A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A glorious piece of prose...Pollan leads readers on his adventure with humor and grace."
--Chicago Tribune

"A captivating and informative adventure."
--John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"An utterly terrific book...an inspired meditation on the complex relationship between space, the human body and the human spirit."
--Francine du Plessix Gray


From the Trade Paperback edition. -- Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“A glorious piece of prose . . . Pollan leads readers on his adventure with humor and grace.”
—Chicago Tribune

“A captivating and informative adventure.”
—John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“An utterly terrific book . . . an inspired meditation on the complex relationship between space, the human body, and the human spirit.”
—Francine du Plessix Gray --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (March 19, 1998)
• ISBN-10: 0747535132
• ISBN-13: 978-0747535133
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,651,341 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars looking at building from all angles, January 2, 2009

By	RamblingReviewer - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Paperback)

I'm so glad this book is once again readily available; I keep wanting to give it to friends and it had become hard to find. Pollan undertook the project of building himself a modest shelter, and used that as a jumping-off place to consider--always entertainingly--a dazzling array of related subjects. The book is a joy to read, a disquisition on everything from design considerations (site, view, feel), to descriptions of the nitty-gritty of basic shelter construction (why you don't see windows that swing inward, the right way to hammer a nail), to reflections about historical, cultural and technological influences on the evolution of structures, the divergence between design and construction that produced the profession of architect and the craft of builder and the tension between the two. Pollan's graceful writing is informed by his inquiring intellect and his wide-ranging fund of knowledge. There is something thought-provoking on nearly every page.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intimate tour of a writer's most sacred place: the house of their dreams, April 11, 2009

By	Michael Tiemann (Chapel Hill, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Paperback)

I was astonished to see that there are *any* less than stellar reviews for this book, so let me speak in defense of Michael Pollan's sophomore effort: You Must Read This Book!

For those who loved The Omnivore's Dilemma, this book describes the process by which the cradle of that great work was itself brought to life. As a person married to an author, and as a person who himself writes more than the average American, Pollan's process of articulating his own dreams (and fears) for his own writing house literally brought tears to my eyes, so profound his subject and so universal its truths. It is a brilliant synthesis of abstract and concrete--the construction of a physical space *so that* greater mental heights can be imagined and obtained.

For those who celebrate the way that Pollan has helped us restore some measure of our own humanity by helping us reconnect with what is true about food (and by learning how to avoid what is false about edible food-like substances), let only those who are truly roofless cast the first stone against this book! For the rest of us, whether we own, rent, or live more transiently in some sheltering construct, this book teaches the truly multi-dimensional ways that dwellings come to be, and how the manifold relationships that condense into built forms continue to express those relationships, even to those who are not yet born.

For those who love Pollan's ways with words, this book is full of fridge-worthy sentences and page-worthy paragraphs.

For those who enjoyed meeting Joel Salatin in "Part III: Grass" of the Omnivore's Dilemma, in this book we meet the prototype from the building trade, Joe Benney. Indeed, I'd be willing to bet that without Joe's training in the manual arts, Michael would never have made it past the first handshake with Mr. Salatin of Polyface farms.

For those who complain "this book is nothing new", fooey. Yes it was first published more than a decade ago, but as a book I had not read, it was new to me. The new paperback format is far more friendly to me and my traveling lifestyle. And the new preface provides an opportunity for Pollan to complete some factual and cultural arcs that were anticipated by the foundations he laid in 1997. (In that way, every finished building is really the start of a new, unimagined next building.)

So...I loved it, and I suspect that if you have ever dreamed about building a place for your own dreams, you will love it, too!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, May 25, 2009

By	Raph84 "eXtreme reader" (South West, OH) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Paperback)

I picked up this book after reading Omnivore's Dilemma. This book is the Omnivore's Dilemma for architecture and building. I found it to give a fantastic overview of the history of architecture, the difficulties in translating the architect's plans into something realistic (paring things down to form over function), and the realities of making a structure from the ground up.
This book however is not a manual of how to build. If you are interested in building or creating things out of scratch it will be very happy with this book. This might better be titled the philosophy of building.... a place of one's own.