October's Book, “A Reverence for Wood”.

Here in Upstate New York, the weather is getting crisper and days are getting shorter, meaning less time for work on the house, and any free time in the powerless shop is coming to an end. A quieter shop means one thing: blogs for The Woodworkers Book Club are back! Dark evenings after work are best spent clacking along at my keyboard, waxing poetic about the giving's of each month’s author. I've had a productive summer, but now it’s time to don my coziest cardigan, sip some tea, and pester the mailing list to come join our meetings.

Eric Sloan’s book “A Reverence for Wood” was a sweet palate cleanser. A simple look into early American life through the telescope of time. Written in 1965, the book focuses approximately 200 years back into the past to distill the simplicity of the early American settlers. The focus on consumption, even back then, was intriguing, especially after Trent Preszler’s “Evergreen” last month. It seems as front of mind to Sloane 70 years ago as it is today to us today. 200 years doesn’t sound that long, but in the Northeast, remnants of stone walls running through what we see as forests are everywhere. To find out they were once clear-cut old-growth forests turned to farmland, then forgotten or sold. The land moved on without a second thought and regrew the forest and rotted away the old fence posts, nearly deleting the existence of those early settlers’ arduous work.

The illustrations in this book are baffling, such incredible beauty in the simplicity of the pen and ink drawings while conveying an immense amount of information. Fun stuff like how to properly nail on shingles to how to store your fruit in a crafter cellar, and pretty much everything in between. The scale of information packed into so few pages is genuinely impressive. Maybe if my school textbooks were done by Mr. Sloane, I would have been a rocket scientist.

The meeting will be held TOMORROW, November 1’st. The day when the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest. The night will be darker and longer than the previous day, opening up opportunities for mysterious happenings. Be sure to join because you never know who may rise to the occasion. The meeting will be held at 8:00 p.m. EST on our Discord channel linked below.

Meeting link: https://discord.gg/9k4kGVAXe?event=1560275678497083493

Also, the new year is approaching, meaning the 2027 reading list is being constructed as we speak, so drop your recommendations for books you want to read or have enjoyed reading into our dedicated channel.

-Owen