Beginning with 'The Incredible Giraffe' - the description of the trouble a giraffe goes through when it has to have water, the book hooks the reader into the unbelievable natural world.The essays are not restricted to the animals but extend into myths and culture associated with them. First person narratives of the experiments and observations bring you closer to the subject.The 'Elusive sea Otter' is no longer so. Things have changed since the book was written. Zoos now have sea otters. If you have seen a sea otter, you know how happy it is to show off its aquatic skills.The book covers animals from different parts of the world. Mrs. Mantis must be the most known. 'The Honeybees Charade' would have been my favorite if I hadnt known about Von Frisch's work.'The Lassoing Spider' - bolas spider has tricks up its sleeve. Look for David A's clip on this. It seems wilier than Mrs. Mantis.Fresh from a stargazing trip and still in trance, I hope that the Newzealands 'The Glowworm Grotto's 'stars shone in such profusion - by the hundreds of thousands - as to showthe Milky Way blush with shame at its own poor brilliance' is a hyperbole.'The Archer Fish' that shoots anything that moves or glows with a pellet, has to be seen in action to be believed. Many other animals like The Four Eyed Fish, the Trap Door Spider, fish that walk and climb are all so unheard of.Apart from the fine photographs, good sketches explain the abilities of some of the animals.
When I picked this book, I was expecting an impersonal account of whatever genes do. But with each story, Dr Marion brings in his human element to the implications of things going wrong at the minute, invisible to the naked eye level.Pediatric radiologist. Each by itself is a specialisation. Its amazing to see the vast field of medicine accomodate combinations too.With diagnosis, symptoms of different conditions like spinal muscular atrophy (its updated name) and infant botulism, the author increases the medical databases of general people. After reading the book, you get an idea of how an infants body and inner mechanisms are not in the same stages of development and hence how they handle things differently.Amniocentesis.
Helen Vendler's Dickinson Selected Poems and Commentaries is a great chance to enter the chamber of Emily Dickinson's poetry.With Vendler's expertise, the reader gets to note the strands of phrases of other poets like Shakespeare, Keats, George Herbert in Dickinson's work. With the author's extensive knowledge of Dickinson's poetry we get to know the continuation of themes in other poems or deleted texts (in the name of revision or brevity)Commentary in layman's language shakes the mystery of a poet of a different century.Now Dickinson's poems will not fade out of my radar without a good look at them.
In Stuff, author Daniel Miller questions why another population should see things the same way as us. The author takes a look at the meaning of clothing for Trinidadian, Indian and Londoners. I still find it difficult to understand a culture where all is on the surface and maintaning the metaphorical 'depth' is unknown. And with just this shaking of ones accepted way of things, the author succeeds in bringing us out of our culture.Next time you wear a saree, note if your body feels atleast 10 things about it.
I picked up this book after having recognised it from one of the book reviews. So far the book has remained true to its core of documenting the multifarious uses of books in a prison.Right now the book is running on its fuel of 'vocational thriller' with the prison librarian getting us cozy with the inmates but little forebodes from a well meaning wild specialist in the tone of 'Remember its still a wild animal'. We know the hell is about to break loose only not when.While reading a 'kite' - note left by an inmate for another in the books - I am wondering if the appropriate permission was taken.You tune so much into the prison rhythms that his visit to the park describing the outmates seems like too much light on a Plato's person just out of a cave.On page 158:"In the meantime, the library continued to play its part revealing prison secrets"The author musing on the meaning of window watching in prison that lends a birds eye view of the city and the creative writing of his students, become a door into the psychology of the inmates. Watching the drama of a mother-child intraprison stranger-stranger relationship, he jumps into his own life too to take stock of his involvement.The section that involves the author going into the prison archive and then to the old prison site and relating it to events in sylvia Plath's life reminded me of a book I read on the natural history of Boston. Here his history and obituary background show their mark.In the beginning, its the Librarian, Library and the Inmates. After the rounds with the author, you go home with a piece of story of each of the inmates with resolution to their dreams or lives.Keen observations about time to prisoner as water to the ancient mariner, prison (social isolation) in a prison add texture to the perception of life in prison for an outsider.While reading this book, I came to care enough about the subject that I picked up 'The pattern of Paper Monsters' of a juvenile in prison to compare what I was finding in the current book. The lattern fiction didnt hold me enough, so there goes the comparitive study.
Bald Coot and Screaming Loon by Niall Edworthy is a book written in qestion answer format about birds and what they eat(or what we should or should not feed them), where they live and all the other things they do. He degrades them in the beginning to put them on the pedestal after the introduction.I have read a Q&A book on birds before that didnt sustain my readership for too long. Compared with that, this book is an eye candy with accurate, lyric and funny illustrations. Its an ear candy too with the poems in it. My favourie is Dixon Lanier Merrit's poem in which he rhymes pelican with '(his bill can hold more than his)belican' and '(But i'm damned if I see how the) helican'.If you are a beginner, you will learn a lot about how the birds 'flying' rules all of its other activities - molting, what organs it can or cannot have. For a bird with scavenging habits, you cannot have feathers on your neck. The most amazing fact to know for me was the duration of day that it takes to make an egg. Again its the need to fly for food. Bird mommy gets no maternity leave. That they discard their nitrogen in a way very differet from mammals which again goes back to how it cant bloat itself so that it can fly. Dusting. Anting and many other phenomenon.If you have not done birdwatching before, theres a how to.With so much going on about air controllers caught sleeping while on duty, a patrol crane with a stone held in its feet might have a way out for waking when you fall asleep.When the author describes how the birds drink water, from what I have seen or remember, I think they posess a soaking ability. I will have to watch more keenly and look for them to hold their head back to gulp it down.If you are not a beginner, still there are many new things that will you make you wonder about the bird world. That swifts cant walk very well like other birds, having chosen the fast life. The technique of Albatroses and others with their tubenoses that desalinate might help us too. If you knew all this about birds, there are still many quotes, poems and anecdotes to enjoy. The best i like is by Emily Dickinson - 'I hope you love birds,too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven'.I have added a new item to my wish list. To watch a mass migration.
When people talk of life changing books, we might imagine a book with a celebrity sword sheen. I know it does come in simple books too. Reading 'The Sound of Wild Snail Eating' by Elisabeth tova Bailey, I could imagine the world many times bigger than me, fumble through it without my dominant eye sense.The author compares a bed-ridden displaced phase of her life to a snail brought from a woodlands by her friend. Watching it, she soons gets attached to it and reads up on snails. At points when I thought why isnt the author naming the snail after owning it truly by calling 'mine', theres an explanation for that. When I wondered what would happen if it came onto a sharp object. The author says that the snails skill in passing the razor test is being used in surgery . We are there with her as all of this is happening. This makes the journey vicarious for the reader.If you dont know much about snails like me then you will appreciate that all that water work left behind on the trail needs to be made by someone - the snail. Countless teeth. Dental Nightmare.Now reading of Liliputs and Gulliver can be done in a new light.
Each day morning when I read a set of poems by a poet and thought about their style or theme inclination, I knew I was on to a great start of the day. After having read enough pages I could compare poems by different poets on a similar experience. For example compare 'The Groundhog' of Richard Eberhart, 'Traveling through the Dark' by william Stafford and 'The Wellfleet whale'by Stanley Kunitz. I wasnt very familiar with the work of any of these poets. This book was a good introduction to many of the unknown poets.To find a non popular poem of a well known poet is to know a poet in a new way. Exa, Design by Robert Frost.The introduction to the authors and their views on poetry and role of poetry are illuminating in the way of how they came to be poets. Some of the influences of their lives are telling in their work.Many poems got me searching for myths, mostly Greek.And sometimes when I flip the pages back, I felt that I hadnt read some poems, that way it becomes an endless book.After reading this book, 'Kill the day' by DonalD Hall is my favourite poem and Richard EberHart is my favourite poet for his eye for nature."For sale signs loomed like paper tombstones on the weedy lawns" - Mona Van Duyn.PS: Poets love to write about Robert Frost. Title paraphrases Walt Whitman's 'The Child who went forth' in recognition of each poet's commitment to spread poetry.
A mosaic of routine and ordinary feelings, things, exotic hike aways, facts about travellers who 'stay put'.The illustrations of different mud land, different rains with the drops gathering in puddles, sliding down the window or sticking slantly have a momentary quality.Colorful mittens, shoes, tea cups all urge you to get snug in a comforter with loads of tea.The illustrations are not all in colour and on paper - Taking a blind cat to a garden so it can sniff the flowers - imagining this leaves the reader with an image of a making of their own.
I remembered the title 'Cooking from Gracie' from 'Man with a Pan' in the author's bio with an essay 'Alternate side cooking'. His dismay in losing control of being the sole food maker for his little daughter is just one of the difficult things that new parents have to deal with. As a child, we might just answer very easily to the question of who our favourite parent with all the taking sides that happens in the family. I wonder how the parents feel pitched against each other for their children's love. Touchy, as the subject is, I appreciated the author's honesty.For new parents theres ton of preview into the 'horror show' of not only sleepless nights but also days and nights merging as well.When the author reaches a revelation about how he cooks, an area where he is good at to substitute for lack in any other area, we are with him in the journey of that process. But his experience is limited to cooking for two to three. So cooking for more is a scene of his adventure in his own familiar turf of the kitchen.I liked the chapter in which he sees himself as an understudy when he has to take care of Gracie for an evening all by himself.
'The game of Boxes' is a game like tic tac toe. How does love compare in your life to the claiming of lines that can be connected and the concomitant boxes that can be claimed?In the 'Apophasis at the All Night Rite aid' poem, the poet 'not wanting to be alone' is shown the door to the moon.In 'A Brief poetics of the Hinge', an article by the poet Catherine Barnett, her search for hinge in poetry, where there is both movement and restriction like that offered by a tether. In Providence,some of the best sermonsdont have endings, he saidcomes to my mind as an example of the restriction and release.chorus is the title of many poems in this book. One thing the title helps with is the conectedness and the identification of the literal chorus for/of many voices. But with so many under that tag, readers will have to remember the first line of the poem for its ID. Couldnt these poems be put into one section with 'Chorus' subheading and look for any other interesting internal theme.'Agape' is for word lovers, not the ones who like them by sounds but for those who like them for their meanings sometimes only and sometimes many.Coming to the style of the poems, with so few lines and words, the reader is forced to think what the poet intended instead of just bagging nice phrases as low hung fruit and proceeding to the next poem. Having hooked the reader into the gap of the poem, there is no choice but to fill our thoughts after the question in Inventory, iiReally, what chance do any of us havefor moments of bliss?But proceeding on without waiting for us to come up with suggestions, she dismisses them.In Old story, The clock doesnt have an amygdala. With no Amygdale, there is no sympathy. As in the warning time and tide wait for none. Whats natural than time and waves, but the measuring of them makes them so inorganic. In 'to speak of other things' gardens speak in a way reminiscent of the serpent eating its tail. Styrofoam in 'Scavenger hunt' shows an imbalance of biodegradable activity and chemical nonbiodegradable inactivity.
I was very taken with the page which has the basic equipment numbered and explained. I couldnt imagine what could be done with them. And then comes the barrage of examples with how to achieve the desired visual effects.Making moulds for the decorations opens a whole new world where in you can design the decoration to sit the theme of the party you want to cater to.With the cutters and stamps, the author shows how stunning effects can be brought about.Some decorations like 'poppy crops' leave the cupcake top feeling no less than a canvas for an eager artist to show off their creative skills.Not only are you introduced to new equipment but to new ingredients like piping gel and their dramatic effect.'Safari stars' is a very creative assemblage.
A book with a bookmark of cake pops.While the credit for the classic pop goes to Bakerella, the author has taken the idea forward applying the dynamic cake pop to faux icecream and popsicle pops.The vibrant colours in the book bring about the festive atmosphere hinted in the title of the book and on the cover. Tiered cake pops is a cool idea.Cake slice pops, animal pops, aeroplane pops... Many ideas like this. Now your kid doesnt have to have one single idea for a cake or choose between the many. You can make all of them as cake pops in one cake.A tiered Display stand for the cake pops and others show how they can add to the aura of the pops and also how pops can build on the themes involved.Paper roses is a new idea unlike the pompoms which has already been introduced by Martha S.
I knew of a couple of famous poems by Lucille Clifton but never felt pushed to explore her work further. Looking at this collection, I gave up even before trying by the enormity of the book. But after being lured into other collections, I have realised how an authors whole body of work speaks in a definite voice. With most poets, we need guides. Not with Lucille Clifton, atleast to enjoy it in first reading. Direct to reader poetry.The verse is so light (all simple worlds) that its hard to believe that one can write on weighty issues and still write on/from dreams, poetry for relatives and a letter and followups to Superman - not in the tone of 'Rescue me'. She taunts the forces be to topple her like those dolls that will never touch face with ground.Repetition used to good effect of gaining familiarty and belongingness.A title begins with ellipsis leading to God.
The first thing that I used from this book is the blanket ride which turned out to be fun for both my daughter and me. Then I made a crown. Morning surprise - coronation.You can pat yourselves on the things you already do.Its interesting to know why some activities like role play, taking care of dolls develop baby's skills.
