October 2011

Denhez, Marc C. The Canadian Home: from Cave to Electronic Cocoon. Toronto: Dundurn, 1994. Print.

I only read the first chapter of this before taking it back to the library, but I liked what I read and didn’t want to forget to come back to it.  The foreword is by Pierre Berton, so you know this is no trifling book!  The chapter headings have witty summaries, and his literary references are extensive and unexpected, mentioning Socrates and the Rolling Stones on the very first page.  I learned more about the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Company than I’d known before, especially the historical perspective, just in the first chapter.

I need to revisit this in the future.

Minhinnick, Jeanne. At Home in Upper Canada. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1970. Print.

I had a dozen books on old houses and furnishings out of the library at once, and I thought this might turn out to be duplicating information I’d already read.  However, it turned out to be quite different and delightful.  Minhinnick was born around 1900 and raised by grandparents, who had vivid memories of their grandparents and the stories they told about moving to Canada as Loyalists.  Minhinnick uses this gold mine of stories and memories and fleshes it out with research, which she says no-one else was doing at the time.

The book has a conversational tone, and from the first chapter – on gardens and ‘dooryards’ – I was hooked.  She describes what remains of most abandoned homesteads, and it fits ours perfectly – the lilacs, high-bush cranberry, roses, peonies, and lilies.  There are tons of engaging details; for instance, this is one of only two books I’ve seen that mention a frill tacked on to the front of a mantel to help keep smoke going towards the chimney, rather than into the room.  Her personal reminiscinces would be out of a place in a purely scholarly book, but this is a charming mix that I will read again.  It has a lot of the information I was looking for about how my 1913 farmhouse would have been lived in by its original inhabitants.

Bird, Michael S. Canadian Country Furniture: 1675-1950. Toronto: Stoddart, 1994. Print.

I got a little bit fooled by this book, since the 1950 in the title refers to the western part of Canada only.  I’ve noticed this myself – that a house in a museum in Saskatchewan built in 1900 might be very like one built in 1850 in the Maritimes.  So, since I was looking for what furniture might have been in my 1913 Ontario farmhouse, it wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped.

It’s still a neat read, though, with tons of photographs and exhaustive information.  Bird would appear to be a completist and a perfectionist, traveling coast to coast to see and photograph antiques.  It’s divided by province so you can concentrate on the area you’re interested in, although it would be neat to see all this great information in a database where you could see dish dressers through time, for instance.

Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. New York, NY: Viking, 1994. Print.

Now, my devoted readers (all four of you!) are going to be annoyed, because I’m going to use the word ‘transformative’ again for this book, and you are all the type to notice that I’ve used the same word twice in a day.  But what can I do?  Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building and this book, taken together as a single dose in the same month, literally did transform my thinking about building.

Stewart Brand is the originator of the Whole Earth Catalog that I remember my folks used to have around and read.  They had a bit of a hippie vibe going in the 1970s despite their professional engineer/nurse careers, what with the two-room log cabin in the bush and all.  Brand also has an impressive list of education and jobs he has done.

That’s only partially relevant to my thinking about the book, though.  He claims that he’s the only person who has made a study of buildings over time, and I certainly can’t think of any book that contradicts him.  I have a tendency to always want houses, especially, to stay the same, and he has compelling reasons why they shouldn’t.  He distinguishes between two types of houses that work.  The first is what he calls ‘high-road’ houses, like Chatsworth, an old stately home in England I’ve visited.  It has had enough money and visibility to have stayed in good repair, and has had only sympathetic renovations done on it.  By contrast, ‘low-road’ houses or buildings don’t have historical significance, and can have chunks of work done on them to make them livable without worrying so much about authenticity.  Where the changes made to the two originally idential buildings on the cover make me anxious, he just finds it interesting.

It’s a challenge for me to think of my two homes as ‘low-road’ houses that I can hack about at will, but I’m making an attempt.  I’m not likely to go too far in that direction and become unbalanced the other way!

Brand also discusses quite a bit why architecture doesn’t work.  Flat roofs, for instance, always leak.  I was apalled to learn that the original owner of Fallingwater, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous houses, privately called it ‘Rising Damp’.  Wright was so controlling, though, that nothing could be changed – not even the orientation of the screw heads, which have to be horizontal to match his famous Prairie line.  Brand doesn’t focus on big-name architects, though, but the ranks of women and men creating office buildings and houses that can’t adapt to what people need them to do.  A case study of one that works tremendously well an MIT building that went up in a hurry during wartime, meant to be temporary, but that has survived because people love working in it.  Surprising to me, though, was that Brand also doesn’t approve of the modern architect’s method of designing the spaces that people want.  Spaces should be generic, argues Brand, so that they can take on whatever’s needed.  His arguments are surprisingly compelling, especially when he shows a picture of a modern house that tries to express Alexander’s pattern of “Cascading Roofs”; and that by having a half-dozen little roofs over various sets of rooms, the house reaches for a pattern that it can never truly have, since it’s impossible to add on to.  The simple gable-roofed rectangle (like our farmhouse!) that lets a homeowner add on to any of the four sides is a better starting point.

Need I even say at this point that I highly recommend the book?

Schaeffer, John, Alan Berolzheimer, and Bill Giebler. Gaiam Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook: Your Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies and Sustainable Living. Hopland, CA: Gaiam Real Goods, 2008. Print.

This was not at all what I expected, but a very enjoyable book.  To get the negatives out of the way first; it’s not sure whether it’s a catalog, a how-to book, or a non-fiction collection of articles, and that makes things rather confusing.  Information is repeated, sometimes word for word, and sometimes contradicting itself.  There are many authors, but in the sense that Schaeffer pulls large sections from books published by the company (with permission, of course).  Also, I didn’t finish the book.

That said, though, this is a great library reference.  I learned about how solar systems work, including safety aspects that I hadn’t been aware of.  I still don’t really understand electricity (but that’s okay; I’ve given up on understanding Shakespeare and electricity in this lifetime), but know a lot more about the practical aspects of using it than I did.  The worksheets that allowed me to calculate how many solar panels we could put on our roof and how much power we could expect to get from it are invaluable.  The catalog sections are either deadly boring – page after page of batteries – or delightful – solar versions of items I don’t even own.  They don’t just cater to the most stringest of environmentalists – you can choose the level you’re ready for and outfit yourself accordingly.  Together with Steward Brand’s How Buildings Learn, I came across the notion twice in one week about “embodied energy”; the energy that went into producing an item or constructing a building, that is lost when that item is thrown out.

Like I say, it’s great fun, and although I wouldn’t recommend you go out and buy it, certainly borrow the latest version your library has.  Not everything has been updated in each edition, so the catalog prices aren’t necessarily up to date, but it certainly gives a useful ballpark.

Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford UP, 1979. Print.

I had read Alexander’s A Pattern Language back in the 90s when programmers were all talking about design patterns and using Alexander’s ideas as a springboard.  I was a bit surprised at the time to find out that it was about architecture, and since I was only just into my home-owning years I found it interesting, but not fascinating, and certainly not useful.

Wanting to revisit that book again, I thought I would use my current “funemployment” time to read all six volumes in the series.  At first I thought I was going to hate this book – his insistence in talking about “the quality that has no name” seemed ludicrious.  Fortunately I was reading it on the island, which is conducive to taking my time and feeling philosophical, and by the end of it I count myself a convert.  I like the way he constructs the book so that you can read it just by reading the headings and italicized chapters, which gives you a view of the whole.  (I think I recall that something like that is mentioned in How to Read a Book, which I’m overdue to re-read).

I’m eager to get at Volume 2 so that I can try for myself the methods he talks about; how by insisting on a series of patterns that we know describe a building with the nameless quality, we can create living buildings.  Applying a single pattern allows you the chance to improve other patterns at the same time, so that you are always improving the entire structure.  The patterns also follow a hierarchy, so you can start at whatever level (a town, a house, a room, a window) you need to deal with at that moment in time.  This dovetails neatly with Stewart Brand’s ideas about what he calls “low-road buildings” in How Buildings Learn, which I read just before this, but have not yet reviewed.

A transformative book for me, highly recommended for anyone interested in houses and what makes them work.

Deuker, Carl. Gym Candy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.

I so wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t.  I made it to the 50-page mark, but gave up.  It had been recommended as a list of good books for kids; in fact, I think it was the same YASLA 2010 book list that recommended After-School Nightmare, as part of a list of books dealing with teen bodies and their issues.

I picked it to read now because we had a boy in the house interested in football, but the plot lines about steroid use and father-son relationships were either over his head or touchy subjects, so it wasn’t suitable for that.  I found the storyline too contrived, clichéd, and obvious to be worth reading myself.  So, I will not finish it, but I won’t give up on Deuker yet – fiction ‘about’ sports adds an appealing dimension for boys.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman; Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. New York: Viking, 1949. Print.

I started this one night on the island, and I’m embarrassed to admit, didn’t finish it.  I thought I had another three weeks with it, but I’m not able to renew it again, so will have to go back to it.

I’m sure we read this in high school English.  I didn’t appreciate it, of course, and thought it was time to revisit.  I remembered Willy Loman’s character as being broken and sad, but not as unhinged as he read to me this time.  I didn’t enjoy reading plays back then, but I certainly grew to enjoy them in my university years, so I got a lot more out of the stage directions on this reading.

Need to finish.

Litchfield, Michael W. In-laws, Outlaws, and Granny Flats: Your Guide to Turning One House into Two Homes. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 2011. Print.

I live in a part of Toronto with lots of fairly old, large homes that have been turned into apartments or rooming houses.  Upon learning that one old house in the neighbourhood I’m particularly fond of might be getting the treatment soon, I set out to find more about the process.

Taunton never fails to impress me with the quality of their content, writing, and pictures.  The 30 projects pictured cover a wide range, from garage, attic, and basement conversions to separate backyard cottages.  He talks about building permits and what you’ll run into from a political as well as construction perspective.  The exterior, with separate gardens and walls to keep privacy sorted out, isn’t forgotten.  He even discusses the psychological issues of sharing your space with strangers, friends, or family members.  It gave me a lot to think about, and I’m sure I’ll refer to this book again.  Highly recommended.

Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. New York: Harper, 1960. Print.

This is the favourite book of a good friend, and I first read it in 2007, but I don’t seem to have recorded any thoughts on it at the time.  I think I borrowed a copy from our editor aunt and uncle in New York while visiting.

I love the feeling of being immersed in another time and place.  I’m not normally a mystery reader, and I don’t seek them out, but I do enjoy a well-written one.  In this novel Harriet Vane – already introduced in another book, although I didn’t know that on first reading – returns to her Oxford college for a kind of reunion weekend (hence the title).  Someone is distributing ‘poison pen’ letters and drawings, and causing general havoc.  Things become serious enough that Harriet consults with Lord Peter Wimsey, a recurring character in Sayers’ novels.

My minor complaint is that I sometimes found it hard to follow what was going on.  When the Dean, Warden, and Bursar are sometimes referred to by their titles and sometimes by their names, it’s as if there are three extra people (at least they weren’t normally referred to by first names as well!).  I think the entire first time I read the book, I never realized that SCR stood for ‘Senior Common Room’, meaning the people belonging to it as well as the room itself.  Oxford ways are a mystery to me in themselves, so there were inferences that were lost on me, but they didn’t hinder my enjoyment.  They might have hindered me from figuring out the mystery myself, but I never expect that I will since I’m not well-versed in mysteries.

The only other complaint I have is that to me, after two readings, it’s still firmly a “Harriet Vane” novel.  When a large part of the novel is taken up with discussions on whether women should attend colleges and put an academic career ahead of their personal life, it galls me to have the novel blazoned with “A Lord Peter Wimsey novel” at the top of the cover.  However, it was originally published in 1935, so I can’t be too hard on the novel on that account.

I suspect that with my poor memory, I can happily re-read and enjoy this book every four or five years for the rest of my life.  I have Strong Poison, the first Harriet Vane book, on hold at the library to enjoy some time in the future.