Real LI

"Fences, Gates and Bridges and How to Build Them" (Lyons Press, $14.95) by George A. Martin: This endearing edition of a book first published in 1900 is a short, practical guide to building that, for the most part, could be used today. Some of the tools are completely out of date -- there's an old post driver, for example, that relies on human instead of mechanical power and some projects are explained with horse power, using real horses. But most of the advice holds up today -- how to build wire fences on uneven ground, put together a latch gate, among many other projects, and is perfectly useful. It is well-illustrated with dozens of small line drawings. And it contains a couple of rather offbeat projects: building a smokehouse and making a table for filling sausages. This is an excellent book, republished this year, that works on both a practical and collector level.

- PAM ROBINSON