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Home & Interior Design books:
Little House on a Small Planet: Simple Homes, Cozy Retreats, and Energy Efficient Possibilities

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Funky book -
Although most of the homes in this book take "simple," "cozy" and "energy efficient" to the extreme, I find it inspiring in terms of what's possible. I wish the photos (most are clumped together in the middle of the book) were printed alongside the story of the home they represent. It's confusing and frustrating trying to match the pictures with the correct home.

But I appreciate the imagination of the people featured in the book. If you have an interest in real-life examples of energy efficient living, this one's worth the purchase price.

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Excellent and Inspiring -
This book is totally well prepared. And if a person is looking to modify their life to lessen the effects of the "rat race", this book will suggest excellent options that will save a person YEARS of labor and savings and costs, which can then be devoted to ???? making a better life all around !
HikerBOB

Not well written -
I am a developer in Dubai and want to address the problem of the middle class that can't afford to even rent a house. I bouhgt this (and other) books to help me in undersdtanding how to go about it. Unfortunately this book is totally useless for what I need with no floor plans, and no description on how and what I can do to help. Tee discussion on reducing the space is fine but not suitable for me.

For crunchy people with resources. -
It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and it made a lot of blanket assumptions about people who want to live in something bigger than a garden shed. Maybe it's just that I'm an introvert, but asking me to live in a pile of people in a house with minimal privacy and elbow room is a recipe for mass murder.

The house shapes and building materials are diverse, but the people featured in them, in many ways, are not. There is really only one working-class family. Most of them are people with at least some degree of financial or occupational flexibility (freelancers, telecommuters, self-employed, people who could afford to have a spouse either stay home or work reduced hours; people whose jobs provided sufficient income at a part-time level); a surprising number had family or friends who could make them low-interest loans. Most of the houses are in suburban, small-town/bedroom community, semi-rural, or rural areas where housing prices are often a bit lower but where there are fewer jobs. Several of the small older houses featured cost twice as much as my parents' large house (which, yes, they had to buy to get us into a good school district and safe neighborhood. Such is life in a major metropolitan area). I was hoping this would be more city-oriented since, if we all move to the country, it will no longer be the country. The author decries the bulldozing of greenspace for cheap subdivisions, but the small-house-on-large-lot option is financially out of reach for many people and also contributes to sprawl (small planet, remember?). We can't all live on Walden Pond.

I was a bit surprised that she was so quick to advocate converting the garage to house space, even after you've decluttered. Unless you can get rid of your car, how about putting the car back into the garage? Garaged cars last longer, which reduces pollution since fewer cars go to scrap.

This book is not very useful unless you have the time, money, and support network to allow you a fair amount of lifestyle flexibility. If you live in a city, have a job that requires fixed hours and requires you to be on-site, and are single and comparatively low-income, and don't have an extensive and strong family/friends support network, only the more superficial suggestions apply (like getting a more energy-efficient refrigerator. Duh). It's not that I'm a McMansion fan or anything; I'm not, but this isn't a realistic solution for many of us.

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Diverse and intelligent case studies -
A compilation of case studies collected over an extended period of time investigating the why's and how's of North Americans choosing to live small, live green and/or launch communal living situations. Personal and creative, some ideas are more applicable to the average person than others. Packed with floor plans, diagrams and interviews, it was denser and took longer to read than I expected, but I learned a lot. Definitely recommend it if you're looking for something new and detailed on the subject.