John Scanlan

I grew up helping out in my parents’ large garden, and last year I finally attempted one of my own. Some things worked (delicious bush beans through September) and others didn’t (my poor eggplant and pepper starts never got above 4 inches tall). Reading The Organic Home Garden I now have some ideas as to why some of my plants failed, what I can do differently, and other great plants to try – I can hardly wait until July to start fennel! This book was written in a very accessible way by show more an author who, by trial and error, now has a magnificent looking and bountiful garden. The book is nicely broken down with similar plants forming their own chapter and takes you through seeding to harvest, with a few recipes at the end for your bounty. There were several pictures throughout the book; I wish these had been labeled better and been more plentiful. As a gardening novice I found this book to be very helpful, but a more experienced gardener might be looking for something more scientific or detailed. show less

I’ve kept a small vegetable garden in my backyard for the past 20 years. Some years are better than others, but I feel I could do more to have a more consistently successful garden. That's why I was excited to receive this book from the Early Reviewers program. Also, the author Patrick Lima used to write for Harrowsmith Country Life magazine, which I often turned to for recipes and gardening tips before publication ceased in the 90's.

The first thing I noticed was that this book is not like show more the other gardening books I own which I use as reference books. This one reads more like a memoir with plenty of useful advice. Reading it is like having a cosy chat with an enthusiastic gardening guru brimming with knowledge that he wants to share.

At first I found the book disappointing because of the lack of diagrams, checklists and the like that I normally see in gardening reference books. Then, I just decided to accept it for what it is: an inspirational account of one person’s gardening experiences that, in the end, gave me a lot of information and ideas to ponder over when I start my vegetable garden next season.

Even though the author tries to give general time frames for gardening activities, the book seems best for the cooler parts of North America. A bonus is the collection of recipes that use the bounty from the garden. show less

The Organic Home Garden : A Step-by-Step Guide To Growing Food / text by Patrick Lima, Illustrations and photography by John Scanlan. Neustadt, Ontario : Five Rivers Chapmanry, 2011.

Reviewed for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program from an electronic Advance Reader Copy.

This is a useful book, full of great info for the novice organic gardener, but even an experienced gardener like me will learn a few things, and it’s written in an engaging, chatty style. I enjoyed learning about the show more development of the author’s garden at their rural Ontario property. There are some tasty-looking recipes, too. It is not a 100% new book – it’s a revised and updated version of an older work.

There were deficiencies in the e-ARC that made it hard to review properly – notably that all the pictures were out of context at the very end of the book and all in black and white. It also lacked an index, and a lot of the punctuation appeared as gibberish characters and made reading a chore. I assume that in the proper for-sale version these problems are corrected but I haven’t checked to be sure. show less

When Regenbogen moved his father into a St. Louis, Missouri retirement home, he noticed that many of the residents were veterans of WW II. He embarked on a project to interview as many as possible and preserve their stories for history. This volume includes 16 stories including one of a woman who as a Polish Jew experienced both Hitler's and Stalin's terror. One the of stories was about a soldier who had enlisted after the war ended but who had amazing adventures in post war Japan.

Many of show more the episodes include vivid descriptions of fighting in Europe and the Pacific. Most stories include the soldier's life before joining the military and most of them experienced the hardships of the Depression. For some, joining the military was a way to escape poverty and experience adventure.

Great stories and many led inspirational lives before and after returning home. show less