Staff Book Picks: What Makes a House a Home?
Your house is just a place, but home is a feeling. Our staff talks about books that make us feel at home, no matter where we are.
At Boston.com we’re dedicated to news that makes it easier to for you to find a place to live, but filling your shelves with these books could help make your house a home.
Some of our choices are practical – about construction or decoration. Others are non-fiction narratives about building or creating a home. And we threw in a few fiction stories in which characters struggle with their own ideas of home.
Here’s our list, in no particular order:
1. A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams
By Michael Pollan
In this book, Pollan builds a small, wooden hut – “a shelter for daydreams.’’ Pollan explores the history of human buildings and draws connections between space, nature, and the human spirit.
-Eleanor Cleverly
2. At Home: A Short History of Private Life
By Bill Bryson
Bryson takes the reader on a room-by-room tour through his home in this personal narrative. He reminds us of the significance of domestic artifacts we use everyday, whether we’re looking at a pillow, a pipe or a dresser.
-Megan Turchi
3. Room
By Emma Donoghue
In this fictional yet terrifying story, the reader meets Jack, a 5-year-old who has been kept in an eleven-by-eleven foot room with his abducted mother his entire life. As Jack’s mom tries to make her prison a home for her son, Donoghue raises the question of whether home is a place or a person.
-Ellen O’Leary
4. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks
By David Larkin & Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
This book showcases some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest architecture through penciled-in structural and architectural diagrams. It also features about 100 color photographs of some of his masterworks.
-Ellen O’Leary
5. Walden
By Henry David Thoreau
In this 19th century classic, Thoreau moves to a cabin on Walden Pond and immerses himself in nature. He discovers the beauty of solitude and self-sufficiency.
-Justine Hofherr
6. Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport
By Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
In this illustrated children’s book, a little boy who grew up in New York City confronts a scary reality: He and his parents will be moving out West, where there are cacti, buffalos, and far less traffic.
-Sanjay Salomon
By Andre Dubus III
This fictional story paints a realistic picture of modern day America, as three characters – a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force, a recovering alcoholic, and her lover – try to carve out places to call home.
-Sanjay Salomon
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