Books & Resources

Books to read – and read again. Can 2 hours in a book can solve all ills? Probably. With big plans and long Canadian winters – here a list of books I rabidly recommend. They’ve helped with all sorts of crazy ideas, from owning 10,000 worms and growing $500 of food this year, to improving the air I breathe and the questions asked at open houses.

Admission criteria? These books have ignited a hobby, or out & out changed my life (that’s you there, Animal Vegetable Miracle). I’ve read them once & then returned again & again. They’ve earned lifetime free rent on my small bookshelf for outrageous usefulness. How beloved are these books? Let’s put it this way – Paolo’s Potter books would be gladly left behind.

Buying & selling

•  101 Streetsmart Condo Buying Tips For Canadians A 100-level primer (read my full review).
• Seven Steps to Sold Makes scrubbing your kitchen floor sound like the hardest part of selling (read my full review).

Design

• The Perfectly Imperfect Home (read my full review).
• Design*Sponge at Home (read my full review).
• Small Bath Solutions The nudge we needed to install a wooden bathroom vanity.

Home & health

• How to Grow Fresh Air (read my full review)
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Kick-started my balcony garden in early 2008 & have read twice since. Compulsive.
• At Home “Paolo! Guess what?” “… Guess what else!” Drive your family crazy reciting 512 pages’ worth of unbelievable facts and fascinating anecdotes – about glass, George Washington and green wallpaper.

Gardening & growing

• Worms Eat My Garbage Meant an easy adjustment to owning 10,000 composting worms. (Read more on balcony worm composting).
• The Vegetable & Herb Expert Apparently one of these books sells every 30 seconds. Especially useful when your plants start dying. The manual.
• McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container Great reference for balcony gardeners – spacing, pot sizes, sun, etc.

Writing

• Eats, Shoots and Leaves For persnickety types.
• On Writing (by Stephen King) Only a little scary.
• On Writer’s Block How to stop beating yourself up when it stops being fun.

Cooking & Baking

If I had to eat from only three cookbooks, it would be these three. Hardback, for preference and prettiness.

• The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (Tarek Malouf) Any idea how much Brits like butter and sugar?
• Thai Food (David Thompson) I’m a curry queen thanks to this book.
• How to Be a Domestic Goddess (Read more on Nigella and kitchens).

Novels

Cheeky putting novels on a home/DIY blog, but I can’t help myself: I love these books.

• The Poisonwood Bible Favourite book by favourite author (Barbara Kingsolver) . I’ve read it at least six times and went stupidly star-struck meeting Barbara at a book-signing. So embarrassing. A shame, because I know we’d be best friends.
• Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood Whenever I think “this is living chaos”, this story pops into my mind. Just so blazingly good.
• My Family and Other Animals My mum gave me this battered, scrap-heap of a book & insisted I read it. I refused: “It’s falling apart”. She insisted. Three years later, I read it in one afternoon – laughing out loud non-stop.

* Affiliate links included throughout. If it one day adds up to a single gin & tonic, I’ll be sure to toast your good health.