2 comments about Tag Against Time.

1. This sequel easily got 4 stars. In the beginning Tag the main character travels through timefrom 1250 to a lot of different times. All through that time he protected the canyon he lived in with his best friend from grave robbers. In the end he finds his dad and the canyon is protected. I thought that the author characterizied Tag and the people he met well. It is very suspenseful and made me read on. This is a very good book to read if you like the Indian culture or action books.



2. This series is amazing, and never leaves you at a loss for whatwill happen next, but the suspense is overwhelming! Tag and Walkertogether make the strongest pair of friends I have ever seen in a novel. Their lives span centuries and their stories capture you! I strongly recommend this book, and the others in the Walker of Time series, to enjoy over and over again as I have!

2 comments about Alaska: Images of the Country (Sierra Club Books Publication).

1. "Alaska" is one of those books that, after teh first few pages lets you forget the world around you and fly to other places. His pictures are breathtaking, and it is true : a picture sas more than a thousand words; rowell manages it to tell you more about Alaska with a couple of photographs than 100 professors could tell you. He shows the reader that there is still some pure wilderness out there and that it is worth to preserve it. rowell is someone who loves the wilderness and the beauty of nature and he makes you love it too.



2. Galen Rowell was one of the great outdoor photographers and most of his books are full of spectacular pictures of mountain scenery. But if you are expecting a normal picture book about Alaska, this isn't it. Instead this is a look at a place that is full of ambiguity.

   The book is structured around John McPhee's book "Coming into the Country". In that book McPhee gives an insightful description of Alaska as a place, and its inhabitants. The Alaskans seem torn between preserving the wilderness and developing it and the extracts contained in this volume capture that spirit. For example, McPhee provides admiring character studies of a number of people who came to Alaska because they just didn't fit in back in the lower 48 states. Even his descriptions of travels in the wilderness have an overlay of the politics of the state, where the federal government, which once owned most of the land, is distrusted by most citizens.

   Rowell decided that he wanted to take McPhee's writing and illustrate it with his own pictures. The preface makes clear that McPhee didn't offer a lot of cooperation. In fact he warned Rowell not to overprint his verbal pictures with Rowell's. The text selection was made by Rowell and the pictures included are not directly related to the words but have a close connection to their spirit.

   As I noted, this is not any ordinary Rowell book (if there is such a thing). There are far more pictures of human beings and their artifacts then one usually finds in such a book, and I sometimes felt that the pictures were gritty and dark. At first I thought that this was a shortcoming of the photographs but then I realized that Rowell had specifically selected these pictures because he believed that they reflected the spirit of McPhee's words. Oh, there are some grand landscapes like a picture of snow-covered Mount McKinley across isolated Nugget Pond, but there is also a picture of the same snow-covered peak taken across a dark, intruding asphalt highway into the wilderness.

   The final pages capture the essence of this book. McPhee describes the role of the 55 gallon steel drum in the Alaskan landscape, and tells how his view has gone from considering them ugly to finding them almost blooming. Opposite these words Rowell has placed a picture of a long line of rusty drums curving sinuously out of the frame into the Arctic Ocean.

   This book is more than 20 years old and the McPhee book almost 40 years old. Alaska may have changed since then, although everything I've read about it recently makes me believe that the same forces are still at work out on this frontier. But for a person interested in Alaska this book provides a feeling for the place and its people that has the ring of authenticity.

   If you want to see Alaska as a work of art, then I would recommend Art Wolfe's recent book of photographs "Alaska". But if you want to understand how a bright place can still have a dark soul, "Images of the Country" is a good place to start.

No comments about AAA North Carolina & South Carolina: Anderson, Asheville, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Charlotte, Columbia, Durham, Fayetteville, Florence, Greensboro, Greenville, High Point, Jacksonville, Raleigh, Spartanburg, Wilmington, Winston-Salem (Plus Carolinas Driving Distance Chart, Great Strand & Myrtle Beach Area Map, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Map: State Series 2007, 2007 Printing, 2007-510406).

2 comments about Reflections (Silhouette Special Edition, #100).

1. What did Lindsay Dunne know about dating? A ballet dancer, her life had been rehersals and recitals-now dangerously handsome Seth Bannion wanted to teach her the lessons of love. Seth's orphaned niece was enchanted with her ballet teacher, and Seth understood why. But if he risked letting Lindsay into their lives, would she one day dance right back out?



2. I realize that this was one of Nora Roberts' earlier books, so the fact that the writing was not as good did not surprise me. However, I was very dissapointed that she speant almost no time letting the readers see Seth's thoughts until the very end and then, in a very uncharacteristic move for Roberts, allows her heroin to forgive him without too much changing or apoligizing on his part. I think this was an interesting book to read because of the fact that it was so early into Roberts' career but as a novel, I was just not impressed.

5 comments about Travels in Alaska.

1. Nature is a beautiful and highly complicated phenomena of this world. Many have sought to understand it and capture its essence in writing. The nature writings of John Muir succeed in capturing the beauty of nature as well as the scientific aspect. I have to be honest, I wasn't that enthused about reading a book about science. I expected Muir's book to be identical to a science textbook, definitely not my idea of enjoyment. However, his book was actually full of detailed descriptions and creative uses of similes, metaphors, and analogies. In fact, it completely changed my perception of a scientific novel.
   
   In his book, "Travels in Alaska", Muir brings alive the magnificence of the vast expanses of unexplored Alaskan territory. His prose reveals his enthusiasm for nature, and he weaves clear and distinct pictures through his words. Muir's writing is very personal. His favorable feelings toward the land are very apparent, and reading the book is like reading his diary or journal. He avoids using scientific jargon that would confuse and frustrate the average reader; his words are easily understood.

   Muir also uses very detailed descriptions throughout "Travels in Alaska". Although at times his painstaking description is a plus, at others, he seems to take it a little too far. Numerous times throughout the book, Muir spent a paragraph or two talking about something slightly insignificant. He would go off on a tangent of enthusiasm for something as simple as a sunrise or the rain. While his careful observances make the book enjoyable, the sometimes excessive detail tends to detract from the point he was trying to make. The description also reveals that his heart and soul was in his research; this became very evident upon reading the long and thoughtful descriptions.
   
   "Travels in Alaska" can be appreciated by a wide audience. Muir shines light upon the Alaskan territory, and he is detailed in his account of the many people he meets. Anyone could read the book and find enjoyment learning about Alaska when it was for the most part unsettled. Muir shares with the readers his keen insight upon the various Indian tribes that lived in Alaska. At one point in the book, he gives a very detailed description of one tribe's feasting and dancing. His observances capture exactly what he saw and the feelings these observances evoked in him.
   
   John Muir's writing is of high quality. He incorporates beautiful and creative similes, metaphors, and analogies. His prose is very poetic, which makes it an enjoyable read. For example, Muir says that "when we contemplate the world as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty." His work is also very organized. The book is divided into 3 sections, or parts of his trip, as well as separate chapters devoted to specific subjects. Muir spends one chapter describing his trip to Puget Sound, another on Wrangell Island, etc. The book follows a specific format that ensures that everything is easily followed and understood.
   
   Truthfully, I was impressed with the writing, and the fact that it was nothing like a textbook. It incorporated the literary aspect so well, that the book held my interest whereas a textbook would not have. I had the wrong impression of a scientific novel, and I urge anyone unfamiliar with the genre, to give "Travels in Alaska" a fair try. It may just change your mind about scientific writing.




2. I confess up front, it's been a few years since I read Muir's Travels in Alaska. Yet significant aspects I remember well. Given Muir's exuberance for life and almost everything he encounters in his travels, one almost looses view of Muir the botanist and geologist. But not quite. Here we find the author contemplating the activity of glaciers and documenting the flora of southeast Alaska. Muir (who tended strongly toward vegetarianism) gleefully entertaining himself by foiling duck hunters. Baffling the locals by happily wandering out into major storms.
   The book is a journal of Muir's 1879, 1880, and 1890 trips (he wouldn't mind if we called them adventures) to SE Alaska's glaciers, rivers, and temperate rain forests. He died while preparing this volume for publication.
   I remind myself, and anyone reading this, that Muir isn't for every reader. And, as other reviewers have stated, this may not be the volume in which to introduce oneself to the one-of-a-kind John Muir. One reviewer doesn't think that Muir is entirely credible in these accounts. I won't say whether or not this is wrong, but I tend to a different view. For some of us -- and certainly for Muir -- wilderness is a medicine, a spiritual tonic, so to speak. For the individual effected in this way, physical impediments and frailties rather dissolve away when he is alone in wildness. I once heard Graham Mackintosh (author of Into a Desert Place) speak of this. In all of his travels alone in the desert, he doesn't recall having ever been sick. This may not sound credible to some, but I strongly suspect it is true.
   If you like Muir's writings, read this book. If you like the stuff of Best Sellers, perhaps you should look elsewhere.



3. From the title, one would think this a type of travel journal, a panorama of episodes along the way, a sequence of stations between the starting off point and the destination. Instead, the overall weight of the book is given to glaciers, their descriptions, their influence on the landscape, their geological record, the discovery of new glaciers, and other characteristics of these moving rivers of ice. While Muir offers descriptive powers unequaled among authors on nature, never repeating himself though constantly repeating his subject, the sheer repetition tends to bog the work down. Two whole pages might contribute to our view of a particular glacier, and suddenly Muir reports that he's finished a 200-mile leg of his journey on foot. He tells us when he's climbed a glacier, and along the way we've missed an entire week. Time and space almost have no medium in this publication, utterly lost when gazing upon a glacier. For nature lovers who will never go to Alaska, the descriptions in this book make the ranges and glaciers come alive in print, but as a dramatic journey, a travelogue, or a field manual for the Alaskan bush, this book forms only a vague shadow.



4. John Muir's "Travels In Alaska" is his accouts of his trips to Southeast Alaska in 1879, 1880, and 1890. Southeast Alaska 125 years ago was sparsely settled and poorly explored; Muir's adventurous spirit and enquiring mind led him to investigate the numerous inlets and glaciers in the area, including the magnificent and much-celebrated Glacier Bay.
   
   Muir's simple, muscular prose weaves a fascinating narrative out of descriptions of the people, wildlife, and geology he encounters on his journey, suffused with his endless sense of wonder at the landscapes in which he saw the hand of God. The reader can hardly help but be carried along by Muir's enthusiasm. Muir's descriptions may be most relevant to those traveling Southeast Alaska by cruise ship, for a sense of what the landscape looked like before the population reached today's size and spread. Those not interested in the travel aspects of the book and in numerous descriptions of glaciers may find this book less interesting.
   
   This book is highly recommended to fans of John Muir's writings, and to those planning a trip through Southeast Alaska.



5. The beauty of this wonderful reprinting is how it shows John Muir as a person, how it helps us to understand the dynamic and overwhelming beauty of Alaska, and the changes in the people of Alaska. Muir's complete, tireless, and joyful commitment to nature comes through on every page. The book unintentionally provides an excellent portrait of the kind of inexhaustible devotion it takes to change the world as did Muir. The book also provides a stunning portrait of Alaska in the latter part of the 19th Century and allows one to compare the Alaska of those days with Alaska of earlier times and of today. The biggest changes are in the glaciers and in the people. The glaciers have receded dramatically as a natural part of their centuries' long retreat. It is interesting to compare what Muir saw with the experience of Vancouver almost exactly 100 years earlier (ca. 1793). Vancouver could hardly enter Glacier Bay. Muir could enter quite some distance, but the glaciers were still the dominant features. Today, the glaciers have largely receded into deep valleys. Muir encountered people in Alaska living largely as they had for centuries. They were hunters and fishermen and lived in small groups along the shore line. As Jonathan Raban points out in the intricately woven fabric of his sublime book "Passage to Juneau," the people of southeast Alaska considered the sea to be the real environment of their lives while the land was considered dangerous and unknowable. They lived along the shore and knew how to live off and with the sea year round. The lives of the Alaskan people are very different today but greatly influenced by the past. Raban often characterizes Muir's writing as overblown and florid. However, it is a portrait of a man, a maritime land and a people. To do justice to those three, the book had to be what it is - an astonishingly colorful and detailed portrait in words.

1 comments about Discovery Travel Adventure Whale Watching (Discovery Travel Adventures).

1. This is an excellent guide to whale watching in the northern hemisphere (pity it does not cover the southern though). It has all the information one would need to plan an excellent nature (read. whale and dolphin watching) getaway and has some interesting introductions. I have read and reread this book several times due to its style of writing (there are several authors penning different chapters, each with their own unique style). Helps you to picture the whale watching spots in your head. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in going for whale watching excursions in the nothern hemisphere!

4 comments about Sky's Witness: A Year in the Wind River Range.

1. If you want to hike, back pack, and live in the Wyoming Wind River Mountains for one year, C. L. Rawlins will take you there in these 300 pages. You will not find a better companion: his writings proceed in a rythmn -- moving from intricate description of rock, snow, and lake, to insightful and stunning explanations of nature itself, followed perhaps by a down-to-earth philosophical reminder. His humor catches one off gaurd and he tests more than a few other emotions. I returned from a four-day back pack trip in the Wyoming Wind River Mountains August 1996. Several days thereafter, by happenstance I noticed this book. In the early pages, Rawlins and his companion, John are skiing with fully loaded packs on the exact trail. up the Big Sandy Opennings, that I traversed. This book was an extra treat for me. Rawlins loves to walk and hike. He writes: "Walking feels good. It helps me think. The Grail, Mecca, Lourdes, the Frontier, Everest -- all are simply good excuses for going." C.L. Rawlins might be considered the "Annie Dillard of the Wind Rivers." When enthralled with a certain spot in his mountains, Rawlins writes, "Words make no sense at all. Being here does." He is humble. His words do make undeniable sense.



2. Anyone willing to endure the physical hardship involved in self-supported mountain travel will appreciate Rawlin's extrordinarilly beautiful soliloquies on the mountain wilderness experience. Example: "But it wasn't the smell of the air that played in me so much as the light. The moon and sun lay opposite each other in the sky, exchanging their gleams, and the country was laid out below all rough and golden. The ridge was a strong point, the hardest rock in the range. On it you could meet the wind, face it, draw it in and breathe it out. And I felt a desire with no object or reason, except the land and the wild light."

   Clearly Rawlin's regards the essence of the mountain wilderness and the essence of himself as one. He writes of the experience of being alone in a small raft on a clear summer night on a high altitude lake in the Wind River Range. "I've touched this water, tasted it. I've caught and eaten its trout, scooped it into pots for coffee, mixed it with my blood, taught it to walk and tell lies, and pissed it back steaming onto the ground. The lake and I have more than a casual acquaintance, yet in the dark, it seems not to know me. I can't see my reflection. The water that has claimed a part of my life now holds me in a star-flecked indifference."

   I believe that all mountain travelers grapple with words to express their most intimate feelings about their mountain experiences. Rawlins gives these experiences expression with the skill of a violin virtuoso who is able to prolong the playing of a single note with haunting clarity and seemingly project it into eternity. So also does Rawlins project his love of the Wind River Range to a spiritual level. The drawings of Hannah Hinchman are exquisite!




3. I own six copies of this book (four are loaners). My life revolves around literature, and this is one of the best books I've read. It's definitely my favorite. Rawlins uses relatively simple language with a powerful, poetic effect. If you have any kind of interest in the environment, backcountry travel, or the mountains--and even if you don't--read this book. Rawlins' writing is beautiful and intense; overall, I think the writing carries more impact than even authors such as Ed Abbey or Aldo Leopold.

   Phrases such as "The cabin is a frozen skull" jump out, as do passages such as this: "At first you're a stranger to the forest. It's too quiet. You feel as if your every move is seen and judged. Then, without noticing a difference, you feel more at home here than anywhere else. It's as if your heart skips a beat and then begins on an older pulse." If you're not an environmentalist when you start the book, you might begin seeing things in a new light. If you were already concerned about the human impact on the world before you started it, you'll feel it more deeply.

   Richard Nelson, author and Burroughs Medal winner, might have said it best in his review of "Sky's Witness:" "A very fine writer...as lavish and varied as a jazz musician--lively, funny, sometimes outrageous; poignant, tender, engaging; richly informative; and deeply poetic. Filled with the joys of working on the land, Rawlins documents the subtle wounding of America's remotest wildlands, where rain and snow are tainted by the breath of distant cities."




4. The books you have read in your life likely fall into one of several classes ranging from extremely poor to unsurpassed worth. On that worthy end of the spectrum, there have probably been those books that caused a pause in you upon reading the final sentence; a pause followed by a nod of thanks to the author for having given you so much pleasure. And then there are those even more rare instances where you reach that final page and feel that sense of want for more. Its a mixed feeling of love for what you have just read combined with the emptiness that follows upon closing the pages for that final time. It is as if you have lost a friend. Rawlins hit that chord in me with Sky's Witness. The Wind River Range is probably my most favorite place to wander, and I was led to this book after searching for all I could find written about it. But one does not have to go to The Winds or appreciate their grandeur in order to be captivated by the author's writing style here. His ability to describe thoughts and places and to reflect on their nature is almost a gift of magic. He covers a lot of territory, both physical and emotional over the course of a year. It has been about five years since I read it, and I still miss the times it gave to me. If I were to have any reservations it its regard, it would only be the put-offish nature that his personality occasionally evokes in his writing and some of the personal encounters that he describes. Put simply, he is certainly not one to be with when he is in a foul mood. But in praise, this again also speaks to his ability to convey all those elemental spokes of our humanity. If you are one who loves the outdoors, this book will go a long way for you. But even if you are not inclined to the rugged nature of the backcountry, this book will still bring rewarding moments to you during that time spent in that soft leather chair.

No comments about The Complete Route 66 Lost & Found.

2 comments about 100 Hikes in Colorado (100 Hikes Series).

1. I may have been born in Colorado but that doesn't mean I know all the great places there are to hike in this state. Both my husband and myself have used this book extensively for ideas on where to go next. The directions to the trailheads are accurate and fair warning is given as to the condition of the roads to get there. I especially appreciate the ranking system.



2. This is a "must have" guidebook if you enjoy hiking in Colorado. Each hike is described in some detail with a ranking of how strenuous each trek is considered. The text is concise and to the point, but gives an adequate feel of each hike. There is at least two pages devoted to each journey and the hike descriptions are to the point. Many such descriptions were the sole reason I decided to hike some of these mountains and I was never disappointed.

   The quality of the book is also to be commended. The paperback binding holds up after major 1,000+ mile car journeys I've made with the book thrown in the back seat. If you buy one guidebook about hiking in Colorado, make it this one. I highly recommend it for the description of each trail and just the overall feel of the book.

2 comments about The Four Winds: A Shaman's Odyssey into the Amazon.

1. The book grabbed me within a heartbeat. It was well written with much visual effects and sensory overloads. One felt as though they were actually becoming a Shaman. It made perfect sense and when he was scared I was scared. When things came together for him, it did for me too. Highly recommended, although it's out of print. Try to obtain it anyway you can.



2. One of the most unbelievable books I've had the pleasure to read. I used to have a copy and think just about everyone should. Hell, I'm a jock and I loved it. Too bad its hard to find. Anyone that sees this, I am NOT OVER STATING MY OPINION.