Month: February 2013

caught my eye on the following blogs:

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield – The Lost Entwife
The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon- Caribousmom
My Antonia by Willa Cather from Books and Movies
Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler- You’ve GOTTA Read This!
Under A Wing by Reeve Lindbergh- Bookfoolery
A Wrinkle in Time the Graphic Novel by Hope Larsen- Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney- Reading Through Life
White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse- Caribousmom
Pride and Prejudice by Marvel Comics- Diary of An Eccentric
Memoirs of An Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks- You’ve GOTTA Read This!
Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws- Commonweeder
Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinor Pruitt Stewart from A Work in Progress

The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry- Iris on Books
Birdsense by Tim Berkhead- Bookwyrme\’s Lair
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores by Jen Campbell- The Captive Reader

by Monica Wellington

In the same style as Apple Farmer Annie, this little book takes the reader through a baker\’s day of work. All the steps are laid out and charmingly illustrated. The baker collects his ingredients, measures and mixes, cuts out animal shapes, bakes them in the oven, decorates, shows them off to the children, sells them in his shop and on the very last page, gets to eat one himself. I don\’t know why this is another cute book unpopular with my child. Maybe what she really likes about the apples one is the little cat and dog on nearly every page! O well, back to the library it goes. Perhaps she\’ll like it better when she\’s a bit older.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 24 pages, 1992

by R.D. Lawrence

The story of an albino mountain lion. It starts with his mother\’s pregnancy, and then follows the life of the cougar as it grows up in mountain wilderness. I really enjoyed the parts that describe the day-to-day life of the big cat and how it perceived and experienced life. Eventually its presence and unusual coat color are discovered by men. Most of the story then focuses on how a pair of hunters try to track the cat down, and the puma eventually begins stalking them in turn. There\’s also a field biologist intent on studying the cat, and the struggle between the different factions of people with opposite intentions for the mountain lion\’s destiny becomes just as intense as the struggle between the cat itself and his pursuers. Written by a wildlife biologist, the novel is strong on themes dealing with poaching and the need for conservation, but what I liked best about it was the thrill of seeing who would win the deadly stalking game that went round and round through the mountain forests, as well as reading about the puma\’s natural behavior and predatory instincts.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 329 pages, 1990

by Sterling Lanier

This is another book I read long ago, and wish I could find another copy now. I don\’t know what happened to the old mass-market paperback I used to have. It\’s a post-apocalyptic adventure story; in a future America where nearly everything has been destroyed, the population has dwindled, and there are mutated mostrous animals (and people) everywhere. (Something like Ariel, methinks). The hero is both a religious priest and a explorer. He has telepathic powers and uses them to communicate with the moose he rides on, and his black bear companion. I thought the idea of a moose for a mount fantastic! So they all go off on a quest into the wilderness to find some needed technology. I don\’t remember if they ever found it, just the plethora of wild adventures, imaginary creatures, battles (both physical and mental- with the telepathy) and if I remember rightly there was a girl in there somewhere, too. The characters of the animals stand out to me, I don\’t remember much about the aspect of him being a priest, though.

There\’s a sequel called The Unforsaken Hiero which looks so familiar I feel sure I used to have a copy of that, as well. But I don\’t think I ever read it. Now I wish I had. It looks good, too. Anyone read either of these?

Rating: 3/5 ……… ? pages, 1973

more opinions:
Reading Science Fiction
Olman\’s Fifty
Raven Crowking\’s Nest
Nathan Shumate
Grognardia

by Slavomir Rawicz

I read this long ago off my father’s bookshelf. It’s one of the best adventure stories I’ve ever read, even if the accuracy of the events have since been questioned. (Which I just discovered). It’s about a small group of Polish men who escape a Soviet labor camp and make a perilous 4,000-mile trek south across the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalaya mountains in order to reach freedom and sanctuary in India (then occupied by the British). I remember vividly, even after so many years, the challenges to their survival, hardships with few supplies, the arguments which threatened the venture, the drive which pushed them to continue when all stamina was gone, and most particularly, that at one point they were driven by thirst to attempt recycling their own urine. Ugh.

I also remember the ending; how the men staggered into a restaurant and were refused service because of their dirty, ragged appearance. How they were hospitalized but so consumed with the ordeal they’d just been through that even though now safe, they kept stumbling out of their beds to continue walking. That image of the starved, ill, exhausted men still trying to keep on walking when they no longer had to, somehow stayed with me a long time.

This is definitely a book I want to read again, if I find a copy (my library doesn’t have it, nor my personal collection). Even if it never really happened, it’s still a great story.

Rating: 4/5
246 pages, 1956

by Marion Dane Bauer
illustrated by Dan Andreasen

This is again, one of those books my toddler and I disagree on. I like the concept and the pictures are just beautiful. My little girl does like all the images of darling little babies, but she gets impatient with the text, turns the pages too fast and never lets me finish reading it. So after just two attempts, it\’s going back to the library.

It\’s a lovely little book of verse, a parent describing to their child how the baby arrived and how much they loved him right from the start. The words tell of little things babies do, attributes they have, tender care the parents give, all reiterating the unconditional love. Through the pictures you see the baby gradually getting older until in the last one he appears to be a year old, walking on his own, looking proud of himself and very charming. I just can\’t say enough how much I love the rich paintings, but as my kid simply won\’t sit through the book and we\’re returning it without once having made it all the way through, it ends up getting a low rating here.

Rating: 2/5 …….. 32 pages, 2002

by Jane Kirkpatrick

Another book I picked up from the Book Thing; my copy jacketless so I didn\’t really know what it was about until I started reading. From a map in the endpapers and the opening chapters I gathered it had to do with people settling in my home state when it was still just a territory and hoped for something rather like The Egg and I in its descriptiveness. I was a bit disappointed in that the characters only reach the Puget Sound area at the very end, but still got some of the beautiful, rough landscape and early settlers\’ lives I was hoping for.

The main character here, Emma Giesy, is a member of a religious community formed of German immigrants. When the book opens Emma is a young woman chafing at the restraints of her culture. Women were pretty much expected to be subservient, seen and not heard, and instead she is outspoken, forward-thinking and rebellious. She falls in love with an older man and they get married against the wishes of the leader. Then she complains that her new husband gets sent off on recruiting missions without her, and manipulates her way into a scouting party bound west to find new land for their community to relocate. The bulk of the novel is about their travels and hardships. When then finally decide on a site on the banks of the Willapa River, things look pretty miserable. The land is harder to \”tame\” than they expected, it rains all winter, their crops don\’t grow well. But Emma finds herself falling in love with the beauty of the formidable land and begins to learn how to live there (small things that made all the difference, like natives showing her how to make wide hats of cedar bark that keep off the wet). When the main party finally arrives and their leader outright rejects the site- to the bitter disappointment of Emma\’s husband, she can\’t bring herself to give up on it yet.

There\’s so much going on here that throughout I was kept interested- Emma bears two children in the wilderness, and although she never looses her inquisitiveness her character does grow some. She learns some wisdom in when to keep her mouth shut, but also how to stand up to the men around her when it matters. I think my favorite part of the book was when she settled in a half-finished house all alone with her child for several weeks. Her husband also faces lots of challenges and although his character doesn\’t grow as much as Emma\’s, there is some development there. Most of the other characters were pretty flat for me, and near the end the story did start to drag. While it closed on a rather hopeful note, the ending felt a bit jumbled to me, a scramble to tie up all the loose ends and name where all the people went to as the community party dissolved. But overall I liked it. A good read.

It\’s based on real people and events.

Rating: 3/5 ……… 368 pages, 2006

more opinions:
Strawmom
Life Is But a Dream
WV Stitcher
Leave Me Alone, I\’m Reading!

by Lucy Cousins

Cute Maisy the mouse entertains kids in an interactive board book where they must discover where she lives by lifting flaps to see who is in different kinds of homes. I like that Maisy is pictured wearing muddy boots, and the pages all have farm animals. Along the way toddlers learn where the animals stay- horses in the stable, pigs in a sty, dog in a doghouse, chickens in the coop, etc.- and the noises they make. At the end there\’s a regular house with a door to open, where you at last find Maisy. My daughter likes to actually knock on this last door with her little fist and say \”open!\” before lifting the flap. Very fun and educational little book.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 12 pages, 2000

by Robert Murphy

Tells the lifestory of a golden eagle. From its youth being taught by the parent birds how to handle itself in the air and hunt for food, to its solo wanderings, meetings with other birds, and encounters with man. I really enjoyed the descriptions of how the eagle perceived things, how it experienced flight and all the different circumstances that came upon it. The descriptions of various landscapes viewed from high above were thrilling at first, then began to pall on me, probably because I didn\’t recognize most of the place names and had trouble picturing it after a while. The fierce, wild eagle doesn\’t have many good experiences with mankind and the author seems to be making a frequent point about how people disturb or outright destroy wildlife; whenever other animals wander on the scene, the author goes into little asides explaining how poorly man has treated this one or the other. Through all her trials, the young eagle gets an injured wing, battles a weasel, runs afoul of a miner who wants to trap her in his cabin, gets shot at more than once, sees one of her parents die at the hand of man, and finally meets an unfortunate fate herself, in spite of the wariness she\’s built up. It\’s not a good ending, if you dislike seeing the animal die. I was left feeling a bit put out, I did so want to see the eagle fly farther and raise its own family…

Rating: 3/5 …….. 157 pages

DISCLAIMER:

All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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