For one year Vanessa Farquharson decided she would make one environmentally friendly change every day. She would keep a blog about her progress, and try to figure out what all of this green movement stuff meant. Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days
is the book version of her blog, although they're very different. The blog had in-depth posts for each change, while the book only has a little bit about a few different changes every month. And sometimes nothing about the changes at all, just a mention of the change and then a story about a date she had that same day. Something completely unrelated. If you can't tell by my lackluster introduction, I was less than pleased with this book.
Maybe I should preface the rest of this review with a statement: I'm an environmentalist. I pretty big environmentalist. I recycle, bike/walk instead of drive whenever possible, buy organic food, recycled products, make homemade cleaning products, take military showers, wear clothes several times before washing. Yeah, I'm kind of green. But there is still so much more I could do, so when I picked up this book I thought maybe I would also pick up some new ideas. Which I did, let's make that clear. I'm planning on creating compost box after reading her description of hers, and there were a few other ideas. But for the most part, I think this book was a cheap ploy to cash in on the media success of the green movement. Oh, and a way for her to brag about how she started dating her boyfriend.
The biggest problem I had with this book was the lack of information. She says she did something, like stop using paper towels, but she never goes into why she decided to make that decision. She doesn't talk about any research she did, and scientific information to back up that decision. And without education, people are not going to make a change. Another problem I had with this book is that she complains relentlessly about everything. She decides to wash her hair with natural oils instead of shampoo, and then complains and complains about how this will prevent her from getting a boyfriend because what kind of guy will date a girl who uses oil to wash her hair. She decides to bike instead of drive to work, but then complains and complains about how this is going to prevent her from wearing cute outfits to work, and that's she's going to have to take backpack (God forbid!) with her to work. She has a real thing against backpacks, just hates them. And there are multiple instances in the book where I was under the impression she was doing all of this to meet hipster guys instead of for herself. To her credit, she does stick with some of her changes and stops complaining about them after a few days, but honestly my view of her was not the greatest, and I didn't find this book to be very interesting, helpful, or mind changing.
I'm giving this book a D.
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