Lately I’ve not had a lot of time to devote to reading lengthy novels that require the full attention span of a higher mammal as opposed to, oh, say, that of a gnat. So I’ve busied myself reading books that can be digested in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks. Both just happen to be guides to strange and foreign lands — one to the land of conscientious environmentalism and the other to the land of the male brain.

Let’s just say that one of these guides will have you raring to go, and the other is going to make you want to chuck things (like, books about the warring sexes) out the window of a moving vehicle.

Let’s get the not-so-great book out of the way first.

The Man Translator, by Alison Grambs, purports to be a guide into the mac ‘n’ cheese-filled mind of the modern male in a way that pokes good clean fun at the menfolk of the world by reminding readers of man’s oh-so-hilarious inability to cook or clean, and his thigh-slappingly comical dependence on football and beer and Pam Anderson and don’t you know all men are sex-crazed sports fanatics that have to be tamed and housebroken before we delicate ladies can share a home with them?

The book is full of tired comedy (the five food groups of Manland: sugar, salt, cheese, meat, alcohol; what a man says vs. what he means: “Allergic to anything?” can be translated as “Allergic to latex?” Etc.) that may have played for modest laughs on primetime sit-coms or even exceptionally horrible episodes of Sex and the City, but it’s nothing you’ll want to intentionally put yourself through.

Ugh. I’m so tired of the “men see blue and green and women see cerulean and chartreuse” camp. Men, I’m taking up for you here. There is nothing wrong with being a slob who can’t cook. (Some women — I’m not saying me, nope, nuh-uh — are slobs who can’t cook.) There is nothing wrong with being a sports fanatic. But not all dudes are sports fanatics who are messy and can’t cook. In fact, most of the guys I know can cook way better than I can, and keep a cleaner house. I need a Man Translator to tell me how to communicate with them. Oh wait, no I don’t. Because I’m not fifteen.

I digress. Grambs gets a couple of good zingers in there, but mostly the humor in the book falls flat because it’s played out and not particularly witty or insightful. Of course, this could be because I am one of those humorless feminist types who doesn’t like to laugh at sexist humor despite who it’s aimed at.

So, let’s move on to Green Land, shall we?

Ed Begley Jr. is an acting icon who just so happens to be a longtime environmentalist. He had a short-running television show on HGTV not too long ago, where he showcased his unconventional lifestyle much to the chagrin of his wife Rachelle, who is kind of a Hollywood princess wannabe. I never really watched the show, so I can only guess how similar its approach is to the book.

Living Like Ed — the book — surprised me with how much I ended up liking it. I’m not a big environmentalist — I recycle wine bottles, that’s pathetically about it — but I do carry around a lot of guilt about my lack of environmental awareness, so I was eager to dig into a guide to help me make those small changes in my life that could eventually have a real impact in the world.

And sure enough, Ed — a conversational and not overly verbose writer — starts from the ground up and helps you shift the way you look at things around you and get into the frame of mind where you are — above all — not wasting so much.

The book breaks down the changes you can make in your life and your home into three price categories — that which is low- or no-cost (think cleaning your refrigerator coils), that which requires a middling investment (constructing an eco-friendly garden), and that which might require some serious financing (installing a solar-panel system on your house). The good news is, the majority of changes you can make to help make your household more eco-friendly are cheap or free. They just require a sense of organization and a real dedication to keeping your trash sorted and an eye out for eco-friendly products. A green thumb wouldn’t hurt, either, as Ed explains.

Ed is pretty fanatical about his environmental approach. It’s admirable, really. The publishers of the book, however, must have felt that he alone couldn’t sell the book, so his wife Rachelle chimes in periodically with her “everyman” take on Ed’s antics. Frankly, they could have saved paper had they cut out her interjections and just let Ed list all the things he’s done to make his household more self-sufficient and environmentally friendly.

I appreciated Ed’s willingness to not just talk about ways homeowners could make a difference, but ways renters can too. There’s all kinds of helpful things you can do — from weatherproofing your own windows to buying carbon offsets — despite your living situation.

So, in the spirit of Ed, I’ve decided that rather than let this book languish on my bookshelf, I’m going to pick a few specific things out of it, write them down and make some goals, and then pass this book along to whoever would like to read it next.

I’ll do the same for the Man Translator, but I can promise it won’t be nearly as helpful.