publication date: Jun 28, 2011
|
author/source: Debbi Scholes
Serious Fun looks frequently
at the subject of
community and its strengths, and while a
true community
joining together only takes place following a
crisis, there are examples given
of how this
spirit has lasted well beyond what prompted it originally.
Caroline North's Serious Fun doesn't only deal with
community however and other chapters discuss the
essentials of life such as
water, food, waste management and
money. In these seriously
straitened times, such
issues are at the
forefront of many minds and the
author shows, anecdotally,
how she and others have
contributed towards
resolutions in small but necessary ways.
The ideas for
recycling water may inspire some and the
current movement in the
UK to
grow your own food can only be heartened by the
experiences detailed in
the book.
The issue of
waste management is a thorny one at best and I felt
Serious Fun looked rather
too often at examples of
artists who used
rubbish creatively,
rather than
ideas to help
solve the whole issue. However, bearing in mind that the
i
ndividuals reading and
getting inspiration from this book cannot alone resolve
the world's
waste problem, maybe these ideas are
better than nothing at all. At
least the
artists' work is unlikely to be
thrown away!
Serious Fun is rather too
spiritual
for my liking but that, naturally, can be taken as a
failing of my own, rather
than of the
book itself. There are also
views that many, myself included, may
feel are rather
too American in their angle, but there is nothing to say that
we
cannot learn from those living across the Pond.
Over all,
Caroline North comes
across as well-read and well-connected,
open to ideas and, above all,
open to
life itself. In many ways, this can be the
best example to set to others.
PWT rating: ♥♥♥♥♥
Serious Fun: Ingenious Improvisations on Money, Food, Waste, Water and Home
is available from Amazon.
