Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water

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the word "rivers" caught my attention

Beautiful, perceptive writing

Great essays. Reflections.

Wet feet again.

Walking in the rivers with Kathleen Dean Moore

Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water
Kathleen Dean Moore
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156004615

Book Description

In these twenty elegant essays, a philosopher and amateur naturalist meanders along the rivers and streams of the american West-and muses on love, loss, aging, motherhood, happiness, the art of poking around, and other important matters. “A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place” (Terry Tempest Williams).

Customer Reviews:

the word "rivers" caught my attention.......2007-02-10

I thought this book was about the rivers themselves--perhaps she had floated these rivers and was writing about the sights and scenes. My mistake. The essays are very well done and I appreciate her sincerity and insights. Although there is not a description of the Brazos River in the essay about the Brazos. I enjoyed the human interest but was left wondering how the daughter's relationship turned out!

Beautiful, perceptive writing.......2006-08-13

Kathleen Moore is my favorite author. She writes beautifully and perceptively about the relationship between humans and the natural world, and how that influences relationships between people. I ordered "Riverwalking" because my original copy is somehow missing. I can highly recommend her other books, "Holdfast" and "The Pine Island Paradox."

Great essays. Reflections........2006-07-26

"Reflections" in the subtitle is very descriptive of this collection of essays. Very serene musings. In this book, Moore is very perceptive. Conveys very well how oneself fits into everything in one's surroundings. Very descriptive observations. Good balance of observations and musings. Sometimes books of this genre are closer to a collection of random thoughts that are not necessarily interesting to others. This book is not like that. Just enough details of places to make it substantive and interesting, and just enough musings to get one thinking somewhat along the same lines.

Wet feet again........2001-04-14

Although I first read this collection of essays nearly five years ago, Derrick Jensen's recent interview with Moore in "The Sun" magazine prompted me to get my feet wet in this river again. "I have come to believe that all essays walk in rivers," Moore writes in the Preface. "Essays ask the philosophical question that flows through time--How shall I live my life? The answers drift together through countless converging streams, where they move swiftly below the reflective surface of the natural world and mix in the deep and quiet places of the mind. Tthis is where an essayist must walk, stirring up the mud" (p. xiii).

There are reflections of love, loss, motherhood, and happiness in these twenty river essays, which tend to run deep. We find Moore river-camping on the Willamette, wondering "What will draw our children back home?" (p. 8); contemplating happiness and sorrow on the John Day River; discovering "love can lead people to beauty" (p. 27), while night-skiing along the headwaters of the Rogue River with her husband, Frank; poking around Winter Creek (my favorite essay in the book); contemplating erosion in the Little Stoney River; "keeping house in the woods" (p. 54) while camping near the Smohalla River; identifying plants at the McKenzie River; spending time with her father under a full moon at the headwaters of the Metolius; walking barefoot up Bear Creek; camping among Sonoran Desert arroyos; country-western dancing to songs about rivers; travelling in the jet stream to see her dying father; contemplating motherhood, loss, and aging by the Puget Sound; studying newts at Klickitat Creek; fly-fishing on the Deschutes River; soul searching on the Salish River; encountering a rattlesnake near Alamo Canyon Creek; and looking at the Maclaren River under the midnight sun in Alaska.

RIVERWALKING shows that we can never step in the same river twice, and will appeal to those who have ever had seeds in their socks, or rocks in their pockets (p. 31).

G. Merritt

Walking in the rivers with Kathleen Dean Moore.......2001-03-11

Writing with clarity and purpose is difficult, but Kathleen Dean Moore has mastered the craft in Riverwalking. Her essays are both simple and complex as they mix her experiences in the natural world with her philosophical questions about life.

She is at her best in the essay, "The John Day River", where she questions a universal balance between happiness and despair. She wonders if the joy of cowboys who park their trucks in wheat fields and turn up their radios "to dance in the headlights" (page 20) enjoy themselves at another's expense. In her casual, but eloquent style she questions the possibility of Nature collecting a debt, payable by sickness or sorrow charged to one (her own father's hospitalization, perhaps) to cover the cost of happiness for another.

Kathleen Dean Moore is a gifted essayist. She has found a beautiful confluence where her philosophical questions empty into the deep ocean of nature writing. She has earned her place as one of the genre's very best.

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Poignant and Enlightened

Sensitive look at who's in Arabia besides Arabs

Fine insights and sensitivity to expatriate atmospherics

Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran
Christopher Dickey
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0871134632

Customer Reviews:

Poignant and Enlightened.......2001-09-21

Christopher Dickey has written an impressive book on the lives of the non-Arab expatriates living throughout the Middle East. Mr. Dickey provides a very lucid account of the experiences of several westerners living (or passing through) different countries of the middle east, in the process shedding light both on the indigenous cultures as well as the one they create for themselves once there.

The only reservation I have about the book (and it does not take away from its overall merits) is that Mr. Dickey's singular window into the lives of non-Arab expats is not matched by any similar insights into the lives of Arab expatriates. This glosses over the rainbow of cultures which exist in most of the Gulf countries, and often impede many westerners from being able to appreciate the diversity that awaits them.

Overall, an easy, engrossing read... with wonderful anecdotes and a singular view into a group of people which most people are not even aware exist.

Sensitive look at who's in Arabia besides Arabs.......2000-06-18

This is a series of essays, some previously published in magazines like Vanity Fair, by Newsweek journalist Dickey.

The author gracefully paints both romance and reality; certainly the west's long-running orientalist fantasies still exist in the heart of anyone who has wanted to visit that part of the world. Dickey simply acknowledges these and strives to give insightful reports of the volatile politics and diverse societies (mostly those of foreigners) in the vast region covered. There is a guileless sense of truth on these pages that stays with the reader.

There are very good chapters about Arabs themselves: a censured writer in Cairo, e.g., Dickey's record of stunned Iranians voicing their dismay in reaction to a particularly heinous American military blunder.

Dickey offers occasional history lessons (the chapter on Oman's leadership), humor (the witty chapter about British expats in Dubai), and poignant human interest (many chapters touch upon the innocent lives scarred or ended by various military acts).

I picked this up thinking I was getting a light book about western expats, but that is a very small part of Dickey's focus. He writes of Filipino tanker crews facing mortal danger with a smile and a shrug, a Russian businessmen in a bad suit and the UN's splendidly stylish Turkish PR man, a self-important French Canadian aid worker. Dickey's contacts are many and vivid.

The book is resolutely but subtly anti-war. It will be impossible for a reader to generalize about Arabs after reading Dickey's book.

A great book to give to anyone going to an Arab country, either as expat or visitor.

Fine insights and sensitivity to expatriate atmospherics.......1998-09-29

Greetings to all.

Mr. Dickey's book is equally insightful and even more useful now in 1998 than when first published about the cultural atmospherics and (diversified) adjustments of expatriates in major countries of the Middle East.

Based on his travels in the region, Mr. Dickey developed many discerning insights from his meeting and interviewing a widely-representative range of expatriates (singletons and families).

I had read his book before I served at American embassies in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council during and after the last Gulf War. His book's treatment of the resident expatriates (the shakiest and flakiest had left Saudi Arabia and adjacent countries) was very helpful and accurate.

A bonus of this book is the inclusion of the views and opinions of Arab employers and other contacts who discuss - with remarkable poignancy - the expatriates and how the various societies perceive and adjust (as they can) to one another.

Highly recommended as an easy-to-read book for sensitizing oneself on many of the cultural, emotional and practical matters of the region.

Good preparation about what to know, who is where and doing what, where to look, and how to think about living and thriving there (and also why some expats do not thrive or survive).

Excellent companion to Gordon Robison's paperback entitled "Arab Gulf States" (2d Edition, 1996), published by Lonely Planet Press and also available at Amazon.com.

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Expats - Travels In Arabia From Tripoli To Teheran
Christopher Dickey -
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PRUU8U

Book Description

Schools of fish, flocks of birds, and swarms of insects are examples of three-dimensional aggregation. Covering both invertebrate and vertebrate species, the authors investigate this pervasive biological phenomenon through a variety of disciplines, from physics to mathematics to biology. The first section is devoted to the various methods, mainly optical and acoustic, used to collect three-dimensional data over time. The second section focuses on analytical methods used to quantify pattern, group kinetics, and interindividual interactions within the group. The section on behavioral ecology and evolution deals with the functions of aggregative behavior from the point of view of an inherently selfish individual member. The final section uses models to elucidate how group dynamics at the individual level creates emergent pattern at the level of the group.

Book Description

One of the first things a student of partial differential equations learns is that it is impossible to solve elliptic equations by spatial marching. This new book describes how to do exactly that, providing a powerful tool for solving problems in fluid dynamics, heat transfer, electrostatics, and other fields characterized by discretized partial differential equations. Elliptic Marching Methods and Domain Decomposition demonstrates how to handle numerical instabilities (i.e., limitations on the size of the problem) that appear when one tries to solve these discretized equations with marching methods. The book also shows how marching methods can be superior to multigrid and pre-conditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) methods, particularly when used in the context of multiprocessor parallel computers. Techniques for using domain decomposition together with marching methods are detailed, clearly illustrating the benefits of these techniques for applications in engineering, applied mathematics, and the physical sciences.

Book Description

"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero--sullen, gawky Hugh Person--to Switzerland . . . As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride. . . . Eight years later--following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment--Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects." --Martin Amis

Customer Reviews:

A Novella That Nobody Understands (?).......2007-09-16

I read that book and was a bit baffled.

After reading the book, it was clear to me that one would need some help in trying to sort out exactly what the book means. Many other people such as John Updike have been baffled by the book. According to professional analysis found elsewhere, Transparent Things was first published in December 1971 in Esquire. And, from what Nabokov said, he finished the slim novella on April fool's day, of that same year. Is that the first tip? Is this book a bit of a sophisticated joke?

Most people have a hard time understanding what it means, and it takes at least two reads to get any sort of an understanding. Nabokov himself was amused by the critics and probably would continue to be amused today if he was still alive, and he said: "Amongst the reviewers several careful readers have published some beautiful stuff about it. Yet neither they nor, of course, the common criticule discerned the structural knot of the story."

And his biographer is quoted:

Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd's analysis attempts to untie that "knot" with a more specific elucidation: "Within the small compass of Transparent Things and the bleak life of Hugh Person, Nabokov ruptures the relationship of reader, character, and author more radically than he has ever done, in order to explore some of his oldest themes: the nature of time; the mystery and privacy of the human soul, and its simultaneous need to breach its solitude; the scope of consciousness beyond death; the possibility of design in the universe."

So where does that leave us average reader? What are we to make of it all? What is Nabokov's "knot." Without giving away the story, I can only guess but it is a "dream like" narrative of a man who is delusional and later near the end he is in a schizophrenic state? But as noted by others, it is not the protagonist himself who narrates the tale in a wild fashion, but a third party who is (presumably) lucid.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I am happy to discuss the book with anyone; but, was Person not in some sort of delusional state at the end? And, how does his described actions show us a window on our soul, or even blur the boundary between life and death? Or is there a whimsical element here? Or is to make us think, or again is it just literary art?

Many call the book a masterpiece. I think it is a very imaginative and hard to fathom piece of literature. It is literature as art, or art-for-art's sake. Nabokov has removed all the boundaries on his writing, mixing time and events. So, understand it or not, it is an interesting read.

"Is All We See Or Seem, But A Dream Within A Dream?".......2007-01-22

Nothing that Nabokov writes is "transparent." He always is referencing at least two things if not a whole plethora of images and metaphors at once with each line. In this novel, a late one, Nabokov has developed his inimical and sublime writing style. His sentences are virtual perfection. His illustrations are so real and yet so imaginary.

In addition, the story line is very complex. The protagonist is traveling through Europe in a repetition of a trip long gone by. Many things do not come about as he would want them. Each time, for Nabokov's own particular reasons. Sexuality and the lack there of is tantamount to the story. Yet what makes the telling so particularly `Nabokov' is the manner in which he switches from temporal event to temporal event without necessarily giving any indication to the reader that we have come "unstuck in time."

While the book is a rather short 104 pages, the complexity that is built into the story will hold all serious readers of literature in rapt attention. The story moves quickly and it is necessary for the reader to slow down the pace of the reading to make sure that the implications are properly conveyed and absorbed. It truly is a highly recommended example of Nabokov's true literary genius.

"The mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another.".......2005-10-02

In Vladimir Nabokov's novella "Transparent Things" middle-aged Hugh Person speculates that if the future already existed as a concrete reality, then perhaps we would not dwell on the past. Instead, he reasons, future and past could balance each other like a "seesaw." If one wishes to remain "at the exact level of the moment" Person argues, then it's advisable not to concentrate too much on material objects as we risk "sinking into the history of that object." Person explains that "immediate reality" is but a "thin veneer" over the past, and it's much better not to test "the tension film" of this reality.

When the novella begins, Person returns to Switzerland for his fourth trip. Person made his first trip to Switzerland with his father 18 years earlier. Ten years later, as a copy editor for a publishing firm, he made the second trip. His task was to provoke a particularly difficult author into producing a long awaited novel. On this second trip, he met his future wife, Armande--a "dry-souled, essentially unhappy" but kinky woman.

In spite of Person's admonition not to dwell on the past, his arrival in Switzerland evokes powerful memories. Person deliberately feeds these memories by insisting on staying in the same hotel room as before. Exactly why Person is making this fourth trip to Switzerland becomes apparent only after Nabokov leads the reader through the complex labyrinth of Hugh Person's mind. Why does a man avoid his past, and yet seek it out--even though memories yield nothing but exquisite pain? "Transparent Things" is just over 100 pages long, and the author's languid, elegant pace and remarkable, controlled skill as a storyteller is evident in every page of this exquisitely clever tale--displacedhuman

THE RIDDLE OF BEING.......2005-07-27

THERE is little point in attempting a review of these 80 pages of ephemera. A study of one man's inability to fit into his own skin. To put it mildly, a depressing excursion into the one character, Hugh Person's, life. The author says that had Hugh not had his transparent side there would be no point to the book. But I found the transparent side just as infected with this fetish for trivia.

However, the author gives some great advice if the reader could sort it out: Don't "explain the inexplicable." Live with the "supposition that 'reality' may be only a 'dream'." "The very awareness of being aware" may be just "a built-in hallucination." And don't forget this quote: "There is no lake without a closed circle of reliable land." This reader is still searching to find these transparent things.

powerful and full of texture, yet deliciously brief.......2004-05-25

This is typical brilliant Nabokov, with plenty of detail and mysterious threads laid down throughout that the imaginative can choose to follow or ignore. Because it was written in English rather than translated, Nabokov's prose is at its most powerful and organic - by far. The stories in this are extremely haunting, at least for me, musing on the nature of life after death, among many other themes. It is true genius and you can read it in a single sitting. Get it. You won't be disappointed.

Cosas Transparentes (Translation from Transparent Things (1972))

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Cosas Transparentes (Translation from Transparent Things (1972))
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: VERSAL, Barcelona, Spain
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Transparent Things
Nobakov
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JD65ZW

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Transparent Things
Nabokov Vladimir
Manufacturer: McGraw Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UDKRPU

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Transparent Things
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Fawcett crest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Transparent Things A New Novel

Manufacturer: McGraw Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Literary Texts As Nonlinear Patterns: A Chaotics Reading of Rainforest, Transparent Things, Travesty, and Tristram Shandy

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Literary Texts As Nonlinear Patterns: A Chaotics Reading of Rainforest, Transparent Things, Travesty, and Tristram Shandy

Manufacturer: ACTA Universitatis Gothoburgensis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 9173463434

Product Description

Doctoral Dissertation at Göteborg University,1998

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Transparent Things
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Transparent Things
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Transparent Things

Manufacturer: Fawcett Crest Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Product Description

In TRANSPARENT THINGS, Nabokov has written the perfect novella, a work of dazzling invention and originality, ingenious in form, by turns moving, hilarious, and terrifying in substance.

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