Book Review: Michael Reynold's Earthship

Book Review: Michael Reynold's Earthship, Book Review, Michael Reynold's, Earthship
by Sarah Ganly

Reynold's book covers the construction of an earthship from start to finish. An earthship is a sustainable home built from natural resources. It is an extremely informative book that explains in extreme detail why earthships are efficient and important means of housing. This book is effective because it has many pictures and talks in a language that is understandable to someone who is not familiar with home construction. The pictures in this book are very useful, and they help to illustrate scientific ideas that I would not have grasped as easily with just a written explanation.

One of the important ideas described in this book are the use of the sunlight to provide heat in a home. An earthship is constructed with the front of the house facing south, and the front wall of the house is made up of all windows. This book explains that these windows "must be at a 90 degree angle" to the sun during the "winter zenith" of the location of the house you are building (Reynolds, 1990).

This book is filled with useful information, and this has helped to increase my excitement about building an earthship. I feel the author has made a point in this book to make sure the reader does not feel intimidated by building an earthship. The author explains all of the technical details of building an earthship in layman terms and this helps the reader feel empowered. The author of this book is also the man who created this type of housing so I feel he is a very reliable resource for information on building an earthship.

This book has also helped me to understand that the house is so efficient because it interfaces with the earth and works in coordination with nature instead of against it. This book explains how the earthship uses "thermal mass" as insulation instead of using a heating and cooling system, and it describes how earthships are built out of "earth rammed tires" to increase insulation (Reynolds, 1990). The combination of thermal mass and maximized sunlight help keep the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. These methods allow earthships to maintain a temperature of "65-75 degrees" (Reynolds, 1990).

This book has taught me the difference between structural and non-structural walls, and it explains how aluminum cans and concrete can be used to create non-structural walls. This book has also given me an excellent idea of the skills, materials, and tools I will need to create an earthship. The skills I will need are explained in a detail in the book as well which is very helpful. Some of the tools I will need are a "backhoe, chainsaw, skillsaw, and cement mixer" and the materials needed are mainly recycled and easily attainable items such as tires, aluminum cans, cardboard, wood beams, decking, cement, concrete, and windows (Reynolds, 1990).

This book also answered an important question that I was concerned about when it explained that tires only deteriorate when they are exposed to "sun or fire" and when buried and encased in cement they can not burn and are not exposed to sunlight (Reynolds, 1990). This book is a very important tool in my study plan because it explains many of the things I need to know in order to create an earthship in depth.

Book Review: The Tao of Photography Seeing Beyond Seeing

Book Review: The Tao of Photography Seeing Beyond Seeing

by Sarah Ganly

This book discusses the similarities of the Taoist beliefs and photography. It has been very useful to me because before reading this book I did not know anything about photography, and I feel the incorporation of Taoist ideas has helped me understand the ideas of photography easier than book only about photography.

I believe this book has also helped me learn to appreciate timing better. A photograph is such a small fraction of time, and to get the perfect photo you have to be patient but also ready. I enjoyed the patience required, and I also appreciate the idea of readiness and the need to be constantly aware and prepared. This book has helped me pay attention to details by being calmy aware, and I believe the Taoist aspect of this book has helped to stress this point.

I also think this book was very important to me because it helped me develop a greater respect for photography. I think this book helped me understand why people enjoy photography so much; I never truly understood before that "taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second" (Gross & Shapiro, 2001). This book has helped me learn to enjoy photography. I have come to realize that "looking is a gift and seeing is a power" (Gross & Shapiro, 2001).

This book also helped me use photography as a way of meditation that I didn't realize I would enjoy. I enjoyed the author's ideas on the principles of Taoist photography very much and found them inspiring. Some of the principles described in the book are "freedom from the sense of self, receptivity", nonattachment and spontaneity "acceptance and resourcefulness", and "free and easy wandering" (Gross & Shapiro, 2001).

This book was inspiring to me because it helped me become comfortable with the idea of wandering "without a goal, at random" and to "move forward without hurrying" (Gross & Shapiro, 2001). I found this idea exciting, and photographers that create work this way are known as flanur photographers. This idea is motivating to me and some flanur photographers that are "famous for their compelling street photography are... Edouard Boubat, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Marc Riboud" (Gross & Shapiro, 2004).

I feel the author of this book is a good resource for information on photography because he is a professional photographer, and he has many of his photos in the book. I enjoyed many of the photographs in this book and felt they illustrated the ideas of the authors very well. I believe the ideas represented in this book are useful to photographers of all skill levels; I also think that someone who has not tried photography would also be interested in this book because it incorporates Taoist principles into its teachings and adds a philosophical approach to photography which makes it less intimidating.