If you come across this book, you cannot skip it without reading. Its like a code or like a never ending story for a kid.The full page analysis of certain paintings are engrossing.Las Meninas of Diego Velazquez and The Art of Painting by Jan Vermeer with the painters in the picture will make the future analysis of paintings make you imagine the painter too.Pope Innocent X of Diego Velazquez, reinterpreted by Francis Bacon and Dejeuner sur l'herbe (main characters from The Judgement of Paris) of Eduard Manet interpreted by Picasso make you appreciate the importance of knowledge of history of art.After reading this book, I look for lighting source in a picture, what composition means, have come to know of painting where a character can be repeated(The Tribute Money), have a favorite painting(Primavera).
I recognised the bird on the cover as a shoebird from a national geographic article but didnt know that it was the 'most patient feeder'. This book is about the record holders. If it were just that it could have come out on cards with stats. The book is at its best with its explanation for flamingo's long legs, ostriches large eyes, jacana's spread out toes tied to their environment.The literature goes into more depth about say a humming bird's flight with its digits beyond the fast wing-beat rate. Having seen the shorebirds always on ground, looking at a picture of godwits in flight, it came as a surprise to me that they and plovers migrate so far.'Biggest communal nest' of sociable weaver had me thinking of beaver's house.
Until I saw a picture of newly born porcupines, I never thought about how they could be born with bristles. Ways to get rid of their smell was about the only thing I gathered from a movie about the spiky animals. While the first two chapters tell us about the ways of hedgehogs, the drama does not start until the third chapter where the hedgehogs are about to be shunned as bird population destroyers. Having heard calls of stilts at the sight of feral cats, I can imagine the havoc created by people about hedgehogs as culprit. The author with his radio tracking for previous study, paint blotting for identification and counting saved them from the fate of dangers of rounding up by a factor of 10.It is interesting to note that different rules apply to three legged animals released back into the wild after rehabilitation based on the role of the foot in feeding and keeping clean.
As the book is of various buildings over ages, it is also a chunk of minor history. In each description, there is the narrative of towers as gods dwellings in mountains, the innovativeness of concentric castles.The description of the buildings makes you look forward to identify the features in the pictures. The alternating curved and triangular pediments in Palacio Real, Winter Palace could not escape my attention after having read of them in Palazzo Farnese description.The aerial picture of Vauban's Fort carre made the influence easy to match in Fort Henry.John Soane. Christopher Wren.
The book begins with getting rid of r (substitute) symbols for birds (substitute). I have read of triangles in reading an artists work. In one of the methods in the book, we start with the traingle framing our subject in it.Getting the measurements to draw a thing is far from my idea of an artistic endeavour. But getting a thing right as it is, is a goal. And without such positional aids, it is hard to get anything on the paper, much like the blank page staring at the writer. While looking for angles in the picture, you are no longer thinking about how or what of the picture can you transfer onto your page. With so many details, you are only more confident of getting the drawing right. After all this study of a pear, I can appreciate still life drawings and paintings.If you dont know about values, then you really need this book. I could use the steps in the book to draw profile pictures and landscapes from a magazine lying around. After observing the skys gradations in a picture, I saw that a sunrise picture on the back of a grocery truck is not just one colour.The lesson on bridging reminded of creation of music.The authors renderings from the pictures are very instructional.
Caution: You should have a brake already figured, like an unavoidable appointment, if you dont want you fingers to crazily move onto the next pages.Most pieces are smaller than the introduction.Recalling a time that repeats, a color more vibrant and extant in imagination, a townful gaping at gulleywasher, how lies start for one - these shorts make themselves known like electric pulses.Days at the beach are all the same - Low Tide at four, Harriet DoerrBut the story my grandfather never told was his own - Good workers, John T PriceIts in a neighbour's house fiction begins - The Bend for Home, Dermot Healy..when people are dead they dont read books. This I find unbearable. - Nearing 90, William Maxwell
The characters in all the stories are so full of life - A man in the disguise of a mascot, Wannabe parents in worry, The tricksters in action.Names like 'Fragrant Hills' and sayings (until proven otherwise) like 'when the enemy thinks we will fight in the mountains, we will fight in the valleys' recreate the place. The traditional sayings fill the worried parents with hope and acceptance.I wonder how different are the possibilities in Shanghai.Mangosteen
Before reading this book, I didnt know much about Istanbul. But now nothing 'Istanbul' escapes me. What of the chef mentioned in the New Yorker? He is already talked of in the book. Musa Dagdeviren. What did Mark twain think of Istanbul in his 'The Innocents Abroad'. He will not go there again. What did Paul Therox see on his 'The Great Railway Bazaar' train? Such is the fascination that grows of a place, its people, their food, origins, their monuments, streets and daily life.Most places are not this old to have such a long history to know of. So how much ever I may wish to know of all places to the extent covered in this book, might not be possible.It takes a curator, a gardener, journalists, writers, reporters, cook book authors, an Egyptologist, a tour guide and many more to bring the far away land to life.The list and notes of related books is extensive.I have seen TV ads of hamam as a kid. But now I know of the bath house tradition.
Edwin Peterson has written 'Penns woods west' in 1958.Lee Gutkind refers to Peterson's work as 'his words were about wildlife, but his message was to man' and to his own work in 'The peoples of Penns woods west' as ' my message is to man, and about man'.Lee Gutkind has written about thehistory - of Clarion River, of the first settler John Cook, Scotty and Mamalifestyle- of a legendary marksman Jake Guiton, gameskeeper Vogelbacher, of a skilled cooper whose son though alive is lost to the war, buck season, Nessmuk's light canoes, snakehunting and sacking, truckersattitude- of one-arm blacksmith, of a papermill that 'reverses its mistakes', of mountain man McCoolresolve- of resurrecting Clarion Riverof the people of the Penns woods west.
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.
