The title of this post reminds me of my magazine-cover writing days. From the higher-ups: “Use numbers!” “Use exclamation points!” “Use the word ‘free!'” If only it were in neon yellow. But it gets the point across, which is simply this: We’ve added four new excerpts to some of our more-recent titles.
In the excerpt for “Making Things Work: Tales from a Cabinetmaker’s Life (Second Edition” by Nancy Hiller, you’ll find the Table of Contents and Chapter 1: The English Years, which includes “Living the Dream,” “The Accidental Cabinetmaker, I,” and “The Accidental Cabinetmaker, II: On the Brink.” I tried to paraphrase these selections but it’s Nancy and you can’t paraphrase Nancy. It’s 27 pages of intimate, funny, intelligent writing, perfect to read with this morning’s coffee.
The excerpt of Robert Wearing’s “The Solution at Hand” includes the Contents, Editor’s Note, Introduction and Chapter 1: Holding Devices. Try out Robert Wearing’s Planing Grip System or Bench Holdfast or Sticking Board. Read about them, build them –– everything you need to do is included (in fact, Chapter 1 includes 34 detailed illustrations).
We’ve also included an excerpt of “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown” by Christopher Williams. In addition to the Table of Contents, Preface by Nick Gibbs, Editor’s Note and Chapter 2: Introduction to Wales, we also included three columns from Chapter 5: John Brown, in his Own Words, so that you can get a feel for both Christopher’s words, and John’s. Plus you get to see several of Molly Brown’s gorgeous linocut illustrations.
And finally, we created an excerpt of “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years, 1936-1966.” It includes the Table of Contents, From the Publisher and “Charles Hayward Looks Back to the Seamy Side,” a three-part interview series with Charles Hayward, written by Antony Talbot, then editor of Working Wood, in Spring 1980. The excerpt also includes nine columns from 1962, which is one of my favorite chapters (it’s a perk that comes with being the one who makes the excerpts).
Enjoy!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
If you don’t have Wearing’s book, stop reading now and buy it! Why are you still reading? Go buy it! It’s one of the best references books you can own. You’ll skim it, pausing here and there with, “huh! Why didn’t i think of that?” Then keep checking back for a simple solution to your problem at hand. Still not convinced? If i found myself shipwrecked swiss family robinson style with a chest of tools and only 1 woodworking book, this is the one I’d want.
Shouldn’t that be Nancy Hiller as author of “Making Things Work”?
Yup. Fixed.
What a cliffhanger ending for the sample chapters from ‘Making Things Work’! Will our hero ever make furniture again? Or will she succumb to tedium and TPS reports? The only way to learn the truth is to buy the book!
Thanks for these. As a UK pensioner I can only really justify one luxury book each year, and this year’s is going to be Nancy’s kitchen book. So excerpts like this help to stave off the pangs of deprivation!
Just started reading the Hiller excerpt and was annoyed by the foul language. Other humans have no right to subject me to foul language. Is the rest of the book as bad? Couldn’t you have printed a warning? I wouldn’t have read it then. Nearly bought it recently as well; I consider that a narrow escape.