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Books on Finding Purpose in our work and pasttimes
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items Books that help you find fulfillment, zen, and peace through our work, our hobbies and our lifestyles. These are some of my favorite books and they do not turn up in a lot of book recommendation lists because they mostly have extremely niche topics. ...
This book won the Pulitzer Prize. Its a memoir about a lifetime of chasing waves across the world. If you read only one book from this list, make it this one.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life - Finnegan, William
For people that love the Radiohead song “Everything in its Right Place”. This is a well reviewed book about an American woman that apprentoiced as a dry stone waller in the UK. If you have ever been to Great Britain or Ireland (or anywhere in New Eng...
Between Stone and Sky: Memoirs of a Waller
Botanist and Potawatomi elder Robin Wall Kimmerer blends science with Indigenous wisdom to completely rethink our relationship with the land. Instead of conquering nature, she makes the case for actually having a relationship with it: take what you n...
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Most of what fills your day doesn't matter. Greg McKeown argues you should find the few things that do, then cut the rest without apology. The payoff isn't a lighter to-do list, it's real focus, and the peace that comes with it. A bestseller for anyo...
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Maclean writes in short, exact sentences about a Montana river, a family, and the things you can't fix no matter how much you love someone. The fishing scenes are where the peace lives — total focus, nothing else in the world. A slim, devastating cla...
A River Runs through It and Other Stories
Adam Savage spent his career on MythBusters building things, and here he breaks down what actually makes that work satisfying. Skip the perfect plan, he says — start making, and let the mistakes teach you. The joy isn't in the finished object, it's i...
Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
Julia Child arrives in Paris a directionless American in her thirties and falls hard for French cooking. She enrolls at Le Cordon Bleu, fails, keeps going, and finds in butter and technique the calling that was missing. The joy on every page isn't ab...
My Life in France
A philosophical and beautifully written book about why trails exist and what building and maintaining one does to the landscape and the person doing it. Having dug my own trail or two, this one hits home for me. It puts into words what I always felt....
On Trails: An Exploration
Frances Mayes, freshly divorced, buys a crumbling villa in Tuscany on a whim and starts putting it back together with her own hands. The house is a wreck. So is she. Room by room, wall by wall, fixing the place becomes the thing that fixes her. A mas...
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home In Italy
One of the hardest things to explain in life is how owning less can feel like more. It is even haarder to do this without sounding preachy. Fumio Sasaki accomplishes both in this well regarded, straight to the point book about decluttering, minimalis...
Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
Half memoir, half craft manual. King talks about writing as a ritual and as meditative work. The best book on the craft of writing by my favorite writer.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
A memoir of years spent on a national parks trail building crew. Hard, dirty, unglamorous physical labor thaat will build your identity and self respect. Well written. This book should have a larger fan base.
Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
The book that defines the genre. Father—son motorcycle trip becomes a meditation on quality, craftsmanship, and sanity. A must read.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
Peter Korn spent decades building furniture, then wrote down what all those years actually gave him. Not money — most furniture makers don't have much of that. What he found was identity: the self you become when you commit to getting good at making ...
Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
If you have not tried coloring as an adult you should grab an adult coloring book and a good set of markers and dive in. I can color a page at night and watch my blood pressure drop. There is something magical and simple about it. This is a great boo...
Zen Garden: Mindful Escape & Tranquil Beauty