Library
This is a collection of books from my library that I hope you might enjoy. A mix of philosophy, craft and practical guidance, this library is curated to support the work of new artisans seeking to build lives and livelihoods rooted in sufficiency, care, and meaningful work. Each text offers a different lens through which to examine craft, vocation, nature, and the slow transformation that comes from patient attention to what calls us.
Philosophy of Work & Craft
Books exploring the meaning of making, the dignity of skilled work, and how hands-on engagement shapes identity and understanding.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Peter Korn | Why We Make Things and Why It Matters | Furniture maker explores craft as self-transformation, revealing how making shapes identity and meaning through patient hands-on work. |
| Robert M. Pirsig | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Father-son motorcycle journey becomes philosophical quest for Quality, reconciling rational thought with romantic experience of life. |
| Matthew Crawford | Shop Class as Soulcraft | Philosopher-mechanic argues for value of manual work, exploring how hands-on engagement cultivates deeper understanding of world. |
| Richard Sennett | The Craftsman | Sociologist examines craftsmanship as fundamental human impulse, revealing connection between hand and head in skilled work. |
| William Morris | News from Nowhere | Arts and Crafts visionary imagines socialist utopia centered on meaningful work, beauty, and communal ownership. |
| Lewis Hyde | The Gift | Cultural critic examines gift economy versus market economy, revealing how art and creative work circulate through giving. |
Work, Vocation & Purpose
Explorations of finding meaningful work, navigating career transitions, and understanding work as pilgrimage rather than mere employment.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| David Whyte | Crossing the Unknown Sea | Poet explores work as pilgrimage of identity, reuniting imagination with daily life through poetry and philosophical inquiry. |
| Charles Handy | The Second Curve | Visionary management thinker explores navigating change, finding purpose beyond success in work and organizational life. |
| Parker J. Palmer | Let Your Life Speak | Educator-activist explores vocation as listening to inner voice, finding authentic path through limitations and failures. |
| Alain de Botton | The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work | Philosopher examines modern professions, revealing hidden dimensions of work from accountancy to biscuit manufacturing. |
| Donald Hall | Life Work | Poet examines vocation and daily practice, revealing how work sustains life and shapes identity over decades. |
Nature, Ecology & the Living World
Books that deepen our relationship with the natural world, revealing interconnection, reciprocity, and our place within larger living systems.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Merlin Sheldrake | Entangled Life | Mind-altering journey into fungal networks challenging concepts of individuality, intelligence, and our relationship with living systems. |
| Robin Wall Kimmerer | Braiding Sweetgrass | Indigenous botanist weaves scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom, revealing reciprocal relationship between humans and natural world. |
| Wendell Berry | The Art of the Commonplace | Farmer-poet-philosopher essays on agrarian values, community, and living well within limits of place and culture. |
| Annie Dillard | Pilgrim at Tinker Creek | Contemplative naturalist observes creek ecosystem, finding theological and philosophical insights in minute details of nature. |
| Barry Lopez | Arctic Dreams | Naturalist's meditation on Arctic landscape interweaving natural history, indigenous knowledge, and philosophical reflection on imagination. |
| J.A. Baker | The Peregrine | Extraordinary nature writing documenting peregrine falcons' lives, achieving mystical identification with birds through obsessive observation. |
| Aldo Leopold | A Sand County Almanac | Ecologist's seasonal observations develop land ethic, arguing for extending moral community to include soil, water, plants. |
| Edward Abbey | Desert Solitaire | Anarchist park ranger's meditation on wilderness, defending desert landscape against development and mass tourism. |
| Richard Powers | The Overstory | Novel weaves human stories with tree consciousness, revealing forests as complex communities deserving moral consideration. |
| David Abram | The Spell of the Sensuous | Philosopher-ecologist examines how literacy transformed perception, advocating return to sensory engagement with living earth. |
Place, Land & Belonging
Explorations of our relationship with landscape, the politics of land ownership, and finding home through deep attention to place.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Nick Hayes | The Book of Trespass | Radical exploration of land ownership and enclosure, arguing for right to roam through trespass and historical inquiry. |
| Robert Macfarlane | The Old Ways | Writer explores ancient paths and pilgrim routes, revealing how walking shapes thinking and connects us to landscape. |
| Rebecca Solnit | Wanderlust: A History of Walking | Cultural historian traces walking's role in thinking, activism, and creative work across cultures and centuries. |
| Nan Shepherd | The Living Mountain | Scottish writer's intimate portrait of Cairngorm mountains, revealing how deep attention to place transforms perception. |
| James Rebanks | The Shepherd's Life | Lakeland shepherd describes traditional farming life, defending working landscape against romantic outsider perspectives. |
| Frances Mayes | Under the Tuscan Sun | Writer's memoir of restoring Italian farmhouse, exploring how place-making and cultivation create home and belonging. |
Poetry, Contemplation & Presence
Works exploring attention, wonder, and the poetic dimension of everyday life—how language and contemplation deepen experience.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Mary Oliver | Upstream: Selected Essays | Beloved poet's essays on attention, wonder, and living deeply through observation of natural world and literary life. |
| John O'Donohue | Anam Cara | Irish poet-philosopher explores Celtic wisdom on friendship, love, and spiritual awakening through soul companionship. |
| Rainer Maria Rilke | Letters to a Young Poet | Poet counsels aspiring writer on solitude, patience, and allowing creative work to ripen in its own time. |
| Jane Hirshfield | Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry | Poet explores poetic thinking as way of perceiving, revealing how poetry deepens attention to experience. |
| Gary Snyder | The Practice of the Wild | Poet-environmentalist essays on wilderness, language, and place, drawing from Zen Buddhism and deep ecology. |
Slowness, Rhythm & Alternative Ways
Books challenging speed culture, advocating deceleration, and exploring different rhythms of living and working.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Carl Honoré | In Praise of Slowness | Journalist investigates slow movement across work, food, cities, revealing benefits of deceleration in hurried world. |
| Pico Iyer | The Art of Stillness | Travel writer makes case for staying put, exploring how stillness in accelerated world cultivates clarity and presence. |
| Byung-Chul Han | The Burnout Society | Philosopher critiques achievement-oriented culture, revealing how self-exploitation replaces external oppression in contemporary life. |
| Guy Claxton | Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind | Psychologist explores slower ways of knowing, revealing value of intuition and patience in thinking and creativity. |
| E.F. Schumacher | Small is Beautiful | Economist challenges growth paradigm, advocating appropriate technology and human-scale economics for sustainable future. |
| Rolf Potts | Vagabonding | Travel writer advocates extended journeys as life philosophy, showing how travel mindset transforms everyday existence. |
Spiritual Practice & Inner Life
Guides to contemplative practice, spiritual transformation, and cultivating depth in the midst of ordinary life.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Thich Nhat Hanh | The Miracle of Mindfulness | Zen master teaches mindful living through simple practices, revealing how presence transforms ordinary activities into meditation. |
| Thomas Merton | New Seeds of Contemplation | Trappist monk's meditations on solitude, prayer, and finding God in ordinary life through contemplative practice. |
| Richard Rohr | Falling Upward | Franciscan friar explores two halves of life, showing how failure and letting go lead to spiritual maturity. |
| Esther de Waal | Living with Contradiction | Benedictine oblate explores monastic wisdom for contemporary life, finding rhythm between solitude and community. |
| Henry Shukman | One Blade of Grass | Zen teacher's memoir of finding meditation practice, exploring how spiritual path transforms suffering into awakening. |
| Joanna Macy | World as Lover, World as Self | Buddhist scholar offers practices for reconnecting with web of life, transforming despair into engaged compassion. |
Transformation & the Journey
Books on personal evolution, midlife transitions, and finding meaning through life's passages and challenges.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| James Hollis | Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life | Jungian analyst guides midlife transition, exploring how facing mortality deepens authenticity and purpose in living. |
| Helen Macdonald | H is for Hawk | Writer's grief memoir through training goshawk, exploring wildness, loss, and finding self in relationship with raptor. |
| Annie Ernaux | The Years | French writer's collective autobiography spanning postwar to present, capturing how individual life intertwines with social change. |
Seeing & Perception
Works that transform how we see the world, from visual culture to the philosophy of attention and observation.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| John Berger | Ways of Seeing | Art critic revolutionizes visual literacy, examining how images shape perception and cultural assumptions about seeing. |
| Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | Flow | Psychologist identifies optimal experience state, revealing conditions for deep engagement and satisfaction in work and life. |
Fiction with Vision
Novels that imagine alternative ways of organising society, work, and human relationships to challenge dominant paradigms.
| Author | Publication | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Ursula K. Le Guin | The Dispossessed | Science fiction explores anarchist society versus capitalist world, questioning ownership, freedom, and belonging through physics metaphor. |
This library grows with the community. Each book here has been chosen because it offers something essential to artisans seeking to work differently, with more care, more depth, more attention to what ripens slowly. May you find here the companions you need for your own transformation.