Recommended Reading
For Every Homeowner

Once the weather gets cold, there is nothing more satisfying than curling up with a good book about what others are doing on the home front.

Dozens upon dozens of home-focused books are released annually -- and most wind up as mulch. But there are also a lot of very good ones that would make great holiday gifts. After perusing a pile of such books that came out in 2004, my erudite assistant, Ed, and I picked out a few of our favorites, for those who can't get enough information about organizing a pantry or building a root cellar.

Note: We used retail prices, but many can be bought at a discount online or off.

Clean Up Your Act: Coming from the folks who put out the magazine of the same name, "Real Simple: The Organized Home" ($27.95; Time Inc. Home Entertainment & Melcher Media) looks and feels exactly like the magazine, with straightforward text, clean and bright photos and easy-to-follow suggestions. It also smartly splits its sections into rooms of the typical home and gives useful tips for keeping each room clean and organized. We liked a lot of the suggestions -- like putting sheet sets inside the pillow case to keep them from getting mixed up -- although some are laughably self-evident (like meticulously explaining what a doormat is for). Ed correctly pointed out that many people starting out in their first homes need this kind of well-presented information. Indeed, organization is the book's best characteristic -- including a guide to the shelf life of common items in one's kitchen cabinet. I had no idea honey can keep indefinitely, while maple syrup has one year before it goes bad.

My home snobbery is probably why I preferred "Renovate: What the Pros Know About Giving New Life to Your House, Loft, Condo or Apartment" ($45; Filipacchi Publishing), by Fred A. Bernstein, an editor at Metropolitan Home magazine, which helped produce the book. "Renovate" looks at about 30 different actual homes, including city homes, suburban structures and even dwellings designed by famous architects like Philip Johnson. While its gorgeous photos may make this look like a useless coffee-table book, it is full of interesting information on everything from the benefits of concrete siding (it can last 100 years without maintenance), to advice on how to stop an indoor pool from stinking up the whole house. My only complaint is the need for more before-renovation photos. While I liked where "Renovate" took me, I would have liked more about where the journey began.

Off the Grid: A journey into another world is what Eric Brende's "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" ($24.95; HarperCollins) is all about. "I used to be as optimistic as anyone about technology," begins the gripping tale of how this MIT grad left behind the high-tech world to move with his new wife to an Amish-like community in the Midwest that he dubs the "Minimites." Minimal is right -- from abandoning modern refrigeration (no leftovers, as Mr. Brende soon finds) to getting a workout by cranking the washing machine by hand. Happily, Mr. Brende doesn't rant like a Luddite about his 18-month experience, weighing both its good and more-difficult aspects well. Nonetheless, by the end, he delivers a sobering assessment of a society that drives to the gym to get exercise.

A more exhaustive -- and exhausting -- tome on how to make do with less is "Country Wisdom & Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land," by the editors of Storey Books ($19.95; Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers). Done in newsprint-type paper, the huge manual covers everything from dealing with animals to cooking to crafts to gardening. It feels a bit hippyish, but the material is so complete and wide-ranging, I would be surprised if anyone picking it up didn't find something helpful. While Ed preferred the parts about pigeon raising, I particularly enjoyed the sections on the home, where you can learn everything from how to put in your own hardwood floors to building several different kinds of compost heaps to creating your own root cellar and smokehouse. Our only complaint was the extra-small type. Presumably, with a larger font, the book would be twice as big, but I'd hate to tackle it by the light of my oil lantern.

Wit and Whimsy: Few living architects, it can be argued, have had as much popular impact as Michael Graves, who is as famous for his whimsical home products for the Target retail chain as he is for his buildings. That impact is the main message of "Michael Graves Designs: The Art of the Everyday Object," by Phil Patton with the Michael Graves Design Group ($24.95; Melcher Media), which looks at the nearly 1,000 consumer items designed in Mr. Graves's New Jersey studio. Despite being largely a vanity project celebrating Mr. Graves, the slim volume is still fun to peruse for its cool pictures of his many and varied items. That includes the famous, pre-Target Singing Bird teakettle for Alessi and his funky egg-like toaster for Target.

Many and varied, too, are the works of the Treehouse Workshop of Seattle, whose founder Pete Nelson, has come out with an international version of his popular books on castles in the air. Like the other books, "Treehouses of the World" ($35; Harry N. Abrams) is a compendium of attractively photographed treehouses, most of which are better described as large houses that happen to be located in a tree. Each is interesting and creative in its own right but several were breathtaking, including a wonderful chapel ensconced in an oak tree in France.

House as a Life: Typically, I don't care for the proliferation of memoirs that use working on your house as a metaphor for renovating your life.

Still, I had a good laugh and a fast read with "Gutted: Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life," by Lawrence LaRose ($24.95; Bloomsbury). Mr. LaRose does stress the many links between renovating a run-down Cape Codder in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and his new life as a newlywed and recently unemployed dot-commer. But the book is saved by his very funny writing -- he calls home-focused TV shows "home porn" -- and honest appraisal of his rank idiocy at taking on such a monumental task largely alone. The best parts of the book concern Mr. LaRose getting hired on a construction crew building mega-mansions in order to learn carpentry. By the time he ends up getting fired from that, having a baby and building his home, you find yourself rooting for his quirky dream. One caveat: Where are the pictures of his work in progress?

More unusual is an almost Holy Grail quest that Kate Whouley goes on in "Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved: A Woman Moves a House to Make a Home," ($22.95; Commonwealth Editions). Ms. Whouley, a book consultant, becomes obsessed with a small motel cottage she sees advertised for sale for $3,000 and doesn't rest until she has joined it in homely matrimony with her small home on Cape Cod. "It takes a village to move a house," she notes and, indeed, the cast of characters she meets along the way is highly entertaining. So too is her light and breezy writing style.

Email your comments to rjeditor@dowjones.com.