A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity

This book is beautiful. It is well-written, and the author put a lot of careful thought into his work. This book has much to say about simplicity and wanting less and getting more for the effort. This is one of those books that everyone should read. Especially all of us who live in industrialized nations and take simple skills and ways for granted. This book makes you realize that sometimes buying things costs more than you bargain for and you may just be better off doing some things for yourself. I also like the analogy of working a job you hate just for money as prostitution.

It's funny how even a quick browsing of this book tells you it has integrity. It's some combination of the artful layout, the paper quality, and of course the author's inspiration living-the-talk life. A Handmade Life evokes a simple but deep way to live. I should confess, however, that I haven't read the whole book, but I love it anyway and keep it on my desk by computer, sipping it now and again like a wine brewed for inspiration. It's a reminder to slow down, focus more on craft than result and quality more than quantity. Another one in this genre is The Hand-Sculpted House.

The book was not as beautiful as the experience. The first time I went I left a feather and stones and couldn't bear to leave, subsequent visits were as powerful but in the way a life is crafted, one builing upon another. Bill is superlative. The book is good but needs to be taken in small portions, savored,it added to my experience. Building a yurt should be done by any awake human. Bill's the only authentic one I know of-the rest, shallow imitations, posers, pretenders, charlatans and just plain not it. Even though I'm sure they are earnest folks.

I didn't go looking for this book. It simply fell into place. Literally. While I was browsing in the satellite branch of my local public library for books about business this volume fell on my head. It had been left precariously on top of the shelf.Aesthetics appeal to me, to the cover was intriguing. I skipped the book about where mobile and wireless technology is taking society and immediately checked out A Handmade Life.It is a beautifully presented book. The photographs of an idyllic life in Maine are appealingly presented. The text proposes a way of life that, even here on the paradisical edge of the Pacific Ocean, on the edge of the world, even, it is hard not to yearn for. And maybe that is true value of the book. It awakened a hankering in me for a more naieve way. Strangely it also help me make a number of business choices I had been faced with. Appropriate considering there is a side-bar in the book:"Borrow from cultures old and newAnd with our imaginations Blend those borrowingsTo Create new ways to liveThat are simpler, gentlerMore generous and beautiful."Is that my cell-phone ringing?