Customer Reviews

Living the Good Life: How One Family Changed Their World from Their Own Backyard

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fantastic read, could not put it down. The way the author expresses the issues and facts and incorporates them in the way they have chosen to live their life is inspiring. If you have any interest in the planet, you will find information in this book fascinating. Each person can adapt different elements into their life, big and small.

Oh and did I mention it has humorous bits where you will find yourself belly laughing...

Buy the book, you will not regret it.

I Loved this book. Its a very realistic look at the good life. A very good read as well as an inspiration. They set their rules and mostly stuck to it. A very good illustration of what can be achieved by real people in real life. If you have an interest is self sufficiency, downshifting or simplifying your life, this is a great read.

I really enjoed reading this book. It takes place in Austrailia but Americans can easily relate to it as well. The author's writing style is informative, realistic and humorous at times which makes it a nice read. The family spent 6 months with the intentions of not using a car, growing their own food and trying to be as self sufficient and environmentally friendy to our earth as possible. Though most of us would not go to the extent they did to live this simply I think any reader will be inspired to take some of their ideas and implement them in their on life style. This book is especially good for helping us think about living simply during today's economic hardships.

Linda Cockburn's "Living the Good Life" is an Aussie classic. Or it deserves to be.

The book tells the story, in diary form, of how one Australian family became disillusioned with the suburban dream, connecting the dots between their lifestyle and the wider balance that needs to be met between human needs and planetary health.

Then, unlike most of the rest of us, they actively set about changing their lives to be more sustainable - and surprised themselves by finding happiness and valuable life lessons along the way.

If a fault will be found by reviewers here at Amazon, it is that the book *is* very Australia-centric, which may be challenging for some international audience unfamiliar with Australian idioms, political systems, ways of managing waste etc.

But for me I find this refreshing after the massive glut of US books on the market that simply expect everyone to be a US citizen familiar with *their* ways. It's a reminder that the world is not America, and many of us live in ways that are strikingly different from the US standard, with all its plusses and minuses.

Also, the overarching themes and challenges of the book - dealing with pests, reducing waste, finding ways to eat seasonally, managing food gluts - are relevant to anyone interested in growing and harvesting their own, no matter where in the world they live.

Linda Cockburn and her family moved from the home in Queensland in which the book is set a few years ago now, and are currently (as of 2010) building their own straw bale home down in Tasmania, Australia.

I'm guessing (and hoping) that she will set this new experience into another book. I look forward to reading it.

This is a great book even if you aren't into living a sustainable life. It is very entertaining and motivating if you are into living sustainably. Linda's "journal" entries are fun and informative and make you sad when finish the book.

The book might be more interesting to Australians than to this american. The author decided they would live for 6 months without spending a dollar (except for insurance, taxes, medical expenses, etc.), and they managed to do it by bartering produce for toilet paper and other necessities. They fueled their motivation for such a great sacrifice by promising themselves a spending spree at the end of the six months. The backbone of the book is a daily diary which frequently complains of copious sweating and supplies blow-by-blow descriptions of arguments or the details of stopping to play a game with her son. It is laced with information such as how to read a water meter in Australia, how many litres of water it takes to produce various cotton articles, the nutritional value of snails. There are occasional recipes sprinkled in, references to inexperienced gardening practices, vague references to being off the water, but no explanation of how they processed their own water. Or at least not in the part I read. I decided it wasn't worth wading through it hoping to find out something useful. There are pretty color pictures in the middle that are inspiring, but I found the account to be discouraging. Her comments that the rats in the garden weren't as bad as the brown snakes that they attracted, or the tale of lighting incense to get rid of the smell of the rat that died in their walls, just didn't enthuse me a lot for backyard gardening.