Plowed snow piled high
Families throwing snow, sledding
Mt. Baldy looms above LA
As high as you can go now unless parking to ski.
Snow on Mt. Baldy
beauty
One Book a Week-10: A Solitude of Wolverines, Alice Henderson
The perfect book for those who love suspense, Montana, wildlife, wildlife conservation, Alice Cooper, the protagonist, is a young, wildlife biologist who spends most of her life going from one remote research site to another. Here she’s located in a remote area of the high country in Montana, 26 miles from Bitterroot, studying wolverine populations for a wildlife conservancy/trust which now owns a defunct ski resort. While a few of the locals support her work and the conservancy, many more see the trust and her as endangering their way of life, and they are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way.
Filled with suspense, reading this page turner will also inform readers about wildlife biology and research, wolverine study, and life in the northern high country.
If you are looking for a fun read where you actually also learn something, this book is the perfect fit.
Note: This is one of three books I have read this month so far. I will post about the other two in the next few days.
Walnut Creek
emerald surrounds
rushing waters
wandering pathways
Los Angeles County contains many well maintained trails. This one includes Walnut Creek along which a hiker can walk many miles when water is low and easily cross the water crossings. Not this spring. Unless you are on horseback or have tall waders, it is impossible to cross the meandering creek crossings. Along the train in one area is a bridge and a round pen for horses.
Near this area are picnic tables and a meadow.
Storm Clouds Over Mountains
Hiking high trail
Dark clouds shroud mountains
Azure lake glimmers
Winter
Snow wonderland
Wind singing through pines
Walking in Bonelli
One Book a Week-9: “Flights”, Olga Tokarczuk
How to describe this unusual novel? Here’s a possible list:
-No over all plot.
-Several stories about individuals scattered throughout, e.g. read about a person and event, then many pages later back to that person and the consequences of the event(s).
-Short philosophical musings/vignettes interspersed here and there. One reviewer counted 116.
-One common theme relates to the title, Flights, in that in most of the “stories” people are traveling or have traveled on quests for “meaning” or escape from a cumbersome reality.
I learned the following from reading this book:
-Per his request Chopin’s heart was taken from his body. His body was buried in Paris but his sister secretly transported his heart in a jar of special preservation liquid back to Poland, the land of his birth.
-A Dutch anatomist discovered the Achilles tendon after dissecting his own amputated leg.
-Plastination is the method used in anatomy to preserve bodies and body parts. Several characters in the book make their living or are obsessed with this process.
This is not a book for those who prefer relaxing reading or for the “faint of heart”.
Note: The author won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2018. This book won the Mann Booker for translated literature from all over earth in 2018. I plan to read another of her books–have now read two of them–but since the other one in English is 1000 pages long rather guess it might take more than a week for me to read it. This is actually the 11th book I have read to date in 2023 but did not start blogging about them so two are missing in the blog posts,
Snow Blossoms
snow blossoms
falling in pool
a song of silence
One Book a Week-5: The Importance of Paris by Cynthia F. Davidson
This memoir take place when the author decides to move to Paris in order to address certain “issues” related to her childhood and young adult years. She grew up in Saudi Arabia before the oil boom and went to high school and lived in Beirut when it was considered one of the best cities in the world. She had to leave when Lebanon became war torn, her dad was kidnapped, and her sister shot. Her return to the US proved traumatizing even though she is not genetically of Middle Eastern descent. Paris was filled with Lebanese refugees so she moves there in an attempt to understand what happened to her beloved Lebanon and why.
This is not an ordinary memoir. I could not stop reading it; I wanted to know what happens next and why. It includes a graphic honesty not found in most memoirs I’ve read. In addition, it contains political and historical explanations for the events that transpired during the time period of the book.
Want to learn more about the background to current events in the Middle East? Want to read about a remarkable life? Then read this memoir.
Snow on Mountains
warm sun
snow-capped mountains
heartwarming joy
The First Time I Saw the Nile
Riding hours through emerald mountains
to Bahir Dar.
We drove up a steep road,
monkeys begging near the roadside.
Car parked, we climbed a steep hill.
There she was
The NILE
a silver ribbon far below
grassy fields
two white robed people
walked, hippos barely visible.
The NILE
I cried,
a life’s longing fulfilled.
The NILE
Flowing from Lake Tana,
she lay below me,
the legendary river,
ancient people, ancient stories,
builder of civilizations,
of life.
The NILE.
writingontherim 