged 21, Nicolson inherited the Shiants, three lonely Hebridean islands set in a dangerous sea off the Isle of Lewis. With only a stone bothy for accommodation and half a million puffins for company, he found himself in charge of one of the most beautiful places on earth. The story of the Shiants is a story of birds and boats, hermits and fishermen, witchcraft and catastrophe, and Nicolson expertly weaves these elements into his own tale of seclusion on the Shiants to create a stirring celebration of island life.
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