Customer Reviews

Farm Houses: The New Style

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I chose this book for its cover. I found the house on the cover riveting. Unfortunately the book itself does not engage at the same level. I found the other houses in the book to be less inspired and was unimpressed by the text.

The houses represented in this book are okay. Nothing spectacular, but an okay reference none the less.
The quality of the publication, however, is bad to the point of being distracting. Many of the houses are presented with grainy/fuzzy photos. In my world, if a photo doesn't have the resolution to read crisply on a two page spread, you don't use it. That, unfortunately, isn't the reality of this book. I would say that at least half of the photos are of disturbingly bad quality.
To add to that problem, many of the photos that are at least sharp appear washed out. That might be a printing issue as much as a photo quality issue, but it is still unfortunate. They just appear faded.
Beyond the photos, there are a number of line drawings that are so badly pixelated that they are almost pointless.
In the light of these issues this book appears slapped together from low quality content just to make a buck, rather than coming across as a thoughful compilation of related projects. I gave it two stars, rather than one, only because the houses are fair and it wasn't a TOTAL waste of money. However, the buyer should beware.

I LOVED this book - it's well done and the author clearly not only knows what he is talking about, but also feels a genuine enthusiasm for the subject. The ideas and writing were clear and focused - I can recommend this book very highly.

I love farmhouse style, and there have been some noteworthy books recently that have amazing images and really help to articulate what is so compelling about the form. This is not one of them.

"The Farmhouse" is a beautiful, useful book. Buy it.

But Farm Houses: The New Style is not a peer. It is not tragic, but it really pales in comparison.