by Barbara Sjoholm ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2007
An enticing entrée for those in search of extreme weather in a scenic clime.
An American travel writer details how the Arctic winter in Lapland warmed her heart.
With a childhood affinity for Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and a desperate need to emerge from the fog of grief following a painful breakup in 2001, Sjoholm (Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, 2006, etc.) sought a dramatic change of scene. So the Washington state native decided to take a Norwegian friend up on her offer to spend Christmas with her. “I wanted extremity and silence, a winter world to mirror my sense of loss,” writes the author, “an absence of sunshine while I found my bearings again.” That three-month sojourn led to another two years later, followed by a third excursion the year after; the experiences of all three trips comprise these engaging tales of winter in the northern reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Sjoholm took off for Sweden in late 2001. Her first stop was the village of Jukkasjärvi to witness the annual construction of the renowned Icehotel, a marvelous 60-room structure of snow and ice built by architects and artists each fall to host about 13,000 visitors then melt the following spring—what the author aptly dubs “a fine example of art for art’s sake.” She then attends an unforgettable performance of Macbeth, staged outside in the Ice Globe Theatre in temperatures as cold as -13° F. Other trip highlights include a visit to the post office in Rovaniemi, Finland, the unofficial North Pole and recipient of all unstamped letters to Santa; an enchanting encounter with reindeer; and a traumatic attempt at dogsledding. Sjoholm also offers thoughtful sociopolitical ruminations on the plight of the nomadic Sami—the indigenous people of Sápmi, which today includes parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia—and, somewhat paradoxically for one in search of darkness, numerous moving descriptions of the ever-changing, often ephemeral natural light.
An enticing entrée for those in search of extreme weather in a scenic clime.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59376-159-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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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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