Review: Living The Good Life

I really enjoyed "Living the Good Life" by Linda Cockburn. It's the story of an Australian family who spend six months without spending any money, but still living a fairly normal life. They had already converted their half-acre garden to a fruit and vegetable plot (with chickens and a goat called "Possum") to provide all their food, and installed solar hot water, photovoltaics and water catchment to provide electricity and water.

It's also peppered with facts and figures about the harm our modern lifestyles are doing to the planet and to ourselves, including the table I reproduced a couple of weeks ago in "Consumerism v Humanitarianism". These help explain why the family felt motivated to do such a thing, and perhaps should motivate readers to make some changes in their own lifestyles. But if you really don't like that sort of thing you can easily skip those parts because they appear in coloured boxes, so you can just go to the next bit of narrative about the family.

One factor that made it an easy read was that I really liked her. I'd like to meet her and just hang out, because she seemed funny and relaxed, whilst also passionate and serious about things that I agree are important. She kept that balance which (dare I say it) some eco-warriors tend to lose. So there is plenty of humour in the book. For example when their six-year-old son loses patience with the project and declares:

I don't care what's for dinner as long as it comes with a free toy!

Maybe I'm weird (well I know I'm weird) but when I read about how they went six months without buying new clothes (even though they all lost weight and their clothes were dropping off them), or new shoes (and had to mend their own flip-flops), or books (gasp!) or anything else, I really envied them and wished I could do it myself. So many aspects of their lifestyle seemed idyllic, that even their hardships didn't seem as bad as struggling to do the weekly shop in the rain, queueing up for hours at the checkout and then sitting stuck in the traffic on the way home, or the other "hardships" of normal modern life.

The end of the book describes their first couple of weeks "post-project". They had looked forward to having a huge blow-out, eating all the fast food they could get, and buying all the posessions money can provide. But they quickly found it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as they had anticipated. The dad had spent the whole six months cycling home from work past a KFC and trying to resist the alluring smell of hot chips. but when the project was over and he could have gone in and bought them if he wanted, he found he didn't really want to any more.

I recommend you read this book. For one reason, it might open your eyes and motivate you to make some changes in your lifestyle that would benefit you and the whole planet. It certianly did that for me. But that's not the main reason you should read it. The main reason is that it's a good read. I think you'll enjoy it.