Regenerative Livestyle Blog

Sharing my regeneration journey, enjoying living in harmony with nature

Tag Archives: Books


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I try, and I made it!

I’ve just finished to read “The Boy who Harnessed the Wind”, by William Kankwamba and it was so inspiring I wish everyone would read this book…

It’s the true story of an African boy who builds a windmill so that his family never has to live through famine again. He does this mostly alone without any money, with the help of a few library books, a lot of work and determination.

I value this book because William talks about his rural community.  It is not told by an ethnologist, a development officer or a tourist. It’s how life really is for more than one billion people and we hardly ever hear it from the inside.

Moreover, the local solution he offer is, I believe, the way to solve the global problem of scarcity in the world. I really like how he analyses that development must come from within.

Besides, we, in rich countries, take everything for granted (well, we do have more than everything) so we so have much to learn from this story. William is amazing in determination, simplicity, cleverness and altruism.

This book particularly resonates for me because I am librarian, like Mrs Sikelo, and my passion is to bring people the information they need. This story shows my work is all worthwhile as it can be life-changing.

It also tickled me deep inside because when I was 13-14, I told my science teacher that I wanted to be renewable energies engineer (way back in 1980) and he laughed at me… I gave up the dream. William did not give up. As he said in his first TED talk online: “I try, and I made it!” What a grand lesson!

Here is William’s blog, and his Moving Windmills Project website. Worth supporting.


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Future Fiction

It is not Sci-Fi, yet it is fiction with a future focus. It is fiction that expresses what could happen with the global change our world is experiencing, in various ways and perspectives. The genre “eco-thriller” is on the rise and it is as exciting as crime, adventure or detective stories. Plus, it could turn out true!

Teenage reads

Carbon Diaries, Sacy Lloyd

2015. Britain governement implements a carbon card to ration it. You take a car? You use up some of your monthly allowance. You light up your fan? You use up more carbon points, and they disappear far quicker than you would expect. Laura is a normal urban teenager who loves music and tries to live a normal life. Everybody will adapt differently to this new situation. Then disaster strikes… Laura tells about it all in her diary, in a realistic and witty style. Award-winning series.

Empty, by Susan Weyn

In a town in the US, the coming prom is all that matters to these high school students. Being rich and popular or different… But when electricity runs out, and petrol stations close one after the other, nothing is easy anymore. And the coming cyclone transforms all life in survival mode… But solutions exists, if you can shift your mind to them…

On thin ice, by Jamie Bastedo

Set in a small Artic town nowadays and following the talented Ashley, this book opens to a rarely described culture, where reality and myths merge. Impacts of climate change are central to the plot although never sermonic. A rich, suspenseful, true-like novel. Multi-award winner.

More Adult reads

Solar, by Ian McEwan

Beard surfs the wave of fame he won with his physics Nobel price . When he “inherits” the plans for creating artificial photosynthesis power stations, he tries to save the world from climate change and save himself too… A thriller with some scientific data, a lot of travels and adventure, deep human understanding and some hilarious moments.One of my 5 favourite books ever!

Island of shattered dreams, by Chantal Spitz

Meet several generations of a family living on a remote atoll, their loves, their connection to their land, and their struggles when French engineers come to install a nuclear test plant on their island… This book opens to the Pacific Islanders ways of viewing the world, which is quite wide and profound, like the ocean that surrounds them. Beautiful, moving, unforgettable.

Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson

He is adviser to a member of Senate in Washington and looks after the kids while she works in the National Science Foundation. There she meets a monk, a high achiever climber surfer, etc… I enjoyed meeting these normal people in their daily life and how they manage, cope or struggle with what they know and what they want to achieve… before cataclysm hits… The sequel, Fifty degrees below is definitely on my To-Read list.

9780571290802Flight behaviour, by Barbara Kingsolver

It starts like a bored housewife book but as soon as she discovers these butterflies in the hill, it will be a roller coaster of questioning, emotions, meeting new people and science discovery. Barbara Kingsolver is an excellent writer conveying people thoughts and reactions in amazingly subtle ways giving this book as deep a meaning as you want it to.

Children reads

The Lorax, by Dr Seuss, “who speaks for the trees”… and more popular than ever before…
The Paperbag prince, by Colin Thompson, about this old man who lives happily in a bus on a dump;
George saves the world by lunchtime, by Jo Readman and Ley Roberts, to discover how everyday actions can affect the world around.

And many others

  • J. R. R. Tolkien, deep connection with nature in the Middle-earth underlying his books.
  • Carl Hiassen with lots of humour (Flush, Paradise Screwed…);
  • Ursula Le Guin creating a world of literate people in a subsistence age (the Earthsea series);
  • Margaret Mahy, denouncing coastal subdivisions in Kaitangata Twitch…

Do you know of any good one that I would add to my reading list?