The post A Personal Review Of Mark Ellison’s ‘Building’ appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Building, by Mark Ellison, published May, 2023 Courtesy of Penguin RandomHouse This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a serendipitous reconnection to one of the people who made me who I am. As readers, we look for books that “speak to us” in some kind of metaphorical way, hitting themes that resonate in our lives and elevating them to grand principles. But in the case of one recent memoir, I had the surreal experience of reading a book that spoke to me literally, in a familiar but nearly-forgotten voice calling to me across the chasm of half a lifetime. And I had the chance to answer back. If you’ve been reading book reviews or watching PBS PBS lately, you might have heard about Mark Ellison, a master carpenter who specializes in high-end interior renovation projects of astonishing difficulty, craft and beauty. Ellison’s first book, Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work (Random House, 2023), is part memoir of his experiences as a skilled laborer for the super-rich, part meditation on the craft of building physical structures in an impermanent world, and part life lessons on deriving satisfaction from one’s work. It has received good reviews in outlets including the New York Times NYT and the New Yorker, which had previously run a feature on Ellison. In the book, he recounts his exploits with the candor and humor of a born raconteur, but there is more than just good storytelling at work. In a world obsessed with the “creative class,” we rarely hear from someone who actually creates physical objects or works with his hands. Ellison is as eloquent lamenting the vanishing world of professional craftsmanship as he is detailing the logistics of moving several tons of drywall up the service elevator of a prewar coop in…

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Filed under: News - @ November 23, 2023 8:12 pm