Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

At a time when we should be focusing on reusing and recycling and reducing the amount of waste, this book is a great way to show how people have been doing it for centuries. I found it super interesting and well written. I would have liked a little more warmth in tone but thats a personal writing choice. Otherwise a really great and useful read

A fascinating look at the history of reusing and recycling if you want to learn more about making good use of what folks leave behind, check out this book

I was attracted by the title and the unusual title and I can say it was a fascinating and informative read.
A lot of anecdotes, facts and explanations and a good storytelling that keeps you hooked.
I liked it, learned a lot and I recommend it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

The topic was fascinating, however I found the layout of the book to be hard to follow. There were so many footnotes and anecdotes and thoughts thrown in that I found myself confused and not able to enjoy reading Rummage. It wasn't really what I was expecting. I thought this would be more of an easier read and chapterized items and their use/how to recycle them.
A case of it's me and not the book.

*Many thanks to Emily Cockayne, Serpent's Tail/Profile Books and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
A book that teaches us about the value of everything that surrounds us and shows ways to preserve, reuse and recycle things. I believe this is the non-fiction which makes us, users, aware of the fact that the waste of today should be looked after in as many aspects as possible for the next generations. A most interesting read on everyday objects and their preservation.

Well it's fair to say this book recycled my childhood for me. From remembering The Wombles, and those sticky labels the Friends of the Earth sold at great expense so you could redirect and reuse an envelope, to the very nature of the humble jumble sale (which date from the 1880s and not the 1980s, which is closer to my youth I'll have you know), we see the whole history of reuse and recycling. "There's brass in muck" some people were told, and this book, that aims to do what Mary Roach did for cadavers, gives us lots of different windows into how junk was stopped from being junked throughout history.

It's clearly a book with a singular subject, then, although it does go about things in what is slightly too individual a manner, being in reverse chronology. So, not concerning itself with upscaling furniture or so on, we start at the dawn of the current century. Apparently, observant housewives, seeing all the trash they'd separated and sorted for the War Effort in London in the 1940s, were aghast at seeing it all end up in the one single compartment on the back of the collectors' wagon. I know their pain – the brown, green and white sections of the bottle banks I know of the most, all went, right in front of me, into the one unsegregated lorry. But then there has always been a bit of the worthy failure about bottle banks, as we see here.

The book shows the author's skill at gathering information (from social history to the eye-opening source of early Victorian plastics and artificial dyes) – if not quite her talent at editing (the commercial shenanigans of the people in this chapter are far too extensive). And that would be what makes the book a bit off what I thought to expect. It's too often a history of production and re-production, and not the sociology I thought we'd get. The history of turning horses into glue, of turning this effluent into this, and that into that – they're all here but it's a bit too science-y for my tastes, when the more recent chapters, when we had verbatim documentation of attitudes to domestic recycling, were more fun.

So, no "Stiff", but a heck of a lot of stuff to enjoy and learn about – and that's not just to mean the thick woven cloth by that name. For me this was three and a half stars, but for the right reader it's going to be a wonderful purchase. Used, of course.

Imagine this book as an archaeologist peering down into a rubbish tip with its strata of historic “waste”. The reader starts in the present and digs down ever deeper back into time: “(...) recycling and repurposing were normal domestic activities. The lives of things were eked out; extended through being remodelled, passed down, passed on, pawned, borrowed or repaired.”
Absolutely brimful with information on repair, reuse and recycle through the ages, together with research notes and the author’s personal experience and images of items from the author’s collection.
Granted, environmental issues are complex, but I have a sneaking suspicion that authors of these tomes are not encouraged by their publishers to embrace brevity. For a book of over ten hours reading time, I would want a robustly laid-out, structured content. Sadly, once again, I find a rambly, loosely gathered thread. The narrative often gets lost in anecdotal, albeit entertaining, detail. On the plus side, there is a huge wealth of information, an immense web of inventions, thrift, patents, interdependencies, historical constraints, rivalries, factory fires and bankruptcies. An entertaining read, informatve and often surprising.

Thank you to the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I think I was expecting more about domestic reuse in this book, but it makes sense that this is difficult to research and trace given that most historical reuse was done by women with no written records. This well-researched book focuses instead mainly on industrial reuse through the centuries, and why certain large historical events precipitated them (particularly wars). There is some description of domestic recycling and reuse, particularly within living memory, and this was always interesting.

The book traces the history of reuse backwards in time, which was an interesting decision and which mainly works well, although there is some inevitable repetition and crossover of time periods. The inclusion of photographs of some reused and repurposed items was really helpful and brought them to life.

The conclusion that since early modern periods we (the British) have been intermittent reusers and recyclers is an interesting one, and Cockayne is quite scathing of some modern attempts to be thrifty and recycle things (particularly in the introduction). If you are looking for a practical history book showing how our foremothers reused, this is possibly not the book for you, but if you are interested in the history of recycling and reuse, particularly in the industrial world, you will find this invaluable.

I have always been a fan of history, and this book as clearly been an amazing read for me! I have never thought I can get so hooked up by a non-fiction book, but this novel did just that!
If you like learning new things and you love history, you should definitely give this book a shot!