1 rating | 1 review | avg rating:5.00

Catherine Armsden’s Followers (27)

Catherine’s Bookshelves

to-read (1)
currently-reading (0)
read (1)
did-not-finish (0)

Catherine’s Friends (32)

Marion Irwin

328 books | 50 friends

Sasha

747 books | 10 friends

Nellie

0 books | 514 friends

Pete Kocks

128 books | 71 friends

Tobias Butler

815 books | 328 friends

Chiara

165 books | 92 friends

David

47 books | 89 friends

Anne Hall

34 books | 25 friends

More friends…

Catherine Armsden

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United States

June 03

Website

http://www.catherinearmsden.com/

Genre

Fiction

Member Since

September 2015

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/catherinearmsden

edit data

Catherine Armsden’s fascination with architecture was ignited during her childhood growing up among the weather-beaten houses of coastal Maine. Educated in New England, she moved in 1983 with her husband, Lewis Butler, to San Francisco, where they co-founded Butler Armsden Architects. Dream House is her debut novel.

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask Catherine Armsden questions, please sign up.

Popular Answered Questions

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Catherine Armsden Dream House began with a bout of nostalgia when I was visiting my parents at the rented house in Maine where I grew up. For the sixty-one years they l…moreDream House began with a bout of nostalgia when I was visiting my parents at the rented house in Maine where I grew up. For the sixty-one years they lived in the house, my parents had wanted to buy it, but the landlord wouldn’t sell. The house was small and unremarkable, but sited in an extraordinary location overlooking a tranquil cove that opened to the ocean. That day, sitting on my childhood bed looking out the window, it occurred to me that soon, I would lose that exquisite view. I grabbed a notebook and began to write. What I discovered as I wrote was a deep longing for the qualities of my childhood landscape, 3000 miles from where I was living in San Francisco.

My nostalgia inspired the book’s main conflict: Gina, an architect of other peoples’ house dreams, is searching for home. Gaston Bachelard’s intriguing sentiment from The Poetics of Space, which opens Dream House, seemed to anticipate the story I would write:

"Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams."

When you’ve lived somewhere that’s captured your heart, you measure everywhere else you live against that place. I’ve been fascinated by what my residential architecture clients have wanted from their houses. Some are building a dream, a departure from what they’ve known, or an artistic statement; others are motivated by nostalgia for the past. Working with them, I’ve felt the immense power of houses. I began asking the questions that would inform the heart of the book: with a new house, do we start fresh or try to catch the essence of houses that were the containers of our first dreams and memories? How can we re-establish—with shape, color, light, scale, materials, landscape—the important sensory equilibrium we remember? Is it more satisfying to start over? What makes a house feel like home? Compelled by these questions about what our houses mean to us, I became determined to find the story that would allow me to explore them.(less)

flag

4 likes · like
2 comments

See 1 answer from Catherine Armsden…

Combine Editions
Catherine Armsden’s books

Average rating: 3.59 · 259 ratings · 36 reviews · 2 distinct works • Similar authors

	Dream House 3.55 avg rating — 245 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Alert, Well-Hydrated Artist in No Acute Distress 4.43 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2023 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

48 posts
Catherine Armsden's Blog

Thank you for this helpful information.

Thank you for this helpful information. I have been looking very hard to find information specifically about recommended ratios of CBD/THC for insomnia. Friends have told me that some THC is necessary for sleep benefits, but since I’ve experienced anxiety from THC in the past, I’m reluctant to just dive in and do trial-and-error with a CBD/THC product. Has anyone done a study on what ratios seem t

rss
Catherine’s Recent Updates

Catherine Armsden wants to read Drop In: The Gender Rebels Who Changed the Face of Skateboarding – A Cultural History of Queer Pioneers at the Tokyo Olympics by Deborah Stoll (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 26, 2024 01:09PM · like