# Woodworking Novels?



## DanOMad (Jan 7, 2009)

I'm taking a vacation next week and would like to pack some woodworking-related reading material for the long flight. However, rather than taking my favorite woodworking magazines or "how-to" books, I'm looking for novels featuring woodworking, furniture makers, etc. Any ideas? If you can't come up with any novels, what's your favorite history book dealing with a woodworking-related topic?

Thanks in advance,
Dan


----------



## rhett (May 11, 2008)

George Nakashima's "Soul of a Tree" 
James Krenov's "Impractical Cabinetmaker" or any book my him.

More woodworking philosophy than how to.


----------



## rejr (Jun 24, 2008)

Two non-fiction:

One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw - Witold Rybczynski

So, when did turnscrews first show up in our toolchests?

A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder - Michael Pollan

Pollan wants a 'writer's room and winds up, after a brief review of generations of unhandymen in his family, building his own. Digressions on architectural theory and design, insights on using tools.

Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft - Ross A. Laird

Short essays from working wood.


----------



## bbqking (Mar 16, 2008)

"Oak- The Frame of Civilization", by William Bryant Logan. 300 fascinating, easy read pages about, you guessed it, oak. bbqKing.


----------



## YorkshireStewart (Sep 20, 2007)

Can't come up with a novel Dan, but one of my favourite historical books is The Wheelright's Shop By George Sturt.

George Sturt was the son of a well established wheelwright in Farnham, Surrey. He began his working life as a schoolteacher but partly because of his father's failing health and partly under the influence of Ruskin's views on handicraft, he took over the running of the wheelwright's shop in 1884. 
His books record the passing of the old crafts, and of the old craftsmen and workmen. Written, I believe around 1930.

I found a review here: This book was written in the 1930s, at a point where it was being recognised that the traditional, seemingly age-old methods of craftsmanship and technology were being superceded in the machine age. Sturt was writing about an industry he was peripheral to, and and industry in decline. Despite the fact he owned and ran a Wheelwright's shop, he was not a wheelwright, and often refers to himself within the book as the gaffer and the 'boy'.

He highlights the difficulties and techniques involved in not only wheelwrighting, but in a country life in decline. This is less a contemporary text covering the running of a workshop, but a treatise on a way of life in decline: Sturt comments on new wood arriving from North America that has not been air-dried over a period of years, but kiln dried. He comments on the new trends towards profit over craftsmanship, with something of regret, despite recognising the hard life the wheelwrights, woodsmen and sawyers had.

There is also a great deal of appreciation of craftsmanship, and I took from this book a great deal concerning laymen's attitudes to craft, in that it's often unrecognised as being merely ornamental, or without function.

This seems to be a quiet tale about craftsmen in a vanished pastoral age, but provides stark warnings concerning losing technique through a drive to commerce over skill.


----------



## Cejay (Jun 6, 2014)

Two of my favorite fiction books, because of the descriptive text about tools and woodworking or building stuff are "Folly" by Laurie R. King and "Trustee from the Toolroom" by Neville Shute. Nice stories to listen to while working in the shop. (There is one scene in Folly and some language sprinkled sparsely that really isn't kid appropriate though.)


----------



## emme (Jul 25, 2016)

I'm late to the party but let me add "The Magic of Recluse", by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
High fantasy with magic… and in a nice twist on the standard theme of a disgruntled teenage protagonist, the main character here is a woodworking apprentice who has to start using those skills when he's kicked out of his home country.

Later books in the series bog down, but the first book stands alone…and the first few after it are still pretty good.


----------

