Opening Sentences of the Day: The Thunder Tree and To the Woods

A green ravine creases northeast Seattle, draining into Lake Union near the University of Washington.

-- The Thunder Tree: Lessons From an Urban Wildland by Robert Michael Pyle, published by OSU Press.

From Library Journal:

"The Thunder Tree" was a huge, hollow old cottonwood in which the author and his brother once found shelter as children from a life-threatening hailstorm. The tree grew along the High Line Canal, built in the late 19th century as part of a grand plan to bring river water to the Western plains for irrigation. Only a portion of the canal was ever built, but that portion happened to run through the city of Aurora, Colorado, where the author lived as a child and young adult. This book is a collection of essays about the High Line Canal and the butterflies, magpies, cottonwoods, and other living things that existed nearby. Pyle's recollections about growing up in Aurora with his family and friends in the 1950s add a personal dimension. In a broader sense, this book is about the relationship between people and natural areas and how each affects the other. Pyle, who has a Ph.D. in ecology from Yale, is the author of Wintergreen as well as several guides to butterflies. - William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

In our mid-fifties, my husband and I left the toys and noise of urban society for the company of jumping mice, winter wrens, and dark nights full of stars and cricket song.

-- from the author's Preface to To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home by Evelyn Searle Hess, also published by OSU Press.

I stumble groggily to the propane heater, match box in hand, twist open the tank valves, and depress the red button to the count of thirty.

-- from the opening chapter.

Publisher's Description:

To the Woods is a tale of adventure, inspiration, and living life in concert with nature. It is the true story of Evelyn Searle Hess, who, in her late fifties, walked away from the world of modern conveniences to build a new life with her husband on twenty acres of wild land in the foothills of Oregon’s coast range mountains. To the Woods describes Evelyn’s day-to-day struggles, failures, and discoveries. It tracks the natural history of place through the seasons. It wrestles with issues like human impact on the ecology of our planet.




A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

2011 Challenge: Battle of the Prizes, British Version, Wrap-Up

2011 Battle of the Prizes, British Version: January 1, 2011 to January 31, 2012

This challenge pits winners of the English Man Booker Prize against winners of the Scottish James Tait Black Memorial Prize in a British Version of the Battle of the Prizes.  Good thing it ran until the end of this month, so I could finish.

Click here for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.

Click here for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version.

I read four books for the 2011 challenge, two Booker winners and two James Tait Black winners.  I drew no big conclusions about the two prizes, other than the James Tait Black prize is no "me too" award -- it stands on its own.  Both prizes have been around for many years, but only three books have won both. Also, I have a general, perhaps unsubstantiated, feeling that the Bookers get to be more famous but that the Blacks are undercover gems.

MY BOOKS

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Booker; reviewed here)

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd (Black; reviewed here)

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (Booker; reviewed here)

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Sparks (Black; reviewed here)

Opening Sentence: Living

Bridesley, Birmingham.

-- Living by Henry Green.

I have a pet peeve about books that open with non-sentences punctuated like sentences.  It's a very small pet, though, only a hamster-sized, or even goldfish-sized peeve. I can get over it.

The first real sentence is better:

Thousands came back from dinner along streets.

The opening scene is of all the workers returning to their factories after going home for lunch.

Living is one of Henry Green's three best-known novels, along with Loving and Party Going, compiled in my edition.  Living contrasts the lives of factory workers and owners at an English iron foundry. 

I am reading this for the Henry Green Week reading challenge, hosted by Winstonsdad's Blog.

Review: The Mandelbaum Gate

There are plenty of great novels of ideas out there; books that cause a reader to question assumptions and wrestle with big issues. What makes The Mandelbaum Gate stand out is Muriel Spark's presentation of her ideas against the backdrop of early-1960s Jerusalem, a city recently divided between Israel and Jordon.

Barbara Vaughan is a British, half-Jewish, Catholic convert on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, determined to see the holy sites on both sides of the divided city while she waits for her agnostic, archeologist boyfriend to secure an annulment of his first marriage from the Vatican and return to his archeological dig on the Jordanian side of the border. Aided by an amnesiac British diplomat, a Christian Arab merchant, and a family of charming and corrupt travel agents, Vaughan survives her adventures with a mix of stiff-upper-lip British fortitude and religious fatalism.

The dramatic setting if the perfect foil for Vaughan's struggle to unify the conflicting parts of her own identity. Her struggle, coupled with a little cloak and dagger espionage and mildly farcical sexual exploits, make for a compelling read. Anthony Burgess included The Mandelbaum Gate on his list of best novels, calling it "a well-wrought and stimulating novel hard to forget."

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Muriel Spark book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This was the second James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner that I read for the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.

Teaser Tuesday: The Evolution of Shadows

They have barely talked during the day, calling out to each other only when finding a skeleton.  Each time Emil has hoped it would not be Gray, has hoped there is not a camera bag next to the skeleton.  

-- The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott.  This is a pretty intense story about three people trying to find their mutual friend, a news photographer who disappeared during the Bosnian war.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.