Book Markers: 12.18.14
Boatbuilders, Ho!
Coming to you from a northern land of rocky coasts and extreme tides, Paul Garstide is out with a book for both boatbuilders and fans of watercraft as floating pieces of art. “Plans & Dreams: 23 Ready-to-Build Boat Designs” contains 217 pages of color photos, black-and-white construction plans, and essays that the naval architect and custom boatbuilder living in Nova Scotia has had published in Water Craft, a British magazine.
Mr. Garstide will sign copies of the book at a launch party at the Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett on Sunday starting at 3 p.m.
His essays not only entail specific techniques for the construction of wooden craft ranging from sailboats to dinghies, but also comment on boats and boating generally. The author emphasizes pre-digital skills, hand tools, and natural materials: “Simple materials raised to nobility by careful design and workmanship.”
“Plans & Dreams” is available at Amazon.com and from garstideboats.com. Ordering from the latter will get you a yearlong 50-percent discount on “unlimited digital downloads of plans from the firm’s online construction-plan catalog,” a release said.
Hardscrabble Tales
“Land Rush,” Gary Reiswig’s new book of four autobiographical short stories and two essays set in the Oklahoma Panhandle, focuses on small-town life on the Great Plains in the middle of the last century — fathers and sons, the responsibilities placed on a boy in a farming family, the rural elevation of high school football to a near-religion, and more. Tomorrow at 6 p.m., Mr. Reiswig, who lives in Springs, will talk about the book at Ashawagh Hall in that hamlet as part of a celebration that will start at 5:30 and offer food and drinks.
Rather than a traditional reading, Mr. Reiswig plans a give-and-take in which he will address, among other things, the question, “Why did I choose to tell these stories to represent the formative years of my youth?”
R.S.V.P.s are being taken at [email protected] or 516-658-2832.