A successful natural reference book and an easy-to-use planning and scheduling tool.
A nature-based guide to health, nutrition, gardening, housekeeping and more.
In pre-industrial times, people worked in tandem with the cycles of nature. In this book, husband-and-wife team Paungger and Poppe (The Code, 2011) parlay the folk wisdom of “natural timing” into tools appropriate for modern life. Each combination of moon phase, sign and position, they write, correlates favorably to certain aspects of life and unfavorably to others. (Housecleaning, for example, goes more smoothly under a waning moon or a Virgo day, according to the authors.) Paungger’s rural Alpine upbringing informs many of these extensively delineated, eminently practical techniques. Some topics covered here, such as forestry, may be outside the ken of many suburbanites or city dwellers, but most of the advice speaks to readers in any location. Paungger and Poppe urge readers to watch such characteristics as the moon’s sign and position in the zodiac (specifically, whether it has the ascending, increasing force of winter and spring, or the descending, declining force of summer and fall). However, the authors’ approach is more complex than simply following moon phases, as in farmers’ almanacs’ planting charts. They also address matters not specifically connected to the moon, such as how to determine one’s specific nutritional type (and recommended diet) and how to find personality characteristics in the numbers of a birthdate. Although some information here runs to the technical, the overall tone is easy and conversational, with little hint that the text has been translated from German. To encourage its techniques, the book provides a calendar of the moon’s signs, phases and positions from 2013 to 2020. (A prior edition was published in 2002 as Guided by the Moon; both are outgrowths of the authors’ 1993 German-language book.)
A successful natural reference book and an easy-to-use planning and scheduling tool.Pub Date: May 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615760148
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Wisdom Keeper Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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