Customer Reviews

A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While some rave about the prose of Anne Rice and Michael Ondaatje, I rave about Michael Pollan! In A Place of My Own, Pollan has crafted a beautifully written book laced with intelligence, humility and humor. Attempting to escape his own "mid-life crisis," Pollan decides to build a cabin in the woods--a place where he can work undisturbed that also serves as a "shelter for daydreams." During his 2 1/2 years of building, Pollan comes to reflect on many things such as the meaning of "work" in our highly technological society, the sacrifice and celebration of nature and the borders between nature and culture. In the end, Pollan comes to the conclusion that there really is no clear division between matters of the material world and those of the spirit. A warm, witty and wise story told in prose as crystal clear as a bright winter's day. I'd gladly give it ten stars if I could.

First, I enjoyed reading this book. I'm a carpenter turned cabinetmaker that aspires to build spec homes per my own designs, from bottom to top. Given my existing interest in the field, I most enjoyed his discussion of the various architectural movements and the philosophies thereof. It provides a broad overview of different theories of design and how they result in pleasing (or not so pleasing) structures.

However, he definitely goes overboard - especially with the obnoxious use of esoteric vocabulary. Synecdoche? I'm pretty well read and I don't think I've ever even seen that word written before. It goes on and on like that, and it's unfortunate because it really distracts you from what's otherwise a pretty interesting read. He also seems to slip into a bit of stream of consciousness about the theory behind some detail of construction or another (like muntins). Be prepared.

It was also tiring to read about the conflict between the architect and the builder. If it was indeed as tense as he claims, then he's probably in large part to blame, getting wrapped up in the drama (which I believe he does).

Overall I gave it a 3, because it definitely provided a lot of good information. But I was dragging by the end, and it really felt like once he hit his quota of pages he just stopped. He takes you all the way through the process of construction, but doesn't tell you how it ends. How's the building feel? What worked and what didn't? Is it great in the spring with the windows open, or is it too buggy? Freezing in the winter? By dropping 30 pages of theory and putting in an equal amount of reality it would have made this book a real winner.

... this book is much too wordy and self-consciously "word-crafted." A Place of My Own: 3 stars.

I have loved his other books: The Botany of Desire in particular. He is an excellent writer and great to listen to in a radio interview. However, this book, it seems to me, was written for his former colleagues in the "word industry" as a proof that he can write more intricately structured sentences, more erudite vocabulary, more commas generally THAN YOU CAN!!

I began reading the book with great hopes, and I hate to rate any of his books less than a 5; but I immediately bogged down. It has overly complicated, assertively complicated, prose. It has an immensity of nested clauses delimited by a blizzard of commas. I started looking for a sentence without a comma. I couldn't find one for at least a page and a half. Immensely long, self-consciously crafted sentences. Nothing is just a thing: It's possibly the strangest, most meaningful thing, except that his wife, when in the kitchen, though not generally not on Tuesdays, used to enunciate, with a wry expression on her lips -- a rather inappropriate expression I thought, that it was the opposite of the physical object, in spite of Plato and Aristotle, because her cabalistic, pernicious, atavism. (You get the style?) I think he was trying impress himself that his life, decision to write full time and his little studio were worthwhile. To me, it's navel-gazing at its worst.

If you like the kind of sentence I parodied above (though trust me, it's not that much of a parody) you will like this book. Otherwise, not. As noted, I like Michael Pollan. I could not read this. Thank goodness for his more recent books.

[edited for spelling and grammar 28FEB08]

This book, much like his earlier "Second Nature" is a must for anyone who appreciates profound thoughts about gardening, homes, and the space in which we live. He crafts his words as well as he does his home and garden. Read these books and you will never think about homes and gardens in the same way again. Philosophical, poetical, and profound.

I have not harbored any life-long ambition to build my own home, but now, about a year after reading "A Place of My Own," I find myself building a house. It's not all Michael Pollan's fault, but I'm not letting him completely off the hook either. Michael Pollan loves words and spends the majority of his time in the world of words and abstractions. The tale of his inexplicable desire to create something as real-world as a building with his own hands makes for a very seductive invitation into that world for someone who feels most at home in the realm of the abstract but nurtures a growing admiration for the so-called "blue color" folks whose knowledge and expertise reside in their strong and weathered hands as much as it does in their noggins.

While the book in no way operates on the level of a "how-to" manual, now that I've started down that owner-builder road I'm encountering landmarks familiar to me from reading "A Place of My Own," like the tension-bordering-on-hostility that exists between architects, those artisans of the abstract, and builders, who inherit the sometimes unenviable task of turning fanciful "funny-paper" blue-prints into tangible structures of concrete, wood, and glass.

As an accident prone, hurry-up amateur, I appreciated Pollan's candid stance. He is such a fine writer (I found his book on gardening, Second Nature, to be the most pleasurable I have found in the genre), that I felt as though my carpentry skills were improving along with his. And in some way they were, for his details on the process are precise and relevant. Pollan takes it easy, too, and he meanders, but his aim is true, and few words are wasted. One can take or leave his digressions, but there is no denying they complement the main text. I read this book quickly, in three days, and each night after finally putting it down, I looked up at the ceiling from under my covers and visited in imagination his "roof over two bookcases" in progress. I feel, thanks to this journey, more certain than ever that I will get around to building a place of my own.

If you've never built a house, you'll love this book. If you've built over 500 of them, as I have, you'll love this book for its fine craftsmanship, and you'll wish you could have helped on the construction of Pollan's first owner-built home. Read the book, and it's almost as good as being there. Afterwards, you'll want to build a clean, well-lighted place of your own.

I had no idea what was this book about, I just knew that Michael Pollan wrote this amazing meat article for the NY Times a few years ago and decided to buy all his 3 books (a 4th one coming out).
This one (A place of my own) is about him building a studio in the woods behind his house, with architect designs and carpenter's help. I learned tons on house building ... the most interesting thing though is that this book encompass an history lesson on any parts of the house (how were things built before, why were they built that way, what do we do now) ...
Michael read and quotes several other books about architecture, relations between human and the habitat ... thanks for opening my eyes !

I read Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own about 6 months and am now realizing how the story has really stuck with me since then. Pollan has written a thoughtful and thought-provoking narrative that not only has me looking at the built world more carefully but has also inspired me (as I had hoped when I first saw the book) to eventually tackle a construction project for myself. The descriptions in the book are wonderfully detailed and it subsumes an impressive amount of material for its length, giving the reader a sense of how much thought goes into even the most seemingly straightforward projects. I found this book to be rewarding on many levels.

Let me just say this: Pollan's talent as a builder is comical; his talent as a writer is exceptional. And what's the bridge between these two areas that he combines in "Place"? Humility, perhaps. Pollan's no dummy. He knows where his strength lies, in words, and this is the backbone of what would otherwise be a laughable tale of one man's dream-shack, the stereotypical designer and the woodbutcher who helps him bring it to life. If you go into this book thinking you're going to learn how to build, or plan a building, you'll be using it for kindling by the third chapter. But if you appreciate a talented author and have a peripheral interest in designing space, form, and buildings, it's a fun read.