Do I Need Books?

May 30, 2018

...ary doesn’t have and that I think I will read someday. Which are reference books or cookbooks that we regularly use. These latter books I will keep but could probably do without (I lack the iron will of Fumio Sasaki). Interestingly, I’ve found myself reading more now that I can’t access my books. Three days a week I go to the YMCA which is mere steps from the vast Los Angeles Central Library. I can, pretty much, find any book I want there. I also...

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How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Mr. Homegrown

May 13, 2019

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...l know how these “influencer” nightmares play out. If you’re looking for a book about how to be more productive in a world of Facebook notifications, text messages and endless emails How to Do Nothing, despite the deceptive subtitle ain’t that book. But, perhaps, that’s the point. Maybe the problem with our culture is the need to “be productive,” to live in the myth of endless growth on a planet with finite resources. Central to Odell’s book is Wa...

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Sensuous Space: How to Create Romantic, Seductive and Sensuous Settings

Mr. Homegrown

April 21, 2023

Design

1 Comment

...e see our first hot tub. The power nexus of the erotic panopticons in this book are, naturally, your disco control centers because your house must have its own private discotheque. I don’t know how you keep the blow from gumming up the electronics. Of course, such idiosyncratic spaces are the domain of the ultra-wealthy who can afford serial remodeling. Reznikoff notes that many of these spaces are second homes. A particular class of nouveau riche...

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Nomadic Furniture

Mr. Homegrown

February 5, 2014

Design

7 Comments

...ed designers. Nomadic Furniture contains instructions for cardboard seats, bookshelves, lamps made from milk jugs, hexagonal dining sets as well as a two page hymn to the waterbed (ok, not sure about that thoughtstyling). The subtitle of the book sums it up, “how to build and where to buy lightweight furniture that folds, inflates, knocks down, stacks, or is disposable and can be recycled.” You can see more of their work thanks to a recent retrosp...

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I Built a Set of Gerritt Rietveld Crate Chairs and So Can You

Mr. Homegrown

November 30, 2020

Design

3 Comments

...shelf, can be made with a few hand tools. The rest of the projects in this book would require a table saw and varying levels of skill. The book contains measured drawings for all the projects and tips on how Rietveld did the joinery as well as colors and finishes. If I had a modernist house or office I’d go crazy and make everything in this book. Pro tip: learn even a modest amount of carpentry skills and you can have furniture by famous designers...

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