My woodworking journey began with a simple question. I had just purchased my first house and found that the price of the furniture I wanted to have inside of it was financially out of my reach. And so I asked myself the question: "What if I could build the furniture I want to have? Surround my house with furniture that I created by hand instead of buying a bunch of stuff from a store." So, I bought a book about it, built my first project and I've been hooked on working with wood ever since.

I still read just about every woodworking book I can get my hands on and the knowledge I have gained by building projects and learning from these books has been absolutely indispensable.

Here is a small selection from my bookshelf that I hope will find its way to your bookshelf and thus helps you along your journey or to begin it.

PlyDesign: 73 Distinctive DIY Projects in Plywood (and other sheet goods)

PlyDesign: 73 Distinctive DIY Projects in Plywood (and other sheet goods) This was the first woodworking book that I ever read. This book contains inspiration and plans for various types of modern style furniture from many different designers and woodworkers. You may think that plywood is an inferior material compared to traditional hardwood but its stability, size and cost offers some advantages that traditional hardwood does not. Building furniture from plywood is actually a great place to get started in woodworking, the first project I ever built was a new office desk for myself made out of a humble $50 sheet of plywood.

Hybrid Woodworking: Blending Power & Hand Tools for Quick, Quality Furniture

Hybrid Woodworking: Blending Power & Hand Tools for Quick, Quality Furniture This is an excellent book chock full of valuable insight from one of the original online woodworking super heros: Marc Spagnuolo. He was making video tutorials years before Youtube became the Youtube we know and love today. I really like the focus of this book because I think Hybrid woodworking (for the uninitiated, this means combining the best of modern machines with traditional hand tool-based woodworking) is a great way to learn techniques that maximize the potential of all the tools available to us in our toolkits. Marc also has a good sense of humor and cuts right down to facts about how he thinks about woodworking and his own experiences building with wood for many years.

Everyday Woodworking: A Beginner's Guide to Woodcraft With 12 Hand Tools

Everyday Woodworking: A Beginner's Guide to Woodcraft With 12 Hand Tools Rex Krueger is known primarily for his excellent woodworking-focused youtube channel, but he should also be known as a quality author of excellent woodworking books. Rex approaches woodworking from a mostly hand-tool focused perspective. This may be slightly off topic for people more interested in power tool-based woodworking, but I would argue that understanding how hand tools work and their role in traditional woodworking helps people even if they will ultimately be working in a different class of tools. Rex also approaches his projects, books and videos with a good natured affability that makes this an enjoyable read.

Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop

Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop Nick Offerman is a well-known television personality and comedian but he's also an avid longtime woodworker. This book injects Offerman's signature humor into the process of woodworking, so it is as entertaining of a read as it is informative. Don't let the fact that Nick is a comedian and actor fool you, this is a good book with many types of projects contributed both from himself as well as from people that he works with in his Calfornia-based woodworking shop.

Woodworking Basics - Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship - An Integrated Approach With Hand and Power tools

Everyday Woodworking: A Beginner's Guide to Woodcraft With 12 Hand Tools This was a book I picked up early on and it does an excellent job of covering a "hybrid" woodworking process. While this one is not exhaustive in nature it is a fantastic introduction to both power and hand tools. There are only a handful of projects included in this book, but the background information and introductory nature of the book make this an excellent choice to begin understanding and thinking about woodworking basics.