![]() ![]() Ina Coolbrith circa 1871, when she was around thirty, before moving to SOMA from Nob Hill.īorn into Mormonism in Nauvoo, Ill., Coolbrith’s family left the faith in the early-1850s and crossed the plains to settle in Los Angeles. ![]() However, standing in front of her home, looking northward, one would have seen the south side of Russian Hill rising up in the near distance. Fact is, the parlor where the “Overland Trinity” converged, &c., was actually on Nob Hill, though the hill was not yet known by that name (in the 1860s, the closest hill name for where Coolbrith lived would have been Clay Street Hill). There was one, major detail in Tarnoff’s text, however, that had me digging into old directories and newspapers myself: where exactly was Ina Coolbrith’s 1860s home and parlor – that early sanctum of West Coast Bohemia – truly located? Early in, and throughout The Bohemians, Tarnoff again-and-again mentions its being on Russian Hill. This is not a review of Tarnoff’s book, though I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Coolbrith officially became California’s first poet laureate in 1919, and is the person I’m concerned with in this post. ![]() I just finished reading Ben Tarnoff’s The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers who Reinvented American Literature (Penguin, 2014) which follows Mark Twain’s time in San Francisco, his rise to fame, while interweaving the stories of Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ina Donna Coolbrith. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Adding trellises and archways to grow up and maximize your space.No digging, no tilling, no fertilizing, no guesswork-less watering, waste, and weeding! There's so much more packed in this 272-page instructional book-boost your organic vegetable harvest with inspiring how-tos such as: ![]() Perfect for experienced gardeners or beginners, you'll learn the three simple steps to Square Foot Gardening: build a box fill it with Mel's Mix(TM) add a grid. New and experienced gardeners will love the charts, photos, illustrations, and how-to tips in All New Square Foot Gardening, 3rd Edition-including 42 veggie-specific planting, growing, and harvesting guides-that make growing your own food fun, easy, and productive. Since Square Foot Gardening was first introduced by Mel Bartholomew in 1981, this revolutionary way to grow vegetables has helped millions of home gardeners enjoy their own organic, fresh produce in less space and with less work than traditional row gardens. This updated third edition of the best-selling gardening book in North America continues to inspire with planting charts, growing tips, and the know-how you need to grow more veggies than ever before. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Coulter arrives at Oxford to take Lyra away and to prune her into a fine lady. Her wish is about to come true when children (including Lyra’s playmate Roger) start disappearing and the exotic Mrs. Intrigued by ‘Dust’ she wishes to know more about it. Lyra is an orphan and leads a carefree life until she overhears a conversation about ‘Dust’. What more is needed to pique your interest in this one? Northern Lights by Philip Pullman ![]() The daemon can take any form until its human counterpart attains puberty, after which it becomes the animal it chooses to be. How wonderful is that? You have a friend for life who knows all your thoughts and with whom you can talk about anything in the world. The difference being that every person’s soul is a living animal companion or ‘daemon’ who accompanies him/her everywhere. Northern Lights tells the story of Lyra Belacqua who lives in Jordan college, Oxford in a world very much like our own. Northern Lights is the first in the trilogy His Dark Materials. We meet a young girl named, Lyra Belacqua, who journeys to the Northern Lights to fulfill an old prophesy. Also known as The Golden Compass in the States, this is one amazing book set in a world where the human soul resides outside the body as a ‘daemon’ (in the shape of an animal). ![]() ![]() But like any family, there are cracks in the foundation, and Arnett steadily subjects those cracks to pressure until they rupture.Ī significant cause of strain is that Sammie’s and Monika’s parenting styles are at odds. ![]() They have a nice house, a comfortable income and a son, Samson. Sammie and her wife, Monika, have a lovely life together in Orlando, Florida. With Teeth begins with an attempted child abduction at a playground just try to stop reading after such a harrowing scene. Arnett shows her range with laugh-out-loud scenes and moments of honest sadness as she puts protagonist Sammie through the wringer. ![]() ![]() With Teeth is a hilarious and astute dive into the not-so-fun parts of parenthood. Kristen Arnett delivers a fantastic follow-up after her bestselling 2019 novel, Mostly Dead Things. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Kaaro, our protagonist, is a “sensitive” with a special ability to pick up other people’s thoughts and feelings. ![]() UGH.) So there are a few different timelines in Rosewater, with jumps between them, which is a little bit disorientating in a world that’s already so wild and strange, but each jump takes us to such an intriguing blend of bizarre and mundane that it pulled me in. Just tell me a good story, don’t throw out a bunch of random events that will connect in the last 5 minutes of the book! (Multiple timelines can work for me when there are just two timelines, and the stories are thematically related before they’re connected, like in Lions of Fifth Avenue, The Lost Apothecary, etc., but not always, and this format never works for me in a suspense novel where the big twist is that someone changed their name in the intervening 20 years. Look, I normally do not like books with too many time jumps. ![]() This blend of wild and mundane marks the best scifi for me.įrom there, we take different timelines into Kaaro’s past, discovering his abilities and background, and into the story of the alien dome in the city, and into a bit about Kaaro’s girlfriend, Aminat (the protagonist in her own story), and the regular work and the secret work Kaaro does with his abilities. I was immediately intrigued with Kaaro’s abilities as a sensitive, and how this was both a life-changing, unexplained superpower and a skill that got him a dully reliable corporate bank job. Rosewater takes readers to a fascinating specfic future in Nigeria. ![]() ![]() ![]() A lone drifter in the 1940s, attempting to put his past and greatest mistake behind him, resorts to the last job available to reprobates such as himself in yet another small town: as hired help to "crazy Elly", a young, reclusive widow with two young children and another on the way. I was riveted all the way through this charming and heart-wrenching story, drawn to return to the twists and bends of the story as a bee is to honey, completely mesmerized until the compelling conclusion. ![]() Spencer's books, until I came across this jewel. ![]() Her descriptive prose draws one into the worlds of her making, evoking emotions and images as if one were the main characters experiencing every event for oneself, whether male or female. LaVyrle Spencer is, in this humble professor's opinion, the most estimable of historical romance writers. ![]() ![]() The style of Viriconium reminds me of A Confederacy of Dunces with place (Viriconium in this case New Orleans in aCoD) creating a vivid structure and scenery from which moments of pure wit emanate. ![]() Maybe once I've read more Wolfe I'll see more connections, but I think Wolfe's and Harrison's constructions are quite different. I also think that Viriconium ascribes to my favorite orthodoxy - chaos - which I believe Wolfe avoids except to pat it on the head and tell it it's cute. I'd say it's most like Severian's engagement with The Last House in the sense of an order that follows, but has its own cadence also of a type with the trek with Agia through the Botanic Gardens. This is a note I wrote to a friend who was Viriconium curious: If you are seeking an escape then this is not the book for you. There are small dark places one must only crawl through with bright feathers bunched in your tight fist and there are hills from the tops of which can be seen nearly everything there is to be seen. ![]() Much in Viriconium is the same as it is here. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Which makes Two Bad Ants perfect as a simple, clear illustration for the theme of a book. The too-adventurous ants eventually learn their lessons: Choices have consequences. Kids will love the picture of the ants treading water (or coffee) to avoid being sucked into the “cave.” Read the story to enjoy the garbage disposal and toaster scenes! In one of their adventures, the ants end up in a “boiling brown lake,” really a cup of coffee. For example, the text describes the ants marching through a tunnel and then emerging into a world where “the sky was gone.” From the picture, we see that they have entered a kitchen window. The pictures, however, give us the full picture – the omniscient point of view. The story is told from the point of view of the two ants who veer off from their mission into a world of endless sugar crystals – a third person limited POV. With its ants-eye point of view and lessons learned at the end its perfect for introducing these two story-telling elements. ![]() It’s about teaching point of view and theme – two reading skills that are, to say the least, not the easiest to teach! Luckily, I found a picture book that works great for introducing, or practicing both of these topics, and it works great for upper elementary and middle school kids.įor a great picture book connection to point of view and theme, read Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg. This week, I’m re-posting an old favorite. ![]() ![]() ![]() As an academic researcher, Eagleman has studied time perception, synesthesia, sensory input, and decision-making. That kind of back-and-forth has been central to the career of David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine. More, perhaps, than participants in any other scientific field, neuroscientists can oscillate between the hard data of the physical world and the loftier questions of self and soul. One upshot of this reflexivity is a funny kind of loop: studying the brain tells you about being a self being a self offers up questions about the brain. When you get down to it, neuroscience is just brains studying brains. ![]() ![]() Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.įourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate-the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars-ever revealed her identity to. Including her first heartbreak.ĭuring a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. ![]() Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. ![]() |