Books
This book promised to be enjoyable, and it was, I suppose. The author was silly and funny, but I didn’t like this book as much as I wanted to.
The basic premise is that a twenty-something disillusioned writer buys a broken-down cabin in the woods and starts fixing it up. He’s a total novice and throughout the book slap-dashes things together and actively avoids asking experts for help because he doesn’t want to look like an idiot.
I don’t find incompetence or pride a virtue. It was funny for the first few chapters, but got really old. I found myself skimming the building sections, which was a lot of the book.
I want to build my own cabin in the woods one day. I wanted to read some book that would inspire me, but this one didn’t really. There weren’t really any philosophical insights about being more in tune with nature or being out on the frontier. I didn’t learn anything about building. Not too much about nature which was a shame because I love nature writing. I wanted Patrick to abandon his unfulfilling job and just live up there in his cabin, but he never did. It was overall a mildly disappointing book. Man gets a taste of freedom and then eventually sells his cabin after learning how to be a better builder. Supposedly he bought some land somewhere with the proceeds and became a carpenter, but that’s all in the last paragraph of the book and was the story I actually wanted to read. It’s not really about his personal journey. It’s just about a crookedy old cabin and how much he likes drinking in it and how much he thought about being there while he was at work.
Still on the hunt for more runawaytothewoods books!
Oh, and my favorite quote:
”The Sawzall’s only purpose in life is to utterly destroy things while giving the operator the illusion of control.”
I do have to agree with Hutchinson on this one.