Cabin

Hutchison, Patrick. Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman. New York: St. Martin's 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I bought the cabin for $7,500 from a guy on Craigslist. He was a tugboat captain. His name was Tony. Here's why.* (*Footnote: Why I bought the cabin, not why Tony was a tugboat captain or why he was named Tony.)

Description:

Patrick Hutchison, author of Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, at age 30, found himself in a frustrating rut. He had a decent job as a copy editor with decent pay and some interesting travel. But working in a cubicle under florescent lights, turning out copy that may never be read, he longed for something else

Years after leaving college with an intent to roam the earth telling the stories of beautiful lunatics, I was in an office creating email template to sell advertising to plumbers and wondering how I'd ended up here.

He thought that maybe if he could get away to the woods, to the environment he grew up, that would be a distraction and give him a purpose to his life that would somehow provided satisfaction.

 

Eventually, he found his answer while perusing Craigslist (during slow work hours) for cabins. There, among the pricey, fully-outfitted houses, he found a very brief note for a rustic cabin for sale 40 minutes away from his home in Seattle. Driving up that same day, he saw the "rustic" (i.e. dilapidated, falling-down) 10' x 12' structure that resembled "a big chicken coop" or kids' clubhouse. It was on an isolated road lined with abandoned buses and unoccupied cabins that were once meth houses and squatters' shelters. The cabin had no running water, electricity, heat, cell service, or Wi-Fi, but to Hutchison, it was his dream. 

Like any new parent with a hideous baby, my eyes glazed over the flaws. At that moment, I only saw what I wanted....I saw only potential, and I saw a version of myself that was capable of making it better. Not great, necessarily, but better....Most importantly, I felt the pull of something a bit bigger, a grand pursuit, a thing to dive into that was different and new and exciting.

One problem: he knew nothing about building, carpentry, or even power tools. The only time he had used an electric drill was to hang a painting, ending up making multiple holes in the wall, chipping plaster, and making a shambles of everything. With this cabin restoration, what could possible go wrong, or through some great luck actually succeed?

 

Undaunted, he bought the cottage immediately and began obsessively searching YouTube videos and any other source of info to find the best, cheapest tools, materials, cabin restoration techniques, outhouses, foundations, driveway drains, and everything else imaginable. With friends (who also knew nothing about tools or building but brought plenty of beer), on his very first weekend they somehow built an outhouse, fortified the broken deck, cut the front door so it could swing open over the leaning house (leaving a large enough gap at the bottom for birds could walk into the house, and rigged up a Coleman stove for heat and soup. These became his cottage staples, along with plenty of beer and whiskey.

 

All this happens in the first few pages of Cabin, so I'll leave the rest of this delightfully satisfying book to your imagination. But this narration is not just a laughable series of efforts by a hapless idiot. Hutchison is a serious, dedicated, albeit unskilled worker who figures things out on the fly, Yes, he make some (many) quirky mistakes along the way. But all the while, he enjoys the feeling of personal satisfaction he gains with building something with his own hands (and yes, some power tools), while experiencing the beauty and silence in a gorgeous section of forest.

[After buying his first tool, a power drill] Climbing into bed that night, I felt a glow that reminded me of Christmas nights growing up, falling asleep to the reality of new toys and the knowledge that the future held many, many days  of good times.

While the restoration of the cabin is the foundation of the book, this is also a stream-of-consciousness memoir of Hutchison's personal restoration journey to self-confidence through problem-solving of daunting tasks along with his deep love for the cabin itself, and what it represented in his life.   

At times, it felt like the cabin and I were partners in a sort of joint self-improvement project. When the cabin was all fixed up, maybe I would be too.

I don't often whole-heartily recommend a book to all First Sentence Readers, but Cabin is the exception. I hope that everyone reads this absorbing and delightful book. It is at once funny, thoughtful, energetic, foolish, emotional, and triumphant, all in the backdrop of a glorious forest setting full of hikes, trees, snow, stars, and quiet. There are times of rollicking, deep friendships as well as plenty of solitude for dreams and simply enjoying life in an isolated cottage of your own building. Highest recommendation for all readers.

With no one but the trees to judge us and a fistful of Band-Aids to keep everything in order, we'd pick up where we left off as kids, making forts, learning how to build things again.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Wallace, Don. The French House:An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All.   

Author Marshall and his wife, Mindy, both budding writers living in New York City, fall in love with the small French island of Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany where the architecture has remained the same since the 1700s. Their "brand-new ruin" is an eyesore, but a piece of history that needs tender (i.e., specific and expensive) attention.  (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Racket

Niland, Conor. The Racket: On Tour with Tennis's Golden Generation -- and the Other 99%. Dublin, Ireland: Sandycove (Penguin). 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Behind every successful tennis player is a parent who refused to allow them to quit. I was ten when I first told my folks that I wanted to give it all up. They didn't yield then, and they never did. Tennis was our family business, and the stakes were made clear to me when I was young. 

Description:

I used to play a lot of tennis, from age eight through college and later as a teaching professional internationally. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I had the game, physicality, or mentality to compete on any professional level. Without formal lessons, playing rag-tag survival tennis with "interesting" shots (my Turn-Around-Jump-Reverse-Spin serve comes to mind), I knew early on there were way too many levels above me to delude myself into pursuing a playing career. But teaching tennis was for me a different story, one I could excel at and really loved.

For Conor Niland, an Irish tennis player in the early 1980s through the late 1990s, the professional dream was his reality. At least it was for his parents and subsequently his two older siblings who trained and joined the professional circuit. 

 

Niland's recent autobiography, The Racket: On Tour with Tennis's Golden Generation -- and the Other 99%, relates his ambitious climbs from playing on his backyard court under the stern instruction of his parents, through college in the United States, and then into the Futures Circuit (now ITF World Tennis Tour) for players ranked 500 or lower in the world. 

 

His first goal was to break away from the lowly Futures up into the Challenger Tour (for players ranked 100-500) and ideally into the elite ATP Tour of the top players ranked 1-100. Niland explains that each win in any tourney gave him ATP points, helping improve his ranking and placement in upcoming tournaments. A high enough ranking allowed him to enter the next prestigious level of tournaments with more luxuries, prize money and ATP points available.

I grew to like the atmosphere around the house on the morning of a final, my senses were always heightened. From the moment you woke up, every sound appeared that little bit sharper: the spoon hitting the cereal bowl, the bread popping out of the toaster. Everyone was dressed more smartly, and spoke in a quieter, softer tone.

Junior training had its ups and down for Niland. At twelve, he beat an unknown Roger Federer in straight sets. Later, when training at the Nick Bollettieri IMG Academy for two weeks, he noted that the facility is "a tennis zoo: kids are kept caged in courts all day and fed tennis balls," although the Academy did develop players including Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Jim Courier, and Maria Sharapova.

His climb from the backyard upward, recounted on a tournament by tournament basis, reveals the trials and tribulations of a young player on his way up (hopefully), the goals he achieves along the way as well as the blown opportunities that might have helped him. His lifestyle and behavior are also laid out as he struggles with decisions faced both on-court and off. He recalls practice hitting sessions or matches with great players like Andy Murray, the Williams sisters, Andy Roddick and many others now lost in tennis obscurity. Along the way, Niland provides astute, fascinating comments about each player. 

It's not exactly right to say that the very top guys like Djokovic hit the ball much harder....But they hit it deeper, right to the baseline, and they do it relentlessly. It doesn't look like a big difference on TV, but that extra foot and a half of depth, over and over, is a killer. This didn't so much put me under pressure as put me under siege.

Traveling 35 weeks a year, he had no time for social relationships with women or player s concentrating on their own struggles to survive. Sometimes he played nine tournaments in ten weeks, flying all over the world from Doha to Chennai to Montreal to Switzerland to Banja Luka and on and on and on.

Expenses are also always in his mind. Can he afford  to pay a coach who could free him from the tedious requirements of finding hitting partners, give him professionals training and advice, and provide companionship as Niland travels weekly from country to country? How can he deal with the pressure of competition, knowing that a win would secure necessary funds and ATP points (not to mention necessities like travel expenses, equipment, and food), while a loss would lower his ranking? 

Along the way he also discusses his encounters with physiotherapists, gambling on matches, banned substances, sideline coaching, tennis parents, qualifying tourneys, wildcard entrances to the main draw, and even food poisoning at an inopportune moment.

 

I was totally involved with Conor Niland's life, his ambitions, his frustrations, and his day-to-day, tournament-to-tournament lifestyle. When he succeeded, I felt elation. When he stumbled (choked?), I honestly felt bad for him, a player I previously had never heard of.

There were matches in my career in which it felt as though what was at stake was not merely qualification, but my identity too....How long was I going to give it? I was going to give it years if it meant getting a few great hours in return.

Highly recommended for an insider's look into the everyday adder to tennis success and the impending slide back down that also awaits every player at every level.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

McPhee, John. Levels of the Game.   

Point by point analysis of the 1978 US Open tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. McPhee takes readers inside the players' minds as they devise strategies, relish successes, and overcome missed opportunities. Provides the background and personalities which influence each player's shot selection, strategy, and mental game.

 

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

  

Food for Thought

Brown, Alton. Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations. New York: Gallery Books 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I am sitting in front of a bowl, a spoon a box,and a bottle, and I'mbeginning to break out in just a wee bit of a cold sweat 

Description:

I been a long-time fan of Alton Brown and his goofy, informative cooking shows such as Good Eats (16 seasons) and Iron Chef America (13 seasons). These television entertainments provided even non-cooks like me an entertaining introduction to the wonders and science behind preparing delicious food.

Now Brown had created a book, Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations, chock full of his memories and wide-ranging thougts about his career with food. These short essays cover such diverse topics as "Biscuiteering," "Bad Day at the Bakeshop," "Luau from Hell,""The Turkey Man Cometh," "The Sip of the Civilized" and "Cooking: The final (Marriage) Frontier." In other words, Brown shares everything running through his mind, from making the perfect martini to cooking hacks, and his disasterous introductions to Cap'n Crunch cereal and s'mores.

It is not a book of recipe, although he does share his Horcrux meal (something that contains a part of him), the perfect martini (stirred, not shaken), and a few other tips on meal preparation and tools. And believe me, he has strong opinions. It is not a How-To book, but more of a collection of his rambling thoughts

Here's a sample from inside his brain:

• The Son of Blob story about the discarded bread dough Brown had put into the restaurant dumptster that expanded to gigantic size and oozed out of the metal container;

• The first bite of a Cortona, Italy pizza which was so delicious that he used it to define his life "before the bite and life after the bite....To say it was just six simple ingredients would be like saying Pollock's Autumn Rhythym is just four colors of paint";

• He self-taught himself to cook in college to "lure" a woman first with a simple, cheap meal (spaghetti and meatballs), then, if all went well, a second invitation to a slightly more costly one (coq au van), and finally the third meal to close the deal with an expensive serving (sole florentine au gratin. His date cancelled at the last minute and he thoroughly enjoyed the meal by himself;

• [Note: About that seduction-through-meals-plan] - Brown states, "I harbored no illusions of actually beeing anyone; a bit of hand-holding on the sofa or a good-night kiss would have ranked as a major victory." He only cooked one more meal to win a woman's affection and burned the spaghetti, but won her heart and they eventually were married]; 

• "The word chef when preceded by the adverb yes becomes a subtle yet effective form of "f**k you." 

• He conceived of a new type of cooking show to be "a juxtaposition of unrelated forms" based on the style of Julia Child (practical), Mr. Wizard (science), and Monty Python ("laughing brains are more absorbant');

• The theme song for Good Eats was, at Brown's insistance, was catchy and only 10 notes in order to be used in the new 1997 cell phones and their customizable ring tones;

• Eating with chopsticks helped him lose weight;

• To get youngsters to eat food they refuse, just tell them they can't have any of it anyways because it is adult food;

• Once after sampling a soup on Iron Chef America" that contained oysters (which he is allergic to) he threw up repeatedly on the set and ended up in the ER.

I could go on and on with engaging tidbits from Brown, but I'll leave the rest of the discovery to those who read his book in full. Haven't laughed out loud at a book in a long time, so as you can tell I really enjoyed his behind-the-scenes stories, quips about life, and of course, cooking advice/failures/triumphs. Read it even if you don't know anything about food or its preparation, but love delightful writing about stories that will definite make you at least smile alot.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Pepim Jacques. The Apprentice.   

The autobiography of the chef who popularized French cooking in the United States, Includes his French training, apprenticeships, and first restaurants, alltold in clear, personal writing style. Highly enjoyable, even for non-foodies. (Previously reviewed here.)

 

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Going Solo

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo. New York: Penguin 1986. Print.

First Sentences:

 

The ship that was carrying me away from England to Africa in the autumn of 1938 was called the SS Mantola. She was an old paint-peeling tub of 9,000 tons with a single tall funnel and a vibrating engine that rattled the tea=cups in their saucers on the dining-room table.

Description:

Roald Dahl's autobiography, Going Solo, proves again that a reader does not have to know anything about a topic or situation to become totally immersed in the action. Dahl, the well-known author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, etc.) had another much different life prior to his literary career: that of an World War II RAF fighter pilot. Going Solo recounts his memories starting with his 1938 voyage from London to Tanganyika as an 20-year-old inexperienced agent for Shell Oil through his three-year enlistment and training as a pilot in Egypt, including his aerial battles in Greece, and finally his return to his home in England.

 

Dahl puts the reader right inside his mind: a confident, curious, sometimes reckless youth driving all over Africa to meet with Shell clients and take orders. We sit with him on these desert trips as he marvels at the fearless animals he sees which completely ignore him. His favorite activity is to walk among a herd of giraffes, wandering among their legs and calling to them as they indifferently continue with their grazing of trees.

 

He never lost his fear of African snakes, however, and recounted several encounters with both deadly black and green mambas. (He carefully notes learning the difference between "poisonous" and "deadly" snakes), but continually avoids both.

 

After volunteering for the RAF, Dahl joyfully takes readers up into the air during his training flights in the two-seater Tiger Moth bi-plane. 

We could loop the loop and fly upside down. We could get ourselves out of a spin. We could do forced landings with the engine cut. We could side-slip and land decently in a strong cross-wind...and we were full of confidence.

But he had no actual air-to-air combat training before being sent to Greece to engage German planes. He had to learn to fly modern Hurricane (which he had to cram his 6'6" body into a cockpit with his knees against his chin). Readers again are inside his mind during each dangerous mission: thinking his thoughts, sensing his emotions, and feeling his pain both physical and emotional for the loss of fellow pilots, civilians, and even German enemies. 

 

Flight after flight in Greece, his 15-airplane squadron is hopeless outnumbered by the hundreds of German bombers and fighter planes on missions nearby. Dahl flies 3-5 missions a day trying to protect Allied boats unloading cargo, ammunition, and supplies. He is forced to fly his plane directly at the enemy since his machine guns are fixed in his wings and could only shoot straight ahead. albeit through the rotating propellor, a phenomenon Dahl could never understand.. 

Each flight is perilous. Once completed, he and his meager squadron wait by their runway to see which of their fellow pilots return and which did not make it back. He maintains his fearlessness in flying into incredible situations and, with the exception of one horrific crash, emerges in one piece each time.

As you might surmise, I was totally engrossed in this book chock full of Dahl's adventures and thoughts presented in his clear, straightforward, yet somehow gripping writing style. Highly recommended for lovers of personal memoirs of flying. 

(Note: This is the second book in Dahl's autobiography series. The first book, Boy recounts his early childhood, while Going Solo picks up where Boy ends.)

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  Markham, Beryl. West with the Night: A Memoir.   

Autobiography of the woman pilot raised in Kenya who became the first female commercial pilot and air mail-carrier in Africa, as well as the first woman to fly non-stop from Europe to America. She was a friend to Karen Blixen and Denis Fitch Hatton (depicted in the film Out of Africa). Most importantly this memoir is beautifully written, full of life, adventure, and challenges. It was highly-praised by Ernest Hemingway who said Markham "could write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers". (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Will in the World

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: Norton. 2004. Print.

First Sentences:

As a young man from a small provincial town -- a man without independent wealth, without powerful family connections, and without a university education -- moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkable short time becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. His works appeal to the learned and the unlettered, to urban sophisticates and provincial first-time theatergoers. He makes his audiences laugh and cry; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety....How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?


Description:

I picked up Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare knowing nothing about it,  just another reader interested in the mysterious background of William Shakespears and how he possibly could have lived and created his exequite body of historic, romantic, and thrilling works of literature after coming from a relatively small town with little education or travel. At least, those were the assumptions and subsiquent questions offered to me by many historians

Author Greenblatt, however, is different. He devles deeply into historical documents and social norms of the sixteenth century to postulate about the forces behind Shakespeare's life and the elements that affected his growth and decisions.

For example, Greenblatt reveals primary documents about Shakespeare's father, John, showing him to be an important municiple office-holder in Stratford who tryies to enforce laws between the Catholic residents and the incoming Protestent world enforced by the new Queen Elizabeth. Later a failed glovemaker who William worked for, John's life failed to excite his son.

Also, I didn't know Stratford was a fairly important city that drew traveling performers where William probably was exposed to the theatre and even helped with general chores for a short-handed company. There are records that he offered his services tothe traveling King's Company which found themselves short an actor after their leading player was killed in a drunked fight. Reviews from that period testified that William distinguished himself and possibly escaped Stratford with that company when it moved on toward London.

Other revelations included:

• Shakespeare likely attended King's New School in Stratford, reserved for children of means, receiving instruction from 7am - 6pm six days a week twelve months a year, mostly focusing on Latin "which clearly aroused and fed Will's inexhaustible craving for language." 

• At school "virtually all schoolmasters agreed that one of the best ways to instill good Latin in their students was to have them read and perform ancient plays";

• Anne Hathaway, his bride, was eight years older than the 18-year-old Will when they were hurridly married without the delay of publicizing banns. Church records showed their dauthter Susanna was baptized six months later. The couple soon had two other children, one of whom, Hamnet, died young. Anne was not mentioned in Shakespeare's will except that she would receive their "second-best bed," the majority of Shakespeare's wealth and property going to his daughter Susanna;

• Shakespeare in his early twenties left Stratford, wife Anne, and his three children for unexplained reasons. Greenblatt shows evidence that William might have been in trouble with the law for poaching deer on a wealthy estate near Stratford and was forced to flee;

• Later, during one of the frequent bubonic plague epidemics, all London theatres were closed. To earn income, Shakespeare accepted a commission to write many of his 154 sonnets. It is still unclear who financed him or to whom the poems referred to, whether his patron, a young man, or an unknown dark lady;

• When the ground lease for the theatre where they performed was not renewed by the owner (who controlled the land but not the structures), Shakespeare, his company, and their crew snuck onto the theater grounds one night in December, 1598, dismanteled the entire theatre, carted it across the frozen Thames river, and re-constructed it in the new location as The Globe. The new theater, financed by Shakespeare himself, was an octagonal building with a huge stage, and could seat over 3,000 people;

In London, William probably attended many theatrical performances of rival playwrights, including those of his chief rival Christopher Marlowe. He observed what playwrights presented that worked and what did and did not please audiences. Shakespeare moved away from the current broad morality plays, giving his own characters an intensified complexity and humanness rather than one-dimensional aspects. 

Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience, and his unusual success in his own time in his own time suggests that he succeeded briliantly. Virtually all his rival playwrights found themselves on the straight road to starvation; Shakespeare, bu contrast, made enough money to buy one of the best houses in the hometown to which he eretgired in his early fifties, a self-made man.

I loved reading the original surce records that Greenblatt dug up, supporting or disproving theories about Shakespeare.  Each item is carefully examined, put into historical context, and then applied to Shakespeare's life to provide logical conclusions about the playwright and his influences.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.   

The absolute best and highly-readable deep dive into every Shakespeare play, with historical, literary, and cultural explanations to key words, phrases, and plots. So great I read it from cover to cover, and re-read it before watching any Shakespeare play to catch all the references and subtleties. Wonderful. HIghest recommendation. (Previously reviewed here)

  

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title.

(And also read an introduction to The First Sentence Reader.)