Monday, January 24, 2011

The View from Lazy Point

A Compassionate Mind
"In the panic among the fishes and in the frenzying terns, it’s also evident that nature has neither sentiment nor mercy. What it does have is life, truth, and logic. And it strives for what it cannot have: an end to danger, an assurance of longevity, a moment’s peace, and a comfortable death. It’s like us all, because we are natural.

"What anyone needs to know about mercy, one can learn by watching nature strive, seeing people struggle, and realizing what a compassionate mind could add to the picture. So I’m also struck that we who have named ourselves “wise humans” — Homo sapiens — haven’t quite realized that nature, civilization, peace, and human dignity are all facets of the same gemstone, and that abrasion of one tarnishes the whole."
The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina
Review: The View from Lazy Point

Friday, January 14, 2011

Classic Cookbooks: Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook

Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook
by Betty Crocker
General Mills, 1973

Every recipe in this cookbook has beenm tested and retested in the Betty Crocker Kitchens and in homes all across the country.

Cooking for two?

Here are hundreds of new dining ideas for every taste and occasion.

Every menu is complete - main courses, vegetables, breads, desserts - all especially for two.

Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook
Book Search
Book Store
Cookbooks

Now in Review: Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares

Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares
The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms
by Greg A. Marley
Chelsea Green, 2010

Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are fungi food or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly "toadstools" ready to kill anyone foolhardy enough to eat them? In fact, there is truth in all these statements.

In Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares, author Greg Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and our conflicting human reactions to them.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Now in Review: Fire in the Forest

Fire in the Forest
by Peter Thomas and Robert McApline
Cambridge University Press, 2010

How destructive or beneficial are forest fires to wildlife? Should we be trying to reduce or increase the amount of fire in forests? How are forest fires controlled, and why does this sometimes fail? What effect will climate change have?

These and many other questions are answered in this richly illustrated book, written in non-technical language.

Fire in the Forest
Book Store
Book Search
Nature Writing and Natural Histories

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Classic Cookbooks: Adventures in Cooking with Health Foods

Adventures in Cooking with Health Foods
by Nancy Sutton
Pyramid, 1972

Food grown naturally and cooked with a gourmet's touch! That's the happy combination offered in this lively, luscious book.

Mrs. Sutton puts together nature's own whole grains and vegetables with the gourmet flavorings of wines, spices and herbs.

She shows in easy-to-follow recipes how to prepare unforgettable dishes - from macadamia nut cheese filling and beets in pomegranate sauce to rose petal sherbet and carob coconut Easter eggs.

If you want to start eating healthier, tastier meals, begin by reading this book - and go on to prove in your own kitchen that the natural way with food is the most delicious way.

Adventures in Cooking with Health Foods
Book Search
Book Store
Cookbooks

Friday, December 24, 2010

Bird Watching

Bird Watching
by Paula McCartney
Princeton Architectural Press, 2010

At first inspection, this handsomely bound and finely printed volume of bird portraits taken in the wild comes across as a personal birding journal, complete with hand-written observation notes on some three dozen passerine species, from the Northern Cardinal on the Oregon Coast to the Green-hooded Bandit in Minnesota.

Green-hooded Bandit? There is no such species, and the Northern Cardinal's range is nowhere near the Oregon Coast. And, looking more closely, there's something wrong with the birds in these photographs. They are too perfectly coifed, too perfectly arranged in the underbrush, and their legs are made of wires!

A sort of conceptual trompe l'oeil, this book imitates the birder's journal or the field guide in its elegant depictions of nature while slyly mocking their attempts at verisimilitude.

Outrider Books Blog
Bird Watching
Review: Bird Watching
The Nature Pages Review Archive
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
Book Store
Submit a Book for Review

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Review: Nature Stories

Nature Stories by Jules Renard
The New York Review of Books, 2010
reviewed by Michael Hofferber

“You can see one there, lying down, stretched out like a lovely noodle” is Jules Renard's single-sentence portrait of a worm, one of about four dozen sketches included in his classic Nature Stories, newly translated from the French by Douglas Parmée.

An early 20th century novelist and playwright, Renard published the first edition of his Histoires naturelles in 1896. Subsequent editions were illustrated by the likes of Toulouse-Latrec and Pierre Bonnard, whose ink-brush images are included in this English edition.

Consisting of mostly short verse and prose poem celebrations of flora and fauna, the collection also includes a couple longer pieces on hunting and fishing, which are not complimentary. Renard deftly anthropomorphizes the plants and animals around him and clearly empathizes with their existences.

Like the protagonist in “Hunting for Pictures” who jumps out of bed in the morning and sets off into the field in pursuit of mental images, Renard's stories are savored memories committed to words. "He leaves his weapons at home and will be happy just opening his eyes; they'll be nets to capture pictures: the pictures will enjoy being captured."

When he returns home, his head is full of pictures. He carefully counts and organizes them, like a collector of stamps or coins.

"Each one of them reminds him of another one and new pictures come crowding in, all gleaming, to join them, like partridges which, pursued and separated all day, in the evening, no longer in danger, greet each other and sing.”