5 books like How to Carve Wood

They say that travel opens the mind in ways that staying home doesn’t. Books can take you places you can’t otherwise go. So with Yanagi, I got to visit the mind of an early 20th-century Japanese craft connoisseur who looked at thousand-year-old (plain and unassuming) tea bowls and wondered why they’re utterly beautiful and treasured (the best fetch huge sums at auctions–$25million recently for one). Yanagi’s exploration of how the hands of craftsmen can unknowingly and unintentionally create objects of great beauty was both fascinating as it was challenging. It made my shop work a hundred times more enjoyable.

Albert Sack is a riot. He lines up expensive antiques, ranks them from the definitive label “Masterpiece” to the slow-hand insult of “Good”. He describes each in brutally honest and thereby exceptionally insightful terms. One chair is “a brilliant achievement”, while a clock is “relatively crude,” and a table’s legs “end nowhere.” No one comes away with a trophy for participation, making the book exceptionally good to train your eye towards good design. You want people to like the things you make, don’t you? Learn to distinguish good from great with Albert.

Talk about white privilege. This guy gets a doctorate in Philosophy, has a comfy career telling wealthy people what they want to hear, but throws it all away to skin his knuckles in a dingy shop teasing old motorcycles back to life for crap pay and occasional social abuse. Why? Read this book and find out: that working with your hands is satisfying, and good for the soul, connecting you with your essential humanity (so put the book down and go work with your hands). I actually hate this book, really, because he makes many points close to my heart, and I wanted to make them into a successful book. I also wish I had a motorcycle shop.

There are more comprehensive and detailed books on green woodworking, but none with Alexander’s unedited, liberating spirit, or his pioneering work. Lines such as “You need very few tools to go into the woods and bust a chair out of a tree” gave me a kind of permission to be bold, experiment, and just have fun (which is what he did, and is where the book comes from). You’ll learn how to make chairs (chairs!) with a small set of tools. You’ll likely put the book down before finishing it, and run into the woods to get started.

This book is at the top of my list because it’s one of my very favorites. Dunkle spins a gripping, atmospheric story with memorable characters, and you can tell she’s done her research on medieval Scotland. I love the old Celtic tales woven in, and the sweet romance between Maddie and the woodcarver. But what I like most of all is the theme of redemption. Maddie is a true hero, brave in the face of an unimaginably powerful, ancient evil. She showed me that you don’t have to be big or strong or rich or “somebody” to make a difference. You just have to be willing, have faith, and do your part.