Stateway's Garden

Stateway's Garden: stories / Jasmon Drain, read by Guy Lockard, Shayna Small and Sullivan Jones, 288 pgs.

A coming of age story set in the projects in Chicago.  Stateway's Garden is a real place that was eventually torn down.  Most of these stories revolve around two brothers, Tracy and Jacob.  They are dealing with the ravages of poverty, a mom who is always working and the absent fathers, each mostly unknown to their sons.  The dialog is realistic and relatable.  The situations are not always relatable but that is the point, I think.  The audio is well done by a small cast.

Year of no sugar

Year of no sugar / Eve O. Schaub 303 pgs.

What if you decided not to eat sugar for a year?  Would it be easy?  I not talking about the motivation but the possibility.  Eve Schaub found out there is very little processed food that doesn't have added sugar. Seriously very little.  She and her family embark on this project with a couple of exceptions and they actually pull it off.  But there is so much more to it than being motivated and then finding the right foods.  If you pay attention, you realize how much love = sugar.  When we do something special for someone, it often includes baked goods.  Nobody gives you a carrot on your birthday...but carrot cake?  That is acceptable.  It is amazing how many "rewards" given to kids are sugar based.  So it takes much more than motivation and the ability to find foods without sugar, you have to break a lot of social agreements as well.  Eve and her family manage to do this even though at times it is very difficult.  I'm sure I could never manage without sweets but it does make me aware of how much sugar I eat without making the exception for dessert.  Now I too will be paying more attention to labels and shopping more carefully for the things that I don't want to pack a sugar punch.

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62 projects to make with a dead computer and other discarded electronics

62 projects to make with a dead computer and other discarded electronics/Sarafan, Randy 252 pg.

There were a lot of cool projects in this book but also a few that didn't really make sense. If I make something out of "recycled" goods, I want it to work well for the purpose that I'm making it for and I don't want there to be a really cheap alternative that works better. Making speakers out of ear buds and funnels, for example, just doesn't make sense. However, the ant farm or terrarium, that would be awesome and work well.

I certainly did enjoy the creativity put into the ideas and now have a few new ideas for projects for myself. - Christa