Post 367: For the Win

For the Win by Cory Doctorow. ISBN: 9780765322166.

The best idea presented in this book: if corporations are multinational, why are labor unions still local? In fact, why is any kind of protest still local? I haven't seen any kind of mass protest about corporate behavior at all. Then again, the news channels are also corporate owned, so maybe there has been and it just wasn't big enough or long enough to get my attention.

But we do have the ability to set up some very major and damaging protests. I'm sure you've all heard of the "don't buy gas" day that occasionally pops up on Facebook. While this is a good start, it's not going to actually affect the market. People will simply buy gas the day before or after and so the gas consumption will stay the same. It's the same for Buy Nothing Day.

But what would happen if we went a little farther? What if we had don't buy gas month? This wouldn't be practical for most of us since we work in different cities or towns than where we live, but you could certainly reduce your gas consumption within that month. People could get together for carpooling or figure out bus/subway schedules.

What about Christmas? If you refused to shop at a big chain store, they would certainly feel the hurt. Can you imagine the panic Walmart would feel to open up to an empty store during one of their big door buster sales? Where before there were mobs willing to trample each other, now there is only the sound of a large empty store. Queue lonesome western music and tumbleweeds.

And if we have corporations like Walmart, etc. who won't allow unions to contact their employees on store grounds, why not try and go through Facebook? Why not try to use the internet to have a bigger impact, to promote change?

We can't keep doing things the way we did them 30 years ago. It's not going to work. The big guys can take a hit from one store, from one state, and especially if it's just one day. But it doesn't have to be like that. There are good reasons to have a global protest; if only we had the leaders to step up.

Presenting Lenore gives a positive review, despite being a non-gamer. She is both gushy about the awesomeness and realistic about the weaknesses of the novel. Stacked also had some good things to say about it without having blinders on.
LibsNote: Library copy. However, it is also available free and legally at Craphound (Doctorow's website).

Post 366: Pump Six and Other Stories

"The Pasho" in Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. ISBN: 9781441892201 (audiobook).

How far would you be willing to go against your culture in order to bring about the change you felt was necessary for your family, your village, your city, your country? Would you go and become a priest of a religion from a country your country was at war with?

It's a hard question to ask, but what if it was necessary? What if you, and only you, believed that it was honestly the best way to improve the lives around you? This is exactly what Raphel has done. He left his Jai village and learned to become a Keli "Pasho". When he returns, he is greeted with pride by some of his family members, save for his grandfather, who fought against the Keli and says he would gladly do so again.

WWe are faced with serious cultural issues which are preventing us from moving forward as a nation, a people, and as a species. It feels like we are a country full of five year olds who have wet the bed. We know that the bed is going to get cold sooner rather than later, we know that it will be uncomfortable and start to smell, but right now that urine is impossibly warm and it is so hard to get out of bed. We are ashamed to admit that we have wet the bed, and no one remembered to turn on the nightlight for us.

I was watching the Colbert Report the other day and the guest was Nobel Prize winner Jodi Williams. The smartest thing she said was, "I believe when there are more different types of humans in a room having a discussion, different ideas for resolution will be had. When you have a bunch of white dudes sitting around a table you're going to have a bunch of white dude ideas." (~5:07) So why are we so afraid of cooperation among political parties, races, religions?

Why is it so hard to take the step to learn about new cultures and incorporate the good aspects into our own? Is it really such a betrayal to step in and say, "Hey, this isn't working anymore, maybe we shouldn't keep feeding those Christians to the lions persecuting those Muslims"? When exactly did our culture get to be so bad for us? And what would you like to see go?

An excellent review from another Goodreads user can be found here.
LibsNote: Copy borrowed from my library.
Also, if you are curious about steampunk and/or this particular volume you can actually read the first story for free over at Google Books. I freakin' love previews.

Post 365: a general update

So. I'm not going to be posting every day anymore.

I was thinking about going in depth about why I wouldn't be posting anymore, but I don't think it's really necessary, and long-winded explanations about being burned out about reading and my personal/professional/family life getting in the way or not getting in the way is kind of boring. Let's just say I decided I wanted to see if I could post every day for a year and I did. And now it is time to try something new. So from now on I will be posting twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. This means you will get a post tomorrow and then you will not get another one until Thursday this week. And that's how it's going to be.

There are several practical reason for doing this; for one, I think my daily posting schedule is possibly scaring off readers who don't want to read a slightly less than 1500 word essay every day. Also, this will allow me to read longer books without fear of getting behind, and I will not be required to make two posts a book. I think I will continue numbering my posts, simply because it is useful to me personally.

Please feel free to let me know if you like this change, or if you would like to see others. On with the reading list for the next block (which may take longer for me to get through, at least posting-wise).

For the Win by Cory Doctorow.
I'm not a gamer, at least not of the MMORPG variety. I will admit I do casual gaming, I like puzzle games and am more than a fair Tetris player. But of course I know gamers and they are generally interesting people when they have additional interests outside of the game. Doctorow is also an author that came on my radar relatively recently after seeing him as a panelist at ALA 2010 for a science fiction discussion. He seemed intelligent, very pro-library, and he can totally rock the Creative Commons like whoa.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.
I've heard mixed things about this. The blogosphere generally seemed to like it, but a few bloggers who I have personal respect for were more "meh" about it. Goodreads does state that this is "A refreshing satirical romp for hip fiction readers." Ah, dear reader, we all know how incredibly unhip I am. Is it still for me?

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.
I read quite a few (boys') coming of age stories when I was growing up and I have developed a fondness for dystopian fiction, as many of us have recently. I expect to like this, although I may have outgrown the more basic plot devices of the coming of age story. I have heard this is overly violent, but that typically doesn't bother me.

Invasion by Mercedes Lackey.
It has Superheroes and Nazi aliens...apparently. I picked this up from the ARC shelving truck at my library. I generally like Mercedes Lackey and this looked like it was something different from her. I have no actual idea what it's about. I'm honest like that.

The Spice Necklace by Ann Vanderhoof.
I picked this up as an ARC at ALA 2010. I haven't gotten around to it until now because it was published in June 2010 (before the conference) so I figured reading it later wouldn't really matter much anyway. This is one of those combo memoir/travelogue/recipe book deals. I've never read one of those, so it should be an interesting experience at the least. It is set in the Caribbean, which is an area I don't know very much about.

Post 364: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. ISBN: 9780805053081.

I'm quite fond of existentialism for a number of reasons. I like that there is a name for wondering why we are here and what that means and that every person who has asked that question has a completely different answer that for that question. One aspect of existentialism involves the Self and how we both manifest and perceive the Self, and of course how others perceive it. Rushdie makes it sound much less Annoying Undergraduate Philosophy Major though,

"[W]henever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be." Page 509-510.

These two sentences contain a fairly complex idea in a very digestible form. It touches on the topic of Self (as an identity and a being) as well as the Other and how the Self is assigned an identity and a being by the Other, which in turn influences the Self.

Yeah, I read a lot of philosophy in college despite being a history major, and this is what it has done to my thought patterns. Boiled down, I like the concept that Rushdie is presenting here because he is stating that you do exist outside of yourself. However, that existence is more of a perception in the sense that the Other has seen you a certain way and has categorized you accordingly. This has interesting implications: it means that you lose bits of your Self as Others fade away, but it also means that those bits of Self were not necessarily accurate. Still, they represented aspects of your personality or moments of interaction with the Other frozen within someone else's Self.

Okay, getting away from the philosophical speak, because it is pretentious and kind of annoying. This concept appeals to me because I have always viewed identity to be fluid. The Amy Campbell that is here today is not the same Amy Campbell that was here ten years ago (thank god), and will be a different Amy Campbell in another ten years. It is the old Heraclitus adage, "You cannot step in the same river twice." He does not mean that you can only step in the Mississippi River once, only that it is not the same river. Even as you stand in the river, it moves around you and becomes a different bit of river and will never be the same river you stepped into again. Just because there are not noticeable or drastic changes, does not mean that the change is completely negligible.

The things that do make that river seem stable are landmarks, banks, borders, and other methods of observing and measuring. This is exactly what other people do for the Self. Underneath the currents we are (or should be) constantly changing, bringing in new water and shifting sand and wearing away rocks, but the Other observes and only sees that we run North to South through such and such acreage. While this may not seem like an important service, it is actually quite valuable.

It solidifies our identity, or aspects of the Self, in our minds. Through the reflections of the Other, we are able to see more clearly exactly which attributes we have. We can instinctively know things about ourselves, but it is through the eyes of the Other that we learn what those things mean and whether or not we can or should change them so as to present an aspect of ourselves that we find more in tune with our Self. When we lose those extra versions, it can be both a good thing and a bad thing. In some ways it frees us to be more than what was perceived, but if it was validating to the Self it can be detrimental to lose them as those validations are often harder to replace than the damaging or false perceptions.

This is such a lengthy and involved novel that it is hard to focus on one thing to write the review about. However, I found Meredith Dias's evaluation of Rushdie's themes in this novel to be very helpful in digesting this epic.
LibsNote: Library copy.

Post 363: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. ISBN: 9780805053081.

This is going to be another music post, but this time I'll include a quote from the text (because it's Rushdie and you deserve them).

"A nation at war deserves to hear the music that's going mano a mano with the war machine, that's sticking flowers down its fun barrels and baring its breast to the missiles. The soldiers are singing these songs as they die. But this is not the way soldiers used to sing, marching into battle bellowing hymns, kidding themselves they had god on their sides; these aren't patriotic-bullshit, get-yourself-up-for-it songs. These kids are using singing, instead, as an affirmation of what's natural and true, singing against the unnatural lie of war. Using song as a banner of their doomed youth." Page 266-67.

As little as music matters to me nowadays, what music I do listen to tends to be folk music. There are several ways to define folk music,* but for me folk music must have one or two elements. It must cover a topic or issue current to the time it was written and/or it must use instruments and techniques that are fairly accessible to the poorest of musicians. Ideally these songs can be sung with voice alone, or at the very least accompanied by a portable instrument (hand drum, guitar, etc.).

There are a few musicians out there who are covering modern topics in the pop realm, but most of these are vague enough that if you listen to Katie Perry's Fireworks or Lady Gaga's Born This Way thirty years from now, people will (at least hopefully) have no idea what they're referring to. Also they will hopefully wonder what Perry's obsession with sparkling boobs is, because I know I do.

Meanwhile, there are artists out there who are writing about current political, economic, and social problems that are easily placed within a very specific time frame. My favorite is Steve Earle. I particularly like Rich Man's War and Amerika V. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do). Earle keeps within the basics of my definition. You could easily strip away all of the music and even the least trained of singers could manage to learn the songs and perform them reasonably. He does not use a wide vocal range; one could remark that his voice is a bit mumbly and they wouldn't be wrong, but his lyrics are easily understood and relatable.

Hamell on Trial is a bit darker than Earle and possibly a bit more cynical. It's sometimes hard to tell when he's being cynical and when he's just using irony/sarcasm to get his point across. He also tackles issues of parenthood after having a questionable past, which is something I think my generation will have particular issues with. Listen to Inquiring Minds for a sample (that particular video and song drops the F-bomb).

So, why isn't this music on the charts? Well. It's not as easily consumable, I suppose. Topics change so frequently in this country, or at least it seems that way because it's not like we've been at war for 10 years or anything. But we're so much more ADD about it. Nothing holds our attention. But I'd like to see this change. I would like to see popular musicians take a stand with their music and unequivocally say, "Look, this is stupid, and things need to change." Maybe in the '60's we saw musicians rise to fame because of their outrageous and political lyrics, but now we need those who rose to fame because their music was digestible enough to start throwing a bit of acid into the works. We can only eat so many of your sugary pop songs before our brains turn to mush. I'm sure this is good for musicians financially, but not so much artistically. Where is the challenge or pleasure in selling music to the brain deficient?

Somebody, please write me more than a love song.

This is such a lengthy and involved novel that it is hard to focus on one thing to write the review about. However, I found Meredith Dias's evaluation of Rushdie's themes in this novel to be very helpful in digesting this epic.
LibsNote: Library copy.
*Despite the fact this is a Tripod site I decided to link to it anyway, because they use and link to scholarly resources.

Post 362: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. ISBN: 9780805053081.

I cannot talk about this novel without talking about music. It is the center of the book, it's motivator and even a metaphor for the human condition and love, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

However, I don't really care for it.

It's not that I don't like it, but if I wasn't able to hear tomorrow, music is not one of the things I would miss. I would have felt differently about ten years ago, but it was a bigger part of my life back then. Nowadays it seems to be more of a nuisance than a life enriching art form. This might have more to do with the kind of music being foisted upon the public and sold to teenagers than anything else, but really I've just become less interested in it in general.

When I was growing up music was always playing in my house. My father had nearly impeccable taste in music: Frank Zappa, The Rolling Stones, The Band, BB King, Vanessa Williams, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, and hundred of others. His vinyl collection was pretty impressive and we listened to it about as frequently as we watched television in my early years. Sundays seemed to be a day almost dedicated to playing his record collection. As I grew up my music tastes diverged a little bit: I started listening to the early rap (notably Dr. Dre, Coolio, and a few others), and while we were in Oklahoma I also listened to a bit of country. But my roots are and were still firmly planted in the early rock and roll, so even the country I listened to sounded closer to rock and roll than the more twangy cotton-mouth version you can hear on CMT.

By the time I moved to Alabama, without dad, I started listening more to the Blues intermixed with alternative music and metal (KoRn, Smashing Pumpkins, Iced Earth, Jag Panzer, Nirvana, Metallica). My classmates and teachers found this a bizarre mix. One of my teachers was especially confused about why I liked the Blues, as she found them "depressing." I found it difficult and somewhat ironic trying to explain to an African American woman raised in the South why singing about heartache and oppression was sometimes the only way to help me forget it, if only for five minutes.

Sometime during college, music just started meaning less to me. No, that's not quite true: sometime in college, most of the music that was being played on the radio stopped meaning anything to me, and the rest began causing emotional distress. So much of my early life was attached to music that I cannot now detach certain people, emotions, or memories from certain songs. It's not that I don't like these songs anymore, but for the most part I cannot handle the mental distress it causes. Songs like "Hallelujah" or "Mad World" or "Searching for the Ghost" by the Heartless Bastards never fail to put me in tears by the end of the song. Even Christmas carols get me going more often than not.

You would think this would drive me to the more insipid songs, the bubble gum pop that assumes I didn't learn my days of the week and expects me to believe that a 16 year old knows what it means to be in love forever. Instead it just makes me wish the whole world would go quiet, if only for a few days. Maybe it would give us time to think about how stupid everything is right now.

This is such a lengthy and involved novel that it is hard to focus on one thing to write the review about. However, I found Meredith Dias's evaluation of Rushdie's themes in this novel to be very helpful in digesting this epic.
LibsNote: Library copy.

Post 361: Dan Walker (guest blogger)

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers. ISBN: 9781594487736.

One of my ex-girlfriend's friends has prosopagnosia, and meeting her was when I first became aware of the illness. Of course, being me, I immediately began to wonder if I had it. I've come to the conclusion that I don't, but I do feel like I have a hard time remembering people's faces.

In high school, I used to be able to recognize anyone by looking at their back. I don't know how I did it, but hair, clothing, height and weight were much easier traits to use in noticing someone in the halls. Maybe it didn't help that I grew to be six-foot-four, and most faces were below my field of vision. I don't think I do this to quite the same extreme anymore, and I have to wonder how I kept such a running catalog of everyone's back.

Lately, I have had opportunities to reflect on my problems with faces. At my workplace, I've been tasked with keeping track of the parking lot, which means I see a lot of the same people every day. I apparently have an amazing talent for recognizing license plates (we keep track of the people who don't pay us by the end of the day), but when it comes to people, it seems to take forever for me to be able to recognize them.

One girl in particular comes in all the time and tends to stay later than she's supposed to, so we make arrangements for her with the towing company. The only way I ever recognize her is by her license plate, which is a vanity plate and thus easy to remember. It's easier to tell who she is when she's wearing sunglasses, because that's how she looked when I first met her, but even then it takes a while for me to figure out who I'm talking to. The fact is, she looks too much like every other white, preppy, lightly tanned girl with perfect skin that I've ever seen.

There's a second side to this issue, though. I'm measuring my ability to recognize other people versus their ability to recognize me before I recognize them. The fact is, my face is pretty unique, and it could just be that I'm far more memorable than most, because ain't nobody else looks like me.

I got to thinking about this due to the part of the book where the author starts telling people about her prosopagnosia. A lot of people didn't believe her, and her psychiatrist told her that was because they wanted to believe that they were unique enough to be memorable. I find this funny, because, brother, you don't want to be unique, take it from me. I can't ever get away with anything, because if anyone sees my face, they'll remember it. Not to mention I'm pretty creepy looking (as Amy will tell you), so I can't do things like offer candy to my customers the way another of the parking lot attendants does. She's a kindly, grandmotherly type, but I'm more of the "Would you like some candy little girl? It's in the back of my black-windowed van" type. At least, that's what my face is.

So, yeah, having someone not recognize you can kind of be a blow to the old ego. But be careful what you wish for; sometimes anonymity is a thing to be revelled in.

Dan Walker (pseudonym) is a writer from Northeast Ohio, who would be teaching ESL if he wasn't unemployed temporarily working at a bookstore. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Wright State University in 2004 and a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language from Kent State University in 2009. He will make some lucky librarian a wonderful husband someday.


LibsNote: Copy won from Goodreads Giveaway program.
*This post was originally written October 30, 2010 to give the regular blogger a break.Yeah, it's taking me awhile to read The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Post 360: Dan Walker (guest blogger)

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers. ISBN: 9781594487736.

About 30 pages into this book, I said to myself, "Goddamn everyone in this woman's life has mental illness of some kind!" Her mother is the best example; she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I couldn't help but compare the woman to my ex-girlfriend's mother, who I had the "pleasure" of meeting one weekend around Thanksgiving.

I wouldn't go so far as to say she's paranoid schizophrenic, but she definitely has some problems. She drove us to her house up north, a trip that took twice as long as it should have because she refused to use highways. Everything was backroads, 5 MPH under the speed limit. She just seemed to be scared of everything (including me, which was kind of amusing), and it really made me pity her. What must life be like, when you're constantly holding back because of fear?

Well, it's actually really hypocritical of me to be asking that, because I've always held back because of fear, mostly fear of failure. I will tend not to do things if I don't think I can get them right the first time, or if I don't think I'll thoroughly enjoy myself. When I saw my ex's mother's driving habits, I told myself I wasn't going to be like her, but unfortunately, I am. Amy's been helping me take more chances, but when you've had a lifetime of acting a certain way, it's hard to break the habit.

And that's all a set of fear-based behaviors like that is: a habit. When your rituals keep you safe -- you haven't come to any harm in doing them, after all -- the need for doing them is reinforced. When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time worrying myself sick, because I thought that, magically, it would affect things that I really had no control over, like the weather. I have even battled bouts of my own paranoia. Most recently, I would spend hours lying awake at night, absolutely certain that every creak I could hear in the house meant that someone had broken in. I would get up and grab the sword I keep under my bed (it's never been sharpened) and stalk down the stairs very slowly, only to find that nothing had changed since I'd gone to bed. This is actually apparently something I get from my mother, who will have periods where she has to get up in the middle of the night and check to make sure the doors and windows are locked. I finally put an end to it by sleeping with a fan running, even in winter, so that I can't hear anything.

Fear is a great motivator, but like all things, it's best in moderation. It's one thing to lock your windows at night, but you cross the line when you start nailing them shut.

Dan Walker (pseudonym) is a writer from Northeast Ohio, who would be teaching ESL if he wasn't unemployed temporarily working at a bookstore. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Wright State University in 2004 and a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language from Kent State University in 2009. He will make some lucky librarian a wonderful husband someday. 

LibsNote: Copy won from Goodreads Giveaway program.
*This post was originally written October 30, 2010 to give the regular blogger a break.Yeah, it's taking me awhile to read The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Post 359: Plastic

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel. ISBN: 978547152400 (eGalley - Publishes April 18, 2011).

My grandfather would have owed his life to plastics had he been born much later than 1917. He was a premie, and no larger than the towel lined bread pan they kept him in to keep him warm in the oven. He had a very low chance of survival, a chance that would be much higher today now that they can keep even the smallest of premature babies alive with plastics. Had my grandfather needed a blood transfusion or nutrient bag, he would have been out of luck because the tubing just wasn't small and delicate enough for an infant that tiny.

Strangely his life was dominated by plastics anyway. Although they didn't come into wide use until the late 1940's, my grandfather's whole life centered around working with plastics. He went to the University of Chicago where he earned a PhD in Chemistry. He later went on to work for various chemical companies including Dow and Amoco where he likely worked with at least a few plastics in his time.

Later, his wife's life would be saved by a dialysis machine as well as other countless plastics when she underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer. His grandchildren's first toys were plastic, and even my mother had Barbies (in fact she was the first generation to have the doll). In fact, my brother spent time in a plastic tank as a newborn so they could monitor his breathing.

It seems somehow fitting that a man whose life started so tenuously worked with a material that would have automatically increased his chances of survival if only he had been born in the late 1960's.* And how troubling it is that those same plastics have been shown to be potentially harmful in later developmental stages? Does it mean we stop using plastics in NICU and other medical procedures? No, but it does mean we can find better plastics or materials. One might say that lives depend on it.

My review can be found at Goodreads.
LibsNote: Free review copy provided by Netgalley.
*This is when Neonatal ICU's were set up; they did not begin using plastics until the 1980's, at least according to Freinkel's research.
**Oh, if you have a strange fascination with my grandparents, you can read about my paternal grandfather here... or at least about his dog.

Post 358: Plastic

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel. ISBN: 978547152400 (eGalley - Publishes April 18, 2011).

I've always kind of hated plastic bags. It's almost visceral how much I hate them. Reading this book didn't so much tell me why I hate plastic bags, so much as it put those feelings into words for me. I hate them because they are everywhere and they get everywhere and there is pretty much no way to get rid of them once you have accumulated them.

And yes, I am one of those people that collects plastic bags. It drives me crazy because I don't feel like I can just throw them out. They are disgusting are annoying pieces of trash, but a lot of energy went in to making them, and the idea of throwing something away that I've only used once for non-hygiene purposes bothers me to no end. But then I end up with a cabinet full of plastic bags that I can't possibly use as fast as I obtain more. Certainly I use the reusable bags whenever possible, or just skip bags altogether, but the convenience, oh that seemingly convenient inconvenience that plastic bags provide.

It is so much easier to walk into the store with nothing and walk out of the store loaded down with those flimsy diaphanous puffs of white bag loaded down with even more plastic packaging containing my food or other recently purchased products. How wonderful it seems when I am walking the 60-100 feet from storefront to car, and really not even that if I'm using a shopping cart. Sometimes their usefulness is only really from cart to trunk and then the very short walk from my parking space to my apartment (look Ma, no stairs!). Honestly, in the situations where I go to the grocery and forget my reusable bags, I could easily just ask the bagger/cashier to put them directly in the cart. When I get home it is not overly difficult to run in and get a bag for that short transport from car to refrigerator. So why don't I do it? Because it's easier. And so I am stuck with more plastic bags than I know what to do with and a cat who poops in volumes, but not enough to fill all of those bags.

You know, I kind of miss paper bags. They might have taken up more space to transport,etc. but they take up less space under the kitchen sink. They are easier to reuse as long as they don't get wet. I miss the smell of them. People talk about missing the smell of books; shopping just doesn't feel the same with plastic bags. Paper had this sort of dark earthy smell to it. Even though my fruit often came in its own plastic, it felt a bit like pulling something out of the earth when I removed it from that dark, crinkly bag.

And we were more likely to reuse them too. There were infinite uses for paper bags. Not only were they convenient as small trash bags or even temporary trash cans, but we often used them to wrap presents after designing our own wrapping paper with stamps and markers. My mother frequently used paper bags to make sewing patterns that were far more sturdy and durable than the flimsy ones provided by the pattern companies. We used them as book covers for my textbooks (why buy them?). They were used as shelf paper, they were way better than newspaper for drying wet shoes, and often they were more fun to draw or color on than regular paper.

Apparently paper bags are just as bad or worse than plastic, but when you're done with a plastic bag... It really only has one more use: bathroom/small trash bag or Pet poo collector.

My review can be found at Goodreads.
LibsNote: Free review copy provided by Netgalley.
There's a great blog that was mentioned in this book about a woman who is trying to eliminate her use of plastic and has greatly reduced her use. Read about it at My Plastic-free Life (formerly Fake Plastic Fish).