Book Description
Long believed to be disappearing and possibly even extinct, the Southwestern bighorn sheep of Utah’s canyonlands have made a surprising comeback. Naturalist Ellen Meloy tracks a band of these majestic creatures through backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels across the Southwest. Alone in the wilderness, Meloy chronicles her communion with the bighorns and laments the growing severance of man from nature, a severance that she feels has left us spiritually hungry. Wry, quirky and perceptive, Eating Stone is a brillant and wholly original tribute to the natural world.
Customer Reviews:
Quirky Nature Writing.......2007-10-15
Many write gorgeously about deserts and mountains, but few inject self-conscious weirdness, of the absurdist variety, into their lyricism. Ellen Meloy does. In Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, she describes her obsession with a band of desert bighorn sheep near her home in a small town on the Colorado Plateau and her wider explorations of the species in Baja California, on Navy bombing ranges, and around uranium-mining ghost towns. Readers can loll about in rhythmic, biblical prose, in sentences like, "The late afternoon light comes from the bedrock, from within the mountains themselves, pouring amber from granite and dust, wicking up through the trunks and out the branches of the foxtail pines." Then Meloy exclaims, "The next time you buff up the Hummer with an auto-detailing cloth that came from the skin of a petite rupicaprid, bond with the ungulates that share with us a molecular past."
Meloy welcomes the reader without pretension, so her bizarro sallies seem flirtatious. They tease, tantalize, and keep us alert even as they run the risk of annoying us. For my part, I enjoyed the jarring mysteries. It was like finding Dali touches in the corners of a grand Bierstadt landscape. For Meloy, the road along the Hoover dam becomes the "hair-thin rim of a giant potato chip." A diorama of bighorns in a museum "sounds as if its grinding up fresh loads of zirconium monkeys." She casts "a Giacometti shadow," invoking the uncanny yet familiar weirdness of those elongated statues. Like other nature writers, she exhorts us to wake up and pay attention, but she does so with these curious injunctions: "Admire the male midwife toad," "Master a hyena's laugh and use it when in the presence of politicians" and "Quit badgering your tax attorney." She observes a poodle's entrance into a small church in Baja California and then declares, "I am too snobby to share a church with a poodle."
Meloy seeks to mirror the strangeness of the world and of the mind. The very randomness and uncertainty are the point. As she finds herself in intimate contact with the desert and the sheep, her response is flailing, voracious, bewildered. She wants "to rise up and bite the desert to bits." Like Virginia Woolf, Meloy finds meaning in "moments of being." She seeks "the occasions when jolts from the universe fly open. This jolt, in this desert with these animals, is a belonging so overwhelming, it can put deep cracks in your heart." At the moment when she finally belongs, when she comes home, the experience breaks her. The wilderness makes her whole as it accepts her discontinuities. Perhaps this is the meaning of the subtitle, "Imagination and the loss of the wild." Wilderness embodies and welcomes chaos, the chaos that gives rise to imagination and spirit. In the wild, Meloy feels at home in the wildness of her mind.
Eating Stone - an interesting read.......2006-11-07
this is the story of Ellen Meloy's personal infatuation with desert bighorn ship and how she tracked a particular band over the course of a year. Her descriptions of the canyon country is without equal. Although an interesting read, the subject matter seemed to grow a bit tiring towards the end of the book.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from OnEarth, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2005. The length of the article is 841 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild.(Book Review)
Author: Florence Williams
Publication:
OnEarth (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 27
Issue: 3
Page: 40(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
The Best in Tent Camping: Missouri and the Ozarks guides you to the quietest, most beautiful, most secure, and best-managed campgrounds in Missouri and the Ozarks. Painstakingly selected from hundreds of campgrounds in Missouri and Arkansas, each campsite is rated for beauty, privacy, security, spaciousness, and cleanliness. Whether you are a native of the area in search of new territory or a vacationer on the lookout for that dream campground, this book unlocks the secrets to the best tent camping that Missouri and the Ozarks have to offer.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent resource for tent campers!.......2007-10-01
As the title suggests, this book is an EXCELLENT resource if you, like me, love to find the beautiful, out-of-the-way, quiet places to camp away from the RV crowds. I found this book in my local library, and checked it out 3 times for trips to Missouri, and now have finally purchased my own copy.
Each trip I was able to use this book to plan my itinerary in advance, pick exactly the places I wanted to camp and even the best campsites, as well as the hiking and other activities I wanted to do while in the area. With each campground featured you get a good idea of what makes that spot special, a detailed description (and map) of the campground so you can select the site that best fits your tastes, and a description of hiking trails and natural features to check out in the area. There are good directions, and side bars that summarize the details: cost, number of campsites, facilities available, contact and reservation info, etc.
This is a book I will use again and again as I camp!
Book Description
Precise at-a-glance information and informative descriptions are hallmarks of this tent camping guide. Includes the best quiet and beautiful sites in each state covered.
Customer Reviews:
Shhhh, don't tell anyone Steve........2004-03-24
Steve Henry gets it. If you camp because you love the beauty, solitude and adventure of the outdoors, then you'll love this book. Mr. Henry's advice has led us to some amazing sites in the Ozarks. I almost hesitate to recommend the book because I'd rather keep these places secret.
Best Ozark Camping Guide I've found........2002-07-18
It's not exactly easy to find Ozark specific camping guides but this one seems to contain all of the most important information. It is especially nice since it avoids all the road-side "campgrounds" and lists instead REAL camping areas, most of which are free to the general public. The book rates sites according to scenic appeal, safety and price and gives good tips for when and where to find the best (most secluded or picturesque sites). If you want an Ozarks Tenting Guide & like the idea of camping for absolutely FREE in the most beautiful areas that The Ozarks have to offer...this book is for you! Maybe we will see each other somewhere along The Buffalo River. I will be the sweaty guy, wandering aimlessly through the forest trying to find his Jeep.
Great book!!.......2001-06-27
This is a must read if you do a lot of camping. Steve Henry really puts the fun back into camping. This book makes you remember that camping isn't about the rv's and portable electronics, but the greatness of being outside.
Customer Reviews:
The Best of a Bad Lot.......2004-08-25
If you are looking for a writing handbook for a college writing class, this is the best there is. Ideally, you should get the paperback, but it appears to be out of print.
The volume wastes little time or space on trivia (web pages, business memos, etc.). The handling of grammar is clear and to the point. Discussions of reading and note-taking, argumentation, and analysis are useful, if not always inspired. Coverage of documentation and research writing is as good as such manuals get, which is to say decent without being fully satisfactory. Much of the pedagogical material interspersed with the rest, particularly about ESL students, cultural backgrounds, writing literature papers, and so forth is very well done.
Unlike every other manual I saw when my program reviewed nearly fifty of these tomes, Lunsford's text is clearly written by someone who understands what students will actually be asked to do in college classes. She doesn't lard the book with a lot of bad Mickey Mouse assignments. Those who actually read the text will find that she moves rapidly from basics (grammar, etc.) into elementary academic writing, which is of course exactly what professors will demand of students. Every other text I read through seems to think that professors want their students to write position papers expressing their opinions!
Lunsford has a charming, clear writing style, and the book is simply and clearly laid out. Those who only flip through it rapidly may think it insufficiently glitzy, but you buy a manual for its content, not its colors.
If you have to choose one writing textbook, this is far and away the best. Unfortunately, that just means it's acceptable, not that it's actually particularly good.
One day someone is going to write a manual that's about 500 pages (instead of 1,000), that's simple and clear and to the point, and that costs about $25. Until that happens, Andrea Lunsford's manual is your best bet for college writing.
St.Martin's Handbook 3rd Edition.......2000-04-30
This is a excellent resourse for the young writter to get reference how to write up reference and other english grammer. This book helped me in writting up my thesis and papers. This book can be used by graduate and undergraduate students. I recommend every home, office, and research laboratories ,universities should had it on there desk for reference. This is good resourse for International students, involved in any type of writing papers in scenitific journals.
Average customer rating:
- The Freshmen Team Does Well
- Another Anthology & Largely A Good Thing Too...
- Excellent Stories of Life in the Gay Community
- An Outstanding Book
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Book Description
Certain to become a literary touchstone, Fresh Men collects the best new writing by emerging gay authors from around the nation. The critically acclaimed author Edmund White, chair of the Creative Writing program at Princeton and the author of more than 17 gay works, selects 20 original stories from the new crop of extraordinary writers. With equal parts sensitivity and irreverence, Fresh Men speaks to the broad range of gay experiences. From stories of coming out, coming of age, self-representation and family to sex and love in the time of AIDS, from living in the closet to loving in a post-gay world, this book highlights the complexities of gay life. This groundbreaking collection also embodies a wide spectrum of literary tastes, from works rich in experimental, transgressive elements to more conventional, traditionally crafted stories.
Customer Reviews:
The Freshmen Team Does Well.......2005-07-20
First, this new anthology of gay writing, FRESH MEN, has a clever title with at least two meanings. Secondly, the writers are all for the most part unknown. Edmund White, who selected them says that not one writer has had a book published yet. Third, they come from all areas of the United States as well as the British Isles. And they are not all Caucasian. The stories are set in a variety of locales and are not all about gay men picking up other gay men in bars. We can finally read about gay men who interact with other people besides other gay men and live outside a gay ghetto in a large city, usually New York. As you would expect from most any collection of stories, some are better than others. Some of the stories are excellent. I would put "ONJ.com," "Acqua Calda," "TV Dinner" and "Teamwork" in that category. "ONJ.com" by Vestal McIntyre, the first story in the book, is about a young woman in the world of advertising who wishes to "make a gay friend," a silly wish on its face, and gets more than she bargains for. In Keith McDermott's "Acqua Calda" a young American wrestles with how and when or if he should tell an Italian whom he is attracted to that he is HIV positive. "TV Dinner" by Reed Hearne is a funny account of a minor TV personality's filming of a day in the life of a waiter in the California Bay Area. Kevin Reardon's "Teamwork," which according to the biographical data about the authors won the 2003 Richard Hall Memorial Short Story Contest, is a great little story about proofreaders at Healthco, "a pharmaceutical advertising agency. The narrator has a crush on Todd, a perfectly drawn character, who when he gets fired over an ampersand by Gregory, a gay art director who "played for the team," responds: "'You're a bastard, man. . . I am so out of here.'" He is just so "kwel."
This is a very good collection and introduces the reader to writers he wants to read more of. Several of the selections are from novels in progress and should be available soon if not already.
Another Anthology & Largely A Good Thing Too..........2004-12-18
These twenty stories seemed to me excellent, also okay, few deficient. I found a quarter of them to be good art.
(1) Five stories seem artistically meritorious. Plus the gay-specific content seems to universalize to general human themes.
"TV Dinner" is a romp. Set in a high-end status-snob restaurant, it serves up the real "menu" of human discomfort-food. Several "courses." The waiter's rage at being a "candy-ass bootlick," and his terrors too. The chef's self-deluded egotism. The society matron's gorging unhealthily on Status Cake. The smarmy politico mayor exposed as being a gross feeder. The cast of workers in the out-caste system, pretty petty frustrated in the all-too-subhuman jealousies and other deadly-sin ingredients. But the author is a master-wordchef who concocts up these raw materials gourmet-style with his buttercup-swirl of tall-food diction, aesthetically-nourishing word-candy, a just-desserts confection whose sauce-iness is perfectly balanced with sweet-sour imagery plus insight. This many-course tasting menu moves right along madcap but on point!
Not so shabby either is "Teamwork," about a proofreader at an advertising agency. Poignant specifically about the "beautiful young man named Todd D'Onofrio," fetching but unobtainable, the protagonist's Harlow or shepherd boy... But pointed generally about the universal human tangle of miscommunications, pettiness about font-styles, power and status issues, insecurities, insensitivities. The miscast of characters in the office seem to carry these warts and blemishes like a virus re-infecting those whose Psychological Immune Systems are not mature enough. Solid and sprightly, madcap and satirical.
Adult men with younger or teenage males is the subject of both "Some Speculations on the Bob Uncertainty" and also "Chicken." But the former, pondering why a young hunk continues to revisit an older man, seems to do so with much enjoyable grace, verve, bemused and appreciative non-needy distance aesthetic not emotional.
"American Widow" portrays a woman inundated by giant waves of major depression. It energetically risks sentimentality in the depicting of her almost-melodramatic multiple missteps, but it does powerfully paint her pathos.
(2) A second set of stories seems (to me) more simply to simply narrate events, almost diary style. In "Aqua Calda," an American on a film shoot in Italy, scores with an Italian. Okay... In "Taking Pictures," a highschooler sees that a teacher of his takes videotapes of the guys working out. Okay...
(3) Minority perspective is represented by "Wave," His Five-Year Sentence," and "Rondo." New here is local color and representativeness I guess.
(4) Psychological insight however Politically Non-Correct I saw in three stories. "ONJ.com" shows gay man and straight woman but can candidly ask whether this man at least is as he describes gay men generally, as being "damaged, dangerous people. They feel wronged and are looking for vengeance." Refreshing anyhow to investigate. In "Advanced Soaring," why why why does moonstruck Mark keep on seeking after louche lax Luke at all? And in "The Inadvertant Headshot," the protagonist fears becoming a soiled type: "the humorless, thin-skinned gay man, the art fag, the prissy prude who trafficked in disdain" contemptuously to "rue, resent and scorn again" because feeling out of control. Something gay here; something human also. We are well past the Dark Age when a hoity (and hetero) reviewer would allude to the above dirty laundry as indicating something like "the pathology of homosexuality," blah blah. (Of course, it is still verboten now, to even reference in the same sentence, "homosexual males," and the issue of "attachment disorder" or problems-with-intimacy...)
Finally in its own category, "Ground Control" sends us home with a take-out treat. The 16-year-old gay highschooler has his problems, with self-image, self-acceptance. But his, and our, hero is his 14-year-old brother Frankie. This kid comes out to his dysfunctional family simply by drawing Star War cartoons of himself and Luke Skywalker. At the kitchen table. Just going about his business. Utterly unbugged by his sister's or anyone's reaction to his being his own true if socially-despised self so early. A universal model for us all, gay, straight, bi, or plaid...
Then six more stories I haven't mentioned. But all told, the anthology is quite valid for those interested in some quality and much variety in current gay male short fiction.
Excellent Stories of Life in the Gay Community.......2004-11-17
"Fresh Men" is a collection of twenty short stories selected by distinguished author Edmund White. All are interesting. There are stories with African-American, Hispanic, Filipino, and Asian characters, as well as the usual types. There are stories set at school, in the family, at work, at cruising, and around relationships. The variety is good, at least as it has been understood.
The last two sentences of Edmund White's introduction read: "If this anthology is thought of as a house, it's a big rooming house inhabited by every kind of client, of every age and color and background, some on their way up and some in quick descent; some of the roomers are shacking up and others are breaking up. It's a very full house."
When I look at the "About the Authors" section, the twenty stories' authors now live in or near the following places: New York City 7, Yale University 2, 1 each at Boston, San Francisco, Long Beach, Montreal, London, Austin, and 5 unknown. When I read the stories, the locations are New York City 6, coastal California 6, with additional locations in Montreal, Dublin, London, Sicily, Honolulu, New Orleans, Tucson, Florida (near the Space Center), rural Maine, and over the Atlantic {Some stories have multiple locations). There is a feel of gay cosmopolitans writing for other gay cosmopolitans. This has been a successful approach for previous anthologies.
Still, after the November elections, I have heard endless commentary on the divide between 'blue' and 'red' states, on the need to counter 'religious' criticisms, on the fear of being transferred from a state with domestic partnerships and state permission to raise children to one without. These stories do not feature material anti-gay characters or people considering marital status-related issues. The stories are personal and relationship-oriented, not political.
I do worry that writers from or directed at socially conservative areas are not part of the "new voices in gay fiction" that "Fresh Men" proclaims. One of the reasons for the setbacks in the recent elections was the inability of a large part of the Midwestern and Southern electorate to imagine a different, improved world. Having local voices is a large part of moving ahead.
This is a fine collection. I can relate to the stories. I do recommend the book highly.
An Outstanding Book.......2004-10-15
I recommend this book to anyone, gay or straight. The writing is top-notch, often hilarious, and always compelling. From beginning to end it will hold your interest and impress you. We'll be hearing from these authors in the future, I'm certain, and this is a wonderful opportunity to get in the "ground floor" of their careers. You won't be disappointed!
Book Description
Fresh Men 2 collects the best new writing by emerging gay authors from around the nation. With equal parts sensitivity and irreverence, the anthology speaks to the broad range of gay experiences. From stories of coming out, coming of age, self-representation and family to sex and love in the time of AIDS, from living in the closet to loving in a post-gay world, this book highlights the complexities of gay life. Fresh Men 2 is a groundbreaking collection that also embodies a wide spectrum of literary tastes, from works rich in experimental, transgressive elements to more conventional, traditionally crafted stories.
Customer Reviews:
LITERARY LUST.......2005-10-11
This premier anthology of gay fiction features twenty stories by a diverse collection of new authors who all have one very special thing in common: their ability to shine a new light on upscale gay fiction. In a collection rife with excellence, one is hard pressed to choose a favorite. However, mention must be made of Michael Van Devere's short story "Manboobs", which is a comic collision of physical desire and psychological demand. Van Devere's take on gym-obsessed urban America is spot-on. His elusive creation of the title character Manboobs is not only riotous and real, but the narrator's growing lust of him spawns memories of Mary Shelly's Frankenstien. Michael Van Devere is clearly an emerging writer who has the gifts that herald the beginning of a long career. I have read and reread this anthology and can only say bravo to the editor and authors for revealing the highs and lows of the modern gay psyche.
Product Description
Fresh Men 2 collects the best new writing by emerging gay authors from around the nation. With equal parts sensitivity and irreverence, the anthology speaks to the broad range of gay experiences. From stories of coming out, coming of age, self-representation and family to sex and love in the time of AIDS, from living in the closet to loving in a post-gay world, this book highlights the complexities of gay life. Fresh Men 2 is a groundbreaking collection that also embodies a wide spectrum of literary tastes, from works rich in experimental, transgressive elements to more conventional, traditionally crafted stories.
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