My suggestion:

No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way Of Life in the Process by Colin Beavan. In this year-long chronicle, Beavan tells how he tried to live carbon-free with his wife and young daughter in Manhattan. They stopped using electricity, the subway, cars and even toilet paper. (This book, despite its preachy tone, made me think about my own wasteful habits.)

Remodeling:

Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live by Sarah Susanka (#9 customer favorite, home & garden). Susanka, who has urged Americans for more than a decade to build better, not bigger, looks at remodeling in her latest book. I mention this book in a story I wrote in May about the U.S. trend toward building smaller homes.

My suggestion:

Restoring a House In the City: A Guide to Renovating Town Houses, Brownstones and Row Houses With Great Style by Ingrid Abramovitch. This lushly photographed book shows how old homes can be brought back to life rather than demolished. You can read excerpts with the author in this earlier post.

Gardening:

The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn by John Greenlee (#3 editors'  home & garden pick). "If there's one lesson every homeowner must learn, it's this: The traditional lawn is a huge, time consuming, synthetic-chemical sucking mistake," Greenlee writes. "The time has come to look for new ways to create friendly, livable spaces around our homes."

The New Low-Maintenance Garden: How to Have a Beautiful, Productive Garden and the Time to Enjoy It by Valerie Easton (#5 editors'  home & garden pick). This book shows you how to design a garden that's easy to maintain, partly by including attractive hardscape, mastering the most efficient planting and maintenance techniques and embracing home-grown fruits, herbs and vegetables.

Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love by Julie Moir Messervy (#10, editors' home & garden pick). This gorgeous book shows readers how to create living spaces outdoors.

Urban farming:

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen (#8 editors'  home & garden pick). This practical, hands-on guide will help you harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, clean without toxins or convert your home to solar energy.

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman (#6 customer favorite in home & garden). Gardeners and farmers can use Coleman's methods to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.

The Backyard Homestead: Produce All the Food You Need On Just a Quarter Acre! by Carleen Madigan (#7 customer favorite in home & garden). The author says it's possible, on a quarter acre, to harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork and 75 pounds of nuts.

My suggestion:

Farm City: The Education of An Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. In this wacky, irreverent memoir, Carpenter chronicles her efforts -- in a seedy neighborhood of Oakland -- to keep bees, raise chickens and harvest vegetables in a small squatter garden.

Green Living:

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer and Driving Less Are the Key to Sustainability by David Owen (#2 editors pick in outdoor & nature). The conventional wisdom condemns Manhattan as an environmental nightmare, but this eco-urbanist manifesto says it is by far the greenest place in America.

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand (#9 editors' pick in outdoor & nature). Co-author of the seminal 1969 Whole Earth Catalog, Brand reflects on 40 years of trying to stem global warming.

My suggestion:

Whole Green Catalog: 1,000 Best Things For You and the Earth edited by Michael W. Robbins. This helpful guides gives consumer tips in many areas, from home furnishings and appliances to clothing and children's toys, from pets and beauty products to travel and investing.

In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue by Lauren Weber. Because of the economic recession, "frugality is back in style," Weber says. Her book traces the history of thrift, often maligned as "cheapness," in the USA. She describes her own childhood of short showers, to conserve water, and a house set at 50 degrees during New England winters, to save energy.

Readers: Which of these books did you enjoy and why? Are there other 2009 books you'd recommend?