Books I’ve bought over the Christmas break for the mind to graze on in 2011.

-A guide to the New Ruins Of Great Britain
-People at Home – Living in a Warwickshire Village, 1500 – 1800
-Darwin Among the Machines
-Wanderlust – A History of Walking
-The People of Providence – A housing estate and some of its inhabitants
-Darwin – The Origin of Species

I guess the theme is the reality of life, particularly human life in buildings and how this effects and deflects their purpose over time.

Sometimes I get the chance to take take a tour along my bookshelves and have a magic hour skipping through some of my favorite volumes. Here’s a list of the ones I picked out today. They are not ranked, they appear in the order I came across them. I’ll visit this post again in the future and explain what I got out of each.

-Places for the Soul – Christopher Day
-Building Adaptation – James Douglas
-Baillie Scott – The Artistic House – Diane Haigh
-Ansell Adams – California – Little and Brown
-Homework – Handbuilt Shelter – Lloyd Kahn
-The Great Wide Open – Panoramic Views of the American West – Bohn-Spector and Watts
-Desert Solitaire – Edward Abbey

Today was a day for thinking about the great outdoors and backcountry hideaway’s