by David Yeadon ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2006
All the plights and possibilities of traditional life, viewed through an exquisitely sensitive wide-angle lens. (39 line...
Yeadon (Seasons in Basilicata, 2004, etc.) chronicles a garrulous, well-spent year on the Scottish island where the famous tweed is woven.
Harris was tailor-made for Yeadon, a writer whose affinities have always veered toward wild, remote and wracked landscapes. “So what is the lure?” he asks. “Try silence, wilderness, solitude, dramatic soul-nurturing scenery, and a sense of coming home to something bold, basic, and honest.” Silence there may have been, but there is also lots of good talking in these pages. Yeadon can sing the glories of Harris tweed’s look and feel, but he wouldn’t have known about fixing lichen-colored dyestuff to the wool with fermented urine unless he talked to the weaver. He wouldn’t be able to explain the art of poaching unless he spoke to the poacher, or the nature of lobstering the treacherous channel called the Minch unless he shared the fisherman’s boat, or the chinks appearing in the island’s strict observance of the Sabbath unless he was hoisting a wee dram on the very Sunday. Yeadon’s poetic prose sings the beauty of tiny dark lochans, wild glens and corries, the call of a corncrake, a song by a peat fire. And he displays a formidable talent for describing scenery, of which Harris possesses a fantastic array, from Caribbean-blue waters to lunar moorlands, and for capturing a quality of light, from pearl to lemon-silver, that would make Parisians envious. From his chats with people who live on the isles—crofters or painters, shopkeepers or boat-builders, fishing guides or writers—emerges the hopeful sense that Harris will not lose its distinctiveness, that it will remain a place central to its own existence, with its stories and whiskey, fitful weather, standing stones and cottage-based tweed industry.
All the plights and possibilities of traditional life, viewed through an exquisitely sensitive wide-angle lens. (39 line drawings)Pub Date: July 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074181-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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