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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 728
EAN num: 9780143112044
ISBN number: 014311204X
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: May 29, 2007
Publishing house: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sale Popularity Level: 147010
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
For anyone who obsessively scours the real estate section and dreams of purchasing or building a house, The Perfect $100,000 House is a beacon of hope. Founding editor in chief of Dwell magazine and noted architecture and design critic Karrie Jacobs decided to see for herself whether it was still possible in America’s overheated real estate market to build a home of one’s own for a reasonable sum. Her quest took her across the country, where she encountered creative solutions to the housing dilemma, as well as visionary architects and builders revolutionizing how Americans think about homes, construction, and community.
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Rated by buyers 
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She found lots of perfect $100k homes -- too bad they weren't perfect for her!
I enjoyed this book immensely -- read it in two days.
With a warm and friendly writing style, Ms. Jacobs (former editor at Dwell magazine) introduces us to host of talented architects, each with their own take on the $100,000 home, based on local needs, economics & politics and aesthetics. Some are mid-century moderns, some are updated classics, and others defy classification. All are interesting!
Along the way she gives us some insight into what's going on across the spectrum in the world of architecture, from the huge corporate builders to the "one-off" customs.
As others have noted, there aren't enough pictures (just one grey & white drawing for each chapter), but the two page index of the architects' Web site URLs make up for that in spades. I spent two hours surfing them and had a ball!
Finally, I'm glad it was her doing the extended road trip and not me -- I surely would not have lasted as long as she did!
Rated by buyers 
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It sounds like a great concept: An architecture writer with $100,000 in the house sets out to see what she can buy for that money somewhere in America. And the very first chapter, where she goes to "architecture camp" in Vermont sets us up for something promising.
But the promise isn't fulfilled because for a book like this which is as much travelogue as reporting requires that we have a guide that we enjoy spending the trip with, and Jacobs is that most obnoxious sort of New Yorker: No place is good enough because it just isn't New York. The other cities in America, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, are just places to get through on the way to another rural area which will be dismissed because it's just some remote area where there aren't enough hip people (or too many hip people) for it to be comfortably similar to living in Manhattan.
Worse still, in a book about architecture, there is one essential ingredient which is painfully absent. PICTURES. I'm sorry Ms Jacobs, but your prose is not sufficient to convey the feel of the homes you describe without abundant illustration to accompany them. Instead we're treated to one(!) illustration per chapter, which often isn't even the most interesting-sounding building from the chapter.
Rated by buyers 
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I wavered as to how many stars to give this book. I enjoyed the story of the author's endeavor to find or create her dream home. But I think many people are going to buy this book in the hopes finding practical advice for their own search and in that respect it falls down.
I wanted to know more about the homes themselves and as good a job as the author does describing them, I wanted pictures and, even more for a book so much about architecture, plans and elevations.
I wonder whether the $100K price tag has become too low a target 3 years later. Perhaps the most telling thing is that by the end of the book the author has not found a house that works for her.
An answer for that perhaps would have been instead to focus more on the story of the homeowners who lived in the homes she passed on and why those homes were the perfect ones for them.
Rated by buyers -
The book is rather like a long magazine article. You get the idea and the attitude early on, and nothing changes. She's pithy and terse but the situations become redundant, even for a design nut like myself. I didn't miss photographs, allowing Gary Panter's breezy illustrations to stoke my imagination.
Reading the jacket tells you where she lives now, so the ending is no surprise. But it probably wouldn't have been anyway. I have the strong suspicion Ms. Jacobs is really looking for the right woman to settle down with.
For a more involving and satisfying tale, try Kate Whouley's "Cottage for Sale, Must be Moved." I'd call it a minor modern classic.
Rated by buyers -
I suppose I was expecting a journey along the lines of Tracey Kidder's House, something personal and organic.
I found this book frustrating for two basic reasons:
1. The lack of photographs, especially of the specific houses discussed was frustrating. Akin to discussing the merits of a painting, without a picture of it! I don't know if this oversight was the fault of a cheap publisher's budget, or the author's choice, but the book suffers as a result.
2. The author's voice: seemed bitter or jaded or tired of her journey about two-third's before the road trip was done. Needless to say, it seems that she never found a house that she could actually commit to.
As a result of the above, the reader leaves the book neither caring about the author's quest or any closer to discovering where to find the perfect $100,000 house.
Perhaps the only thing I got from this book was a fleeting desire to subscribe to Dwell magazine.
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