October 14, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

A Place Of My Own

A Place Of My Own
Michael Pollan

A magazine editor decides to build his own "writing shed" out behind his rural Connecticut house. He takes the decision literally -- he wants to do a lot of the carpentry himself, though he hires an architect to design the building and a carpenter to guide him. A thoughtful and reflective book in which little happens, except that the author winds up with a nice new room after two years of Sunday labor and a whole raft of thinking.

The concluding chapter on Sources is a wonderful reading list on architectures and construction, their ideas, philosophy, and practice.