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It's not easy being green.

SKY TIME IN GRAY'S RIVER Living for Keeps In a Forgotten Place By Robert Michael Pyle | Mariner. 246 pp. $13.95

To Robert Michael Pyle, there is little in nature that isn't worth celebrating. In Sky Time in Gray's River, his graceful meditation on rural life in the Pacific Northwest, spiders, thistles, blackberries -- even a compost heap ("the place where all goodness goes, between life and more life") -- are imbued with an infectious reverie. Pyle, a lepidopterist who has written and edited numerous books, including Chasing Monarchs and Nabokov's Butterflies, paints an idyllic picture of the more than 20 years he has spent in Gray's River, a village in southwestern Washington where, he writes, you can "see the first arrivals in the spring in all their joy and relief and know there is nothing sentimental in saying so." His case for life off the grid is compelling, but Pyle warns readers not to take his message too literally. "Instead of luring you to some idealized bucolic hideout that would almost certainly disappoint in the end," he says, "may this little book assist you in finding the heart of your own home, which lies in the lives and skies of everyplace."

GREEN HOUSEKEEPING By Ellen Sandbeck | Scribner. 426 pp. $16

Ellen Sandbeck, a Minnesota worm farmer and organic gardener, describes herself as "one of the least domestic people I know." Green Housekeeping, her plainspoken guide to home maintenance, reflects that nonchalance. "The well-tempered house," she writes, "should be just neat and clean enough to make both the neatest person and the sloppiest person . . . just a tiny bit dissatisfied." The goal of cleaning, in her view, is good health -- your own and the planet's -- not prettiness. To that end, she eschews the use of toxic synthetic chemicals in favor of "products made of safe, natural and preferably food-grade ingredients." Examples include homemade furniture polish made of olive oil and beeswax, which, Sandbeck adds helpfully, "also makes a dandy lip balm." Ideas such as these may be ingenious, but others, such as using cloth diapers or shipping delicate clothes to environmentally friendly dry-cleaning facilities belie the low-effort, low-cost premise.

THE SMALLER MAJORITY By Piotr Naskrecki | Belknap/Harvard. 278 pp. $24.95

Piotr Naskrecki's fate may have been set when, as a bespectacled child, he was nicknamed "the Bug." Now an entomologist at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, Naskrecki shares his lifelong fascination with the miniature of the natural world in The Smaller Majority, a pictorial homage to "everything that is small and misunderstood." The book is a full-color, guided tour of the tiny creatures that inhabit deserts, tropic forests and savannas across six continents.

The Smaller Majority, whose title refers to the fact that more than 90 percent of known species are smaller than a human finger, brings you inside animals' habitats. The explanations that accompany Naskrecki's photographs offer a wealth of fascinating detail, with one exception: almost no mention of the animals' dimensions. The omission is intentional, as Naskrecki, ever sensitive to the way size can shape first impressions, feels it would distract from "our appreciation of the animal's beauty." His glorious photographs allay any concerns.

From Our Previous Reviews

* Local historian Mary Kay Ricks's Escape on the Pearl (Harper Perennial, $15.95) chronicles the failed attempt in 1848 by enslaved African Americans to sail from Washington, D.C., to freedom "is as dramatic as anything in Stowe's bestselling Uncle Tom's Cabin," said James T. Campbell.

* The pieces in Better (Picador, $14), the second essay collection by surgeon Atul Gawande, "evoke the profound desire that doctors feel to cure, along with our besetting anxieties about poor performance and its consequences," noted Perri Klass.

* David Treuer's "deeply crafty, shape-shifting third novel" The Translation of Dr. Apelles (Vintage, $14.95), which weaves together the tale of a Native American translator and the characters in an ancient manuscript, recalls the work of Italo Calvino, wrote Brian Hall.

* Michael B. Oren's sweeping history of the role of the United States in the Middle East, Power, Faith, and Fantasy (Norton, $17.95), reveals "both what has changed and what has stayed the same," Robert Kagan explained.

Nora Krug is a regular contributor to Book World.