A Few Good Nature Guides

Please see this post for brief descriptions of the following nature guides:

David Allen Sibley - Guide to Trees

Donald W. Stokes and Deborah Prince - A Guide to Nature in Winter

W.A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys - Snow Crystals

Food and Cooking

See this post for a description of Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food.

Review: Under the Dome

I just finished Stephen King's Under the Dome. Like almost all Stephen King books, it's massive - my edition clocks in at 1072 pages. And like all Stephen King books, it's a quick read - he's a master of pacing and flow. He's done this book before - The Stand - and The Stand was better. But most Stephen King books are pretty good, and this one is too. I used to look down on Stephen King, until I read an essay by him in Best American Essays one year about his getting run down by a car while walking and his subsequent recovery. It was outstanding. I'd always thought of Stephen King as the sort of thing people who didn't read read, if that makes sense. And although I may have been partly right, I was also partly wrong - he's a very effective writer and some of his books are excellent. The first book of his that I read was Lisey's Story, which was mesmerizing.

Under the Dome has that wonderful small town feel - I grew up in a small town and he does them to perfection - that close-knit, almost incestuous feel where everyone knows everyone and their business. There are numerous vividly-drawn characters whom you get to know and like, and the usual complement of psychopathic villains. The premise is entertaining - a dome, ultimately determined to be of alien manufacture, seals a town off from the rest of the world. The social breakdowns, and petty dictators who try to take things over, are familiar. There are the good guys and the bad guys and it's usually pretty clear who's who. In The Stand, there were some people who could have gone either way, and they were particularly interesting, but not here - the bad guys are pretty much bad all the way through.

He also does children really well - there are some outstanding child and young adult characters who reminded me of the children in It. The women characters are also very well-drawn - believable and also sympathetic. This book, however, isn't one of his best ones - insufficient action during the middle portions and the alien/mystical/scary parts aren't as well developed as in his best books. Still entertaining and fun to read, for sure.

Review: The Dead of Winter

I've been a fan of mysteries since I was a child - I started with some of the great classics, including Marjorie Allingham, Dorothy Sayers and of course the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories - I had a hardback copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes, and it was so well-read that the front cover had come off and had to be held on with masking tape.

The Dead of Winter, by Rennie Airth, is the third John Madden mystery. The others are River of Darkness and The Blood-Dimmed Tide. These are historical mysteries set in England during the period from the First World War through WWII. The most recent one is set during WWII, and vividly evokes the fears and privations of that time. The books are well-written and also compel you through the story. The characters are also likable with the exception of the murderer, who remains an enigma to the end. There's some good police procedural action going on as well.

If you enjoy classic mysteries, or like historical mysteries, you will enjoy these books.

Movie Review: The Road

I had the chance to see The Road a few days ago - it is only showing in a few theaters so we had to drive a ways to see it. I'm a big fan of Viggo Mortensen's acting - most everyone knows about his role as Aragon in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but find the time if you can to see A History of Violence and Eastern Promises (for which he got an Oscars Best Actor nomination). Viggo is a very subtle, understated actor, and the part of the Man in the Road suited him well. Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the Boy, did an exceptional job as well, and Robert Duvall has a wonderful small appearance.

I would say that this was a good, not great, movie. I think the Cormac McCarthy book (also called The Road) on which it is based isn't sufficient to build an entire movie around - it's really almost a parable or thought experiment - the beauty and horror of it are in the spareness of the language. The incidents are few, but the movie has a certain bleak grandeur, and hews closely to the book. Certainly worth a look if you can find it.

Review: Win-Win Ecology

For a review of the book Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth's Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise, by Michael L. Rosenzweig, see this post on my blog In Our Own Backyard.

Review: Love Soup

For a review of Love Soup by Anna Thomas, please see my post on my other blog, CrazyVeggieLady.

Box of Books

Every Christmas, for a number of years, my husband and I used to get a box or large bag of books each for ourselves for Christmas - we both love to read and it was the perfect present as you felt free to splurge on books you wanted but might otherwise not have bought. We've gone back to that again this Christmas - the last thing we need is more stuff but more books are very welcome!

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On a blog note, in the listing of books read, being read, in the stack to be read, and to be found and read, I've added the date of the last update in the title of the link.

Review: Invisible

I didn't much like Invisible by Paul Auster. He apparently is a well-regarded American fiction writer - some prizes and nominations. Although it was easy to read to the end - the plot line is quite compelling and carries you along - I found the book rather "sterile". I never was really all that interested in the characters, and the plot seemed contrived, although I was interested enough to want to see how things turned out. It seemed like an exercise, somehow, and didn't really draw me in.