Image by OlinEJ from Pixabay
I just finished reading the book,Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, by Eric Brende (Harper Perennial, 2005) and liked it so much I wanted to do an online book club on my blog, The Crunchy Chicken.
The initial response has been overwhelming. In the first day, almost 100 people have signed up for the book club, proving that this book touches a nerve with the urban and rural homesteading crowd.
The book is about a couple who decides to move to an Amish/Mennonite-like community and live technology-free for 18 months. The author calls their neighbors Minimites because they really are much more strict than modern-day Amish, using as little technology as possible. The author lives in a house with no running water and no electricity, relies on a wood stove and oil lamps and grows all their own food.
Along the way, his wife gets pregnant and delivers their baby using a local midwife (who doesn’t own a phone), they sell their car in exchange for a horse and buggy and, generally, they end up living the lifestyle while gaining a greater appreciation for living modestly.
For more information about April’s book club and to sign up, you can visit the blog post, Better Off Book Club, over on my other blog.
