Pretty entertaining book. It's a collection of essays, basically, about Frauenfelder's efforts to get more connected to the things in his life. He gardens, raises chickens, builds, and tinkers. The chapters are linked by the overarching DIY philosophy.

That said, some of the writing feels a little precious, and the book actually discouraged me a bit. I'm relatively handy, but the problems the author encounters served as cautions against taking on anything too grandiose (like raising chickens in an urban or suburban setting).

But if you're interested in the 'maker revolution,' this is a good book to read as an introduction to 'making stuff.' It's relatively simple to get started. You don't have to kill your lawn to make space for a garden, as the author does. You can start by cooking more meals at home or baking your own bread. The goal is simply to be productive, to consume less, and to feel a connection with the world around you.
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This was a fun book to read about people who are trying the DIY way of life. He really honors the mistakes that are bound to happen and realizes that that is part of the joy of DIY. Reminds me of a story as a young DIYer the first time I changed up a sewing pattern because I liked the style of one shirt and then the sleeve style of another. I just lined the little notches up and it looked like it would work, so I told my mom I was going to do it that way. She about had a cow. The shirt turned out great! I think Mark should talk to a few OT's and I bet he'd be amazed at our ingenuity. Fun book. ( )

Frauenfelder's is an inspiring DIY memoir that ends in a powerful chapter about how kids learn. I won't be raising chickens anytime soon (I'd like to but my current residential situation prohibits it), but I'm going to expand my efforts with growing food and making stuff with my kids. [full review] ( )

This was an interesting one. As Arthur Miller had Willy Loman say, "A man who can't make things with his hands is not a man." This isn't really that, but it does cover the author's experiences in the DIY movement. He tries to keep bees, he has chickens, he makes his own musical instrument, he tries to grow his own food, he modifies his espresso machine and so on. Along the way in his adventure, he learns of other people like himself, people with the right variety of crazy and the know-how to do certain things. Not that he throws himself into it completely, one person was preparing for the eventual end of oil, and had set it up where he grew all of his own food and never went to the market, or something to that effect.

The book tells us that society wasn't always one where people threw things like cars away for the next model; you were expected to be able to do your own repairs, since most people in the early 20th century grew up on farms. The decline of this attitude towards our things was pretty clear. This fellow who was a relation of some famous psychologist got into marketing and changed people's perceptions.

So, this book isn't really a how-to of any kind, but it is really interesting nonetheless. For one thing, people feel a sense of pride out of things that they made themselves. It is a human thing to take a device or object and be able to fix it or put it to a new use, and the author encapsulated that feeling pretty well. He was looking for more satisfaction in his life, and found out that it wasn't at the bottom of a box or package. ( )

Frauenfelder takes an entertaining but shallow look at some of the projects he took on throughout the first decade of the 2000s. I had hoped for more of a critique of the "throwaway world" as hinted in the title. The book peters out in the second half. ( )