Home Books

My husband is an English professor and our house is filled with books. I read about this one in the Chronicle of Higher Education and knew he would love it. We always try to purchase unusual Valentine's gifts, so it seemed a perfect time to add it to our collection. He loves the book and has taken it to work to share with colleagues.

Everything you need to know about creating and caring for your home library is in here. A must read/"must-have" for book-lovers.

I went to Amazon intending to buy a newer book, Decorating with Books, but the reviews of both books led me to buy this one instead. This book will make you feel much more comfortable with having excessive numbers of books, if that is your situation. You know who you are.

This book is a must-have for all booklovers. The photographs of personal libraries are amazing and are supplemented with brief bios of the owners. It's a great compilation of collectors and designers. But most useful were the chapters on creating and maintaining a book collection. And the book is concluded with a great comprehensive resource guide (although I wish they had included website addresses with the contact information). Like other reviewers, I found myself scanning the shelves in the photographs to see if these world famous collectors had the same taste in books as me.

I am not alone! Many share my enthusiasm and love for books!

This book will take you into the homes of many bibliophiles, and you'll most likely find many pieces of yourself in each of their homes. If you are a bibliophile, no one home or person in this book will seem alien to you.

One bibliophile had a copy of Homer's work done in rubber so he could read it in his bathtub. I also love reading in my bathtub, and damaged many books in the process. It never occurred to me to actually have a book printed in rubber. This gave me the idea of downloading an e-book from the internet, and printing the chapters to read in the bathtub. Getting the papers wet would not matter in this case since they can be re-printed at any given time.

This book is fully illustrated with some amazing libraries. Some libraries are well organized, while others are not, but all are unique. By organized I mean neatly arranged on the bookshelves. You'll find some homes in this book where the books seem to be haphazardly arranged, with some on floors, desks, chairs, tables etc... Not all bibliophiles in this book had a dedicated room for their books; some placed their books all over their homes, even on stairwells and corridors. Many had libraries in their bedrooms too. I used to have my library in my bedroom until I designed a dedicated room in my house for books only. I now only keep the books I have not read in my bedroom.

One thing I noticed though is that not a single library in this book had its books arranged according to subject and author. This was quite surprising to me, for some of the homes had thousands of books, and I would imagine it would be very difficult to find specific books. I have my books arranged according to sections, such as philosophy, politics, fiction, religion, economics...and of course a section labeled bibliomania! I also have my books arranged alphabetically according to the author's name. My library is pretty much arranged like a bookstore. It is easy this way to find books, especially when I am discussing a book with a friend and need to quickly refer to it. I will include a video of my library in this review (if I figure out how to do it).

There is something magical sitting in a room surrounded by books. Imagine being surrounded by knowledge spanning thousands of years! What a wonderful and unique feeling that is!

Each book has a story to tell. I am not referring to the story within the pages of the book, but by the book itself. Is the book worn out? How did it get worn out? In whose home was it before? Who touched that book before? Could it have been somebody famous maybe? Are there notes on the margins of the book? If so, who wrote them and what do the notes say about the previous reader? How is the book binding? How was it designed? There are always two fascinating stories in every book you hold: the story read within the pages, and the story told by just holding the book.

For those wanting to design their own libraries, this book will give you many ideas through its many pictures and advice. There are sections in this book about how to organize your library; how to start a collection; all about library lighting; the art of the bookshelf (how thick and of what material should the shelves be to carry the weight of the books); the enemies of books (fire, water, light, dust); and library ladders. You'll find all the inspiration you need in this book to start or renovate your own library.

I also enjoyed learning about the psychology of the different bibliophiles. For example, some collect books just for their cover design, and not necessary to read them. The message is not `read this book' but `see this book.' Some bibliophiles derive pleasure from the thrill of finding old books, not necessary reading them. Some don't keep all their books, but often give them out to charities, libraries, and to prisons. I personally keep all my books for they all have a story to tell me. Again, not the story within the pages, but the story of how I acquired the book and what it meant to me when I first held it in my hands. Some books remind me of my youth for that is when I first held them. I have a very special attachment to my books, and parting with them is very difficult.

There are also some very nice quotations from the bibliophiles in this book. Here are a few:

"You can't want to be a collector, you're born that way. Driven."

"I could spend a lifetime in this room and not be bored."

"Books, like wine, need to be kept at a regular, unfluctuating temperature."

"The book collector must take extraordinary steps to gain the pleasures so easily afforded the art collector."

"A room filled with memories of the past."

"The library as theatre"

"Books are like works of art. You enjoy them, you're their guardians for a while, you're aware that other people have owned and enjoyed them for a short time, and then they are passed on."

"I would never have a room without books. They're a transforming element."

"I like a project that never ends, and a library is that."

"When people ask me, `Do you collect books?' I always say, `No. Books collect me.' "

"Books make better wall decorations than paintings."

"Your books are your personal history. You are what you read."

"It is a terrible thing to have educated eyes but a depleted bank account."

Interestingly, there is a town in the UK, Hay-on-Wye, dedicated only to books. On my next visit to the UK I will surely pass by this town. Its creator is now establishing similar towns across Europe.

I have often been asked why I keep books when they are so easily available electronically through the internet. Electronic books, or eBooks, are also easily stored, requiring only the space of a hard drive, and not a fully dedicated room! My answer is simple. Remember movies on U-matic? If you have U-matic movies today, you'd probably be unable to play them, for their format is no longer supported by the new players and TVs. Similarly, Betamax and VHS have now been replaced by DVD. DVD is now being replaced by Blu-ray. And none of those players are backward compatible. For example, a Blu-ray player cannot play Betamax or VHS. So what will happen to your eBooks collection in a few years from now when no players would support their format? The beauty of a library is that bookshelves are backward compatible, and printed books are here to stay forever, regardless of how fast or what direction technology evolves.

Books change people's lives. This book will give you a glimpse at libraries that will also change your life.

Enjoy your journey. I certainly have!

We recently purchased a house with a large yard that is rough in several places. Since I am a beginning gardener I find this book a great help in guiding my efforts to enhance and plant our yard. I love that it includes construction help as well as information on plants and flowers.

Over a thousand inspirational photos accompany these step-by-step outdoor landscape ideas, which appear in a new updated edition of a classic coverage. From swimming pool options and decks and patios to handling slopes and tricky problem areas, STEP BY STEP LANDSCAPING comes packed with both building and planting tips and will be an excellent pick for homeowners who want to transform their outdoors environments.

This book is easy to read and has very helpful information that you can use. It contains things that you may not think about. I think if just about covers all items you would use in starting a business or just doing for yourself or helping friends with their home.

When you really want specifics on a topic, you just need a book by this author and you'll find yourself immersed in the kind of details and guidance you were hoping to get. Not one to mince words, Jennings lays it all out with precision, yet keeping the information interesting and practical and sometimes a little humorous. She's got plenty of forms, plenty of decorating training (dealing with the professional ways to arrange a client's furniture), and even more guidance on how to move a client's possessions, plus all the set up, promotional and business side of things. An excellent read.

If you're looking to do interior redesign AND home staging simultaneously, I highly recommend both books by this author as they are easy to read, provide outstanding guidance, give you information on additional helpful tools and are flat out the best you'll find on the subject. I am a teacher and always on the hunt for tidbits and gems I can pass on to my own students. I got far more than I bargained for which pleases me greatly. The information is really to the point, very detailed, very precise. Both manuals are large and packed to the brim -- no fluff like some others. Get both by this author. This is a no-brainer.

Jennings has a number of excellent books for the interior redesign and home staging business that fit together and build upon each other into a cohesive whole so that anyone can start and build a business from the ground floor up. This is her basic manual, which is filled to the brim with great advice and guidance, and she also has an advanced book called "Advanced Redesign", along with a couple more books geared for the home staging market. This book, however, shows you how to start up and set up your business, how to get clients, how to do consultations and price your services, how to market and promote it properly, and a good deal of excellent training on the design end of the business - the kind of stuff you won't get from others. For instance, at the end of the book she literally shows you the most common furniture arrangements used by professional designers. In most situations, one of these should be suitable for a typical room a person would work in. She makes the process easy to understand and gives readers the tools and examples to understand what to do, but also why they work so well.

The other books she has written show you how to add related products and services to your business to get the most out of your business that you can get. Since most people want to make profits from their business venture, the book gives you an excellent picture of how to go about doing just that, all in a clear, concise step-by-step analysis. All the books by this author are excellent and well worth the investment.

The furniture arrangement configurations in the back of the book are powerful examples of how to arrange furniture no matter what the shape or size of the room. This is worth the price of the book alone. In a nutshell, I can see the most common ways furniture should be arranged. All I have to do is select one and I should have a winning combination for any room I have to tackle. This is reassuring because I don't want to get to a client's home and not have an answer for their problems. And that's one huge gem at the end of the book, which I haven't found in any book out there.

From start to finish I found this book to be very practical, very thorough and very useful. It focuses on the single topic of starting a redesign business and doesn't get sidetracked. It also doesn't try to cover the subject with broad generalities and filler, like other books I've read. So it delivers exactly what it promises with the kind of details and thoroughness you would expect to get.

All the standard stuff about setting up a business is there, but it relates all that to a redesign business specifically. The author goes indepth on how to interview a client, how to start a project, questions you'll need to ask and the whole step by step process, including taking before and after pictures, collecting the fee and so forth. There are a generous supply of photos showing how it really is to be a redesigner (not studio pictures that are not the norm). So it accurately depicts the life of a redesigner and what we all face no matter where we live and work.

The author's style is easy to follow and conversational, which helped me stay interested throughout, even in the marketing sections that typically are less fun than the design parts. I mean, I'm a creative person, and it's harder for me to concentrate on the business side, but I know that's where I need to improve my knowledge and skill.

I enjoyed this book immensely and appreciate the tools and visual aids the author recommends. It's an excellent read.

Informative and readable. Obviously a labor of love. I give it 5 stars even though the Tom Caspar-inspired design I've settled on didn't come from this book.

A very complete workbench guide with just enough history, lots of technical info, and with high quality pictures and drawings.

Very fine expository writing for those interested in the history of and current state-of-the-art woodworking benches and accessories. Enclosed plans are a nice plus. The resource section is excellent. Well researched, well written, photography is exceptional.

EIM

Seeing various ways to lay out workbenches is nice and this book fulfills that mission.

For me this is a coffee table book. Alot of history and research about workbenches from the middle ages on up till now. Not much information or diagrams on building benches.

A really beautiful book. One of the best I have seen. I live in Mexico and will be using many ideas.

While I was in the process of planning and building my next casa in Baja, this book provided mucho inspiration. The Spanish Colonial, and Hacienda designs, the avalanche of colors and gardens provided me the basis of making mi casa as Mexico as I could.
Yes, the binding is weak, but the book remains as an Essential. I now have 2 copies, one very worn out copy.

i've been to colonial mexico, and i've seen more exciting stuff than what's on this book. also, the pages come appart easily

If you love the bold, life-affirming colors of Mexican houses and interiors but not necessarily the traditional architecture and furnishings of the mexican tradition, this is the book for you! I ordered several books on Mexican interiors and details and this was the best. It gave me great ideas for using bold, bright color in my house without turning it into a hacienda. The book is beautifully designed and the color just blows off the pages. It has in it everything I love about Mexico that is bright, lively, joyous, and enlivening and nothing that is stodgy. As An artist, I found the book irresistable.

I have always loved everything about Mexico, especially their use of color. When I bought my new house I wanted to bring that freedom and joy into my home.

This book was a wonderful guide. Almost every page reminded me to let go and celebrate. There are so many visual feasts and ideas. If you are timid about colors this book will definitely give you a new lease on life.

The underlying premise of this book is that architecture is an imitation and application of the principles of nature. To build is not merely to impose our will on nature. It is to cooperate with nature.

Shelter is a natural human need. Building is the art of meeting that need. It does so, according to Allen, by following the example of nature herself and applying her principles. An organic analogy runs through the book. Buildings live and breathe. A building, like a human body, is matter so arranged that it interacts dynamically with its environment and thus perpetuates the arrangement. Buildings, however, are highly dependent on human beings, whom they serve. The parts of buildings, e.g., the roofs, walls, windows and mechanical systems must work together with the other parts in such a way as to "survive" but most importantly to provide optimal human shelter. Buildings that outlive their usefulness "die."

My favorite passage from the book is a section entitled "People as the Measure" (pp. 169-171). Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the history of architecture, Allen explains how "people literally became the measure of buildings." For example, the brick... was standardized in medieval times within a range of sizes and weights that could be easily manipulated by the left hand of the mason, leaving the right hand free to operate the trowel." Allen cautions against bulk materials manipulated by machines instead of people: "[T]he finished product will not automatically display the human-scale texture that hand-sized components have and that occupants often subconsciously identify with."

This book was very educational for me, a Ph.D. in philosophy who has left academia to help run a construction business. I highly recommend it to new students of architecture or engineering or anyone who has amateur interest in those fields.

This is a book on how buildings are designed. It's not a book on how to design a building, that's the architect's job. It's a book on what the architect is going to do to design the building you want.

The book contains hundreds of line drawings on the components of a building. This is how a wall is built, this is how heat circles around a room, this is how a truss structure holds up the roof, this is how electric power is brought into the house and distributed.

This is not a book on how to design a house, you can put the bedrooms anywhere you want, you can have as many bathrooms as you want. This is the basic design of how the building does its job of providing the walls that make up the bathroom, keep it warm/cool, with water inside but kept where you want it.

I consider this book to be interesting to anyone interested in the subject. I consider this book to be mandatory reading for anyone even thinking about building a house or having one built.

HOW BUILDINGS WORK is just a great book, even more interesting than Macaulay's THE WAY THINGS WORK. Buildings are everywhere, and most everyone uses buildings of various kinds for various purposes. Yet how a building works is often a mystery. In this way, I think buildings are much like computers; most people who use them have no clue about the inner workings of them.

Edward Allen takes us through the functions of a building without going into traditional architectural theory. This book is more concerned with the needs that buildings must fulfill, and how we can fulfull them. He discusses water, waste, heat, ventilation, lighting, accoustics, energy, structure, and more, first by explaining each particular concept, and then by examining how problems can be solved with the knowledge of those concepts.

While this isn't a book on theory, neither is it a wholly practical book. That is, it won't equip you with the skills to go and build a house. But it will open your eyes to the various elements of buildings and building construction and you may think "Aha!" the next time you look at a building and observe a strange structural or design detail. You don't have to be an architecture freak to enjoy the book either. You just need to be curious.

I approach this book as someone who likes to walk around old neighborhoods and look at houses. I have collected architectural field guides for years and I can identify most building styles. However, I had little idea how buildings worked.

This book was enjoyable because the writing style was simple and straight to the point. One does not need a technical background to get a lot out of the book. Edward Allen's skillful line illustrations also add a great deal. If I could not understand the technical description, the simple illustration helped me with the underlying principle.

To give you an example of why this book is helpful to a non-specialist. I have heard of septic systems my entire life. However, I had no idea how they worked. With the help of very clear illustrations and straight forward writing, this mystery has been solved. This book is a great introduction to all those interested in architecture. Highly recommended.

I practice and teach architecture. This is the best book I have ever found for communicating material essential for the study of building science and architecture. The presentation style is frendly and informative. The knowledge of the subject displayed by Edward Allen is superb. I am a unashamed book-a-holic, if I could only take one book to the proverbial desert island - How Buildings Work would be it.

I loved this whole series!!! It is too bad that the first book Big Stone Gap and the third book (which is the best in my opinion) are not available for download. The story of Ave Marie is very heart warming and makes me yearn for my little hometown in the hills of West Virginia. It is what small town life is all about. If you have not experienced small town life, read these books!!! I loved all four of them and was very sad when I had finished all four books.

As always, Adriana Trigiani does an excellent job at absorbing you in to the family's world and taking you along for the ride. Love it!

This book was a fantastic ending to a great series of BOOKS-
I hope the author writes more soon!

This book was excellent. It really held my interest and I couldn't put it down. It made me cry and laugh. Can't wait for the sequel !

HOME TO BIG STONE GAP by Adrianna Trigiani Ms. Trigiani makes her characters come alive. All in this series are wonderful. You get to know Ave Marie from her single days to mother-in-law. Her thoughts come alive and allow you to relate to her on a personal level. Her happy times, her insecurity, her anger; they are all reflected in her speech and thoughts. Her descriptions of the people and setting are vivid and so real. Great book!

This book had many interior and exterior ideas for Tuscan home style. Many great pictures and descriptions of the style elements.

I love Spanish and Italian architecture. This book has some of the best of both. It has great photos and you can almost feel yourself surrounded by the images presented. It is a great coffee table book, as well.

This book had some incredible homes with great "wow" factor! Love the stone and tile used in tuscan designs.

My husband and I are building a Tuscan style house, and we were looking for a book to give us more ideas on design as well as decoration. This book is excellent for that. The houses are beautiful, the decoration is very tasteful, and the pictures are great. This is a great book for someone wanting to build a Tuscan style house in America. My only regret is not buying this book BEFORE beginning our project.

The impression I got from this book is comparable to one of those American restaurants with a name like 'Mexican American' and all the cooks are from the US. The title of the book says 'Andalusian' but there is nothing about it. The decoration in all houses is pretentious and over elaborated with objects filling all spaces. The houses scream 'fake' to anybody with direct contact with the real Andalusian style. Don't buy the book looking for Andalusian style. The only thing I saw related was the use of Mexican saltillo tile in a few floors. If you want Andalusian look for books with Moroccan style, like whitewash walls, 'albero' (ocre) colors on details, lots of Moroccan style tile, ery little furniture, baked clay tile on floors, etc. Some houses on the book did have courtyards but none had the Andalusian style.

I found just what I needed in this book. The photographs are splendid, and the ideas are inspirational. This book works for me.
As far as resources are concerned however, you are just referred to the designer, so if you're doing some of the remodeling yourself, which I am, you can only use this book for ideas, not to track down the individual products photographed. That said, this book has helped me tremendously with my planning decisions.

I am about to totally gut my master bathroom and increase the size by incorporating two adjacent closets. It will still be on the small side but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book covers the very small to the grandiose in size and style. The author discusses practical considerations when choosing each component of the bathroom and highlights common mistakes and misconceptions. There are lots of ideas and a selection of floor plans and whilst you cannot expect any of them to be tailor made for your house, they are a valuable resource to build upon. I would recommend this book if you are thinking of redesigning your bathroom.