Average customer rating:
- Another great explorers book
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Exploring East End Waters: A Natural History and Paddling Guide
Mike Bottini
Manufacturer: Harbor Electronic Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Trail Guide to the South Fork - With a Natural History (Long Island, New York)
ASIN: 0974020168
Release Date: 2005-06-15 |
Product Description
The most comprehensive guide to kayaking and canoeing on the East End of Long Island, Mike Bottini's long-awaited Exploring East End Waters is based on his award-winning column in The Southampton Press. From the Peconic River to Block Island Sound, Mike covers the extraordinary variety of East End paddling areas with a veteran's eye for details and a professional sense of the natural history of the area. Consider the range of possibilities: fresh-water river and ponds, tidal creeks, salt-water ponds, bays, and estuaries, and--for the adventurous--sound and ocean. Where else will you find such a variety of paddling waters? No wonder the East End has been cited as "one of the last great places" by The Nature Conservancy. Exploring East End Waters covers over 30 paddling trips, with detailed hand-drawn maps and "spotlight topics" for each trip, as well as photos and much more!
Customer Reviews:
Another great explorers book.......2007-05-11
From the author of Trail Guide to the South Fork comes another great book. This one explores the waterways of the east end of Long Island by kayak and canoe.
The author relates experiences of various paddling trips, (about 3 dozen) and is packed with a lot of local history. A must read for local paddlers.
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A prospect of flowers: A book about wild flowers
Andrew Young
Manufacturer: J. Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B0007J679M |
Book Description
Conveniently sized for a pocket, briefcase, or backpack, the redesigned Let's Go London Pocket City Guide is an easy-to-use guide contained within a foldout map - a vital resource for residents and tourists alike. The eleven sturdy panels of full-color maps show London's downtown and metro areas, as well as the city's Underground routes. Forty pages of text provide essential information on neighborhoods, sights, museums, dining, nightlife, and shopping in every price range. Quick-reference sight and street indices help you orient yourself and get where you need to go.
Customer Reviews:
You're going to LOVE BRITAIN! .......2004-09-23
I've spent a year in England and have made >30 visits all together.
Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!
MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for pubs, hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the underground and the double decker buses. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the city centre. When you get to be an old London hand, remember that the classic Londoners guide will always be an A to Z (zed) map and guide. If you want to go a bit beyond the central core of the city (perhaps to Windsor, Hampton, or further away) you really need the proper AtoZ to be able to find exact routes and streets.
Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!
Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.
Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.
Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)
Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.
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London of 100 Years Ago
John Coulter
Manufacturer: Alan Sutton Publishing, Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0750918861 |
Book Description
London of One Hundred Years Ago gives a vivid insight into the life of the metropolis in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. A fascinating selection of early photographs and other illustrations, combined with memorable quotations from the writing of the day, recall a lost generation of Londoners and their great city. The book recaptures the spirit of a past age. The London that had so hugely expanded during the nineteenth century excited a wide range of intense responses. Its sheer size and variety, and its extremes of grandeur and ugliness, poverty and extraordinary wealth, provoked astonished reactions from visitors and provided an inexhaustible topic for writers who knew the capital well. Their accounts recall the stink and congestion of the streets, the sprawl of new building, the burgeoning population, the masses of commuters and shoppers, the undercurrents of disorder and crime, and the sometimes worthy attempts made by the city's governors and benefactors to improve social conditions and to enhance the appearance of the principal capital of the British Empire.
The fine selection of illustrations that have been brought together for this book record the startling contrasts of the time. The pictures show royalty and the aristocracy, the professionals and the growing middle class, the office-workers and street-sellers and the vast working population. They also offer an unforgettable glimpse of trends in fashion and entertainment, and recall changing modes of transport and types of work at the beginning of the twentieth century. The accompanying text reveals, too, the attitudes, opinions and habits of Londoners and brings their ordinary concerns and activities back to life.
London of One Hundred Years Ago will appeal to everyone who is keen to learn more about the city's history and about England in an age which now seems so remote. The book creates a powerful impression of this period of unprecedented developments, but it also illustrates the strength of an underlying culture that has resisted change and is recognizable today.
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- Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905
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Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905-1950
Mary Kratt
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0807848719
Release Date: 2000-10-11 |
Book Description
From early hand-colored cards printed in Germany to photographic views in both color and black and white, Mary Boyer's extensive collection of postcards yields a unique glimpse of Charlotte, North Carolina, during the time of extraordinary growth that underpins today's dynamic city.
The postcards—many of them rare and valuable—portray people, hotels, parks, city and street views, residences, schools, sports venues, government buildings, churches, theaters, and more. Many of the buildings portrayed in the cards were subsequently demolished to make way for larger, more modern structures. The extensive captions go well beyond simply describing the scene on each postcard, offering little-known details of Charlotte's diverse social history and lore.
The resulting pictorial history forms a charming visual record of a Charlotte that has largely vanished, one that will be treasured by long-term and new residents of the city and welcomed by the legions of postcard collectors all over the world.
Customer Reviews:
Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905.......2000-10-27
A showcase of early century postcards featuring the Historic Architecture of Charlotte, NC. This book is great for history buffs and postcard aficionados alike. It chronicles, in photographs, the urban development of a southern town, and the subsequent demolition of that town to make room for the emerging city development. Sadly some beautiful buildings and homes were destroyed in the process. "Remembering Charlotte" does a wonderful job of resurrecting those structures once more.
Customer Reviews:
St Pete and the Florida Dream.......2005-09-20
This book was shipped to me extremely fast and was in excellent condition. The information in the book is fascinating; in fact, there is so much information you might have to read it twice to absorb it all!
Average customer rating:
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Tibet: The Sacred Realm, Photographs 1880-1950
Lobsang P. Lhalungpa
Manufacturer: Aperture
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Binding: Paperback
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Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia 1921-1925
ASIN: 0893811211 |
Book Description
Ever since the first European travelers reached Tibet six centuries ago, Westerners have been fascinated and tantalized by tales of that legendary, remote mountain civilization. Today, Tibet 's peaceful , integrated way of life; deeply felt Buddhist tradition; and its culture rich in art, architecture, dance and music have all but disappeared, gradually replaced by the trappings of life introduced since the Chinese take-over of the 1950s. Most of the 3,000 monasteries and temples that once dotted the Tibetan countryside have been destroyed or converted into museums. Only in a few scattered emigre communities, in the treasures hastily smuggled out by 100,000 refugees who fled Tibet in 1959, and in a handful of photographs, is the old Tibet remembered and preserved.
Tibet: The Sacred Realm brings together for the first time a selection of more than 140 of these rare photographs, taken from 1880 to 1950 by more than twenty intrepid adventurers, naturalists, explorers, scientists, and missionaries, who were among the very few in the West to travel to Tibet. In this valuable visual record the forward-looking thirteenth Dalai Lama sits in exile in India surrounded by his high officials; one of Tibet's wealthiest families poses in their Western-style dining room; the artificial lake of Lhasa reflects the imposing gilded roofs of the Potala Palace; Buddhist monks perform sacred dances in ornate animal masks; pilgrims circumambulate the holy city; and monks and sheepskin-bundled nomads gather on the vast northern plains to listen for the first time to a visitor's gramophone.
Selected from the collections of twenty-three institutions' archives and private sources in Europe and the United States, the photographs represent the finest work of the explorer-photographers Alexandra David-Neel, Brooke Dolan, George Taylor, Ilya Tolstoy, and Claude White, among others, including the Tibetan photographer Sinam Wangfel Laden-La. Facing inclement weather, the threats of bandits, the objections of the lamas, the countless other hardships, these photographers still managed to distill the essence of Tibet's mystery and fascination.
Recalling his early years in Tibet, Buddhist scholar, translator, and son of the former chief state oracle of Tibet, Lobsang P. Lhalungpa adds another dimension to the story revealed in the photographs. He shares his recollections of a boyhood in Lhasa, his training under the most revered Tibetan lamas, his life as a monk official in the Dalai Lama's government, and his sorrowful departure from his native land: "I mounted my favorite gelding, which had been saddled with its finest saddle cover. As I bent down to tuck the folds of my clothes under one leg, my round, fur-and-brocade-trimmed hat slipped off my head and fell to the ground. I remember feeling instant apprehension. Was this a sign that I would never see Lhasa again?"
As the technological age threatens to swallow, one by one, the unique civilizations of the world, the lessons to be learned from the age-old traditions of Tibet become all the more valuable. Tibet's past, illuminated here by glimpses of special vision, offers profound spiritual insight and a majestic feast for the eye.
The photographs are introduced by a preface by his Holiness the Dalai Lama.
"Whatever the fate of Tibet, the spiritual essence of the Sacred Realm remains in the hearts of the Tibetan people. Our cultural heritage lives, too, in the handful of photographs taken in our country before 1950, all the more precious because they preserve a sense of time and place that now exists only in our memories."--Lobsang P. Lhalungpa from the Chronicle
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Trials and Triumphs: A Colorado Portrait of the Great Depression, With Fsa Photographs
Stephen J. Leonard
Manufacturer: Univ Pr of Colorado
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ASIN: 0870813110 |
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50 anos de fotografia espanola en la coleccion de la Real Sociedad Fotografica (1900-1950): 15 julio-29 septiembre 1996
Manufacturer: Fundacion Cultural Mapfre Vida
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ASIN: 8489455082 |
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History in photographs, 1900-1950
Manufacturer: New Educational Press
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0904025063 |
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History in photographs, 1900-1950
Manufacturer: New Educational Press
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0904025055 |
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Original Photographs: 1880-1950
Andrew Wheatcroft
Manufacturer: Kegan Paul Intl
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0710304935 |
Book Description
This book addresses the molecular bases of some of the most important biochemical rhythms known at the cellular level. The approach rests on the analysis of theoretical models closely related to experimental observations. Among the main rhythms considered are glycolytic oscillations observed in yeast and muscle, oscillations of cyclic AMP in Dictyostelium amoebae, intracellular calcium oscillation observed in a variety of cell types, the mitotic oscillator that drives the cell division cycle in eukaryotes, pulsatile hormone signaling, and circadian rhythms in Drosophila. This book will be of interest to life scientists such as biochemists, cell biologists, chronobiologists, medical scientists and pharmacologists. In addition, it will appeal to scientists studying nonlinear phenomena, including oscillations and chaos, in chemistry, physics, mathematics and theoretical biology.
Customer Reviews:
Great book on non-linear dynamics of metabolic pathways.......2006-03-10
Albert Goldbeter wrote in the 70s the first articles with models on the oscillations that arise from positive feed-back regulation on metabolic pathways and since then much work has been done by him and other groups on the non-linear behavior of these systems.
This book has great chapters such as the one decribing the transitions the glycolytic pathway can suffer when some biological parameters are modified, varying from a steady-state metabolic flux to an oscillatory, complex or even chaotic one.
The math is quite advanced and in order to fully understand the consequences withdrawn from the models the reader will need a good knowledge of calculus more specifically of systems of non-linear differential equations.
In order to get full advantage of this book I would recommend fetching his early articles in pubmed with the numerical parameters for the equations as well as implementing these models in Matlab or Mathematica.
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Topics on Riemann Surfaces and Fuchsian Groups (London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series)
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521003504 |
Book Description
This book presents a cross-section of different aspects of Riemann surfaces, introducing the reader to the basics as well as highlighting new developments in the field. It provides a mixture of classical material, recent results and some non-mainstream topics. The book is based on lectures from the conference Topics on Riemann Surfaces and Fuchsian Groups held in Madrid to mark the 25th anniversary of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.
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- Mistress of Southern Fiction
- Greatest living southern writer
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Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Library of America
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Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)
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The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
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Eudora Welty: A Biography
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter/Reflections in a Golden Eye/The Ballad of the Sad Cafe/The Member of the Wedding/The Clock Without Hands (Library of America)
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Eudora Welty Photographs
ASIN: 188301154X |
Amazon.com
This Library of America volume gathers all the long fiction published by the beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Throughout her long and storied career, Welty has been most famous, perhaps, for her short stories. But it's in her novels that she attempted some of her most ambitious and powerful creations: the idiosyncratic fable that is The Robber Bridegroom, drawing on legends, local history, folktale, and myth; the underrated, wickedly funny short novel The Ponder Heart; and Losing Battles, a familial epic 15 years in the making and begun in bits and pieces while Welty cared for her sick mother. In a strange inversion of the author's usual career trajectory, Welty's only attempt at a roman à clef came late in life, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist's Daughter, the quiet, moving, largely autobiographical story of a woman coming to grips with her father's death. The novels alone earn Welty a place as one of the finest writers our century has produced; taken together with the Library of America companion volume, Stories, Essays, & Memoir, it's a body of work that William Maxwell calls "beyond human power of praising." Welty rarely strayed for long from the place of her birth, but her fiction is as capacious as the human heart itself. Like Faulkner, she has taken her own corner of Mississippi and made it encompass the world.
Customer Reviews:
Mistress of Southern Fiction.......2006-12-21
Each new volume from The Library of America, the non-profit publisher that has become the de facto literary hall of fame, is a cause for celebration. Its goal of preserving in an enduring format the best fiction and non-fiction is a significant bulwark against the encroaching tides of cultural relativism that attempts to render any value judgments meaningless, as well as a consumer society that insists that if it ain't new, it ain't good.
In the case of Eudora Welty, we're given two volumes: a collection of five novels ("The Robber Bridegroom," "Delta Wedding," "The Ponder Heart," "Losing Battles" and the Pulitzer-winning "The Optimist's Daughter"), and another of her essays, her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings" and her short stories. From her first published short stories, "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" in 1937, to her last novel in 1972, Welty captures with her highly readable style and sharp eye and ear the varieties and eccentricities of Southern life.
But while the South claims Welty as one of its own, she may not necessarily return the favor. Teh cause is both geographic and a matter of choice. Although she was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1909 and lived there all her life, her father was from Ohio and her mother from West Virginia, a state created by the Civil War that went for the Union. This isn't Margaret Mitchell we're talking about here.
Then, in her essay "Place in Fiction," she stresses that while it is important for a writer to capture the feeling of an area, it is not the paramount goal in fiction:
"It is through place that we put out roots ... but where those roots reach toward ... is the deep and running vein, eternal and consistent and everywhere purely itself, that feeds and is fed by the human understanding."
But what pedigree does not provide, her environment probably did, for her work contains those elements poularly associated with Southern fiction. "Delta Wedding" celebrates the Southern family through the sprawling Fairchild clan and its passel of sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, nieces and nephews, all involved in each others' lives to a degree rarely seen today.
Many of her stories revolve around characters marginalized by society, struggling to exist and reach out to others: the simple Lily Daw who tries to evade the determination of the town's ladies to either marry her off or send her to the asylum; the generous, slightly retarded Daniel Ponder who would give away everything he has at the drop of a hat; the demented Clytie in "A Curtain of Green," who rushes about looking in people's faces until, seeing her reflection in a barrel of rainwater, dives in and drowns.
Eudora Welty was a sharp, perceptive writer, and her enshrinement by the Library of America is most welcome.
Greatest living southern writer.......2001-06-15
I began my acquaintance with Eudora Welty's works in college with One Writer's Beginnings and fell in love with the lyrics of her writing. I moved on to her short stories where I believe Ms. Welty surely shines brightest, but her novels are almost as wonderful. Very few people have the depth of insight into the mind and motivations of southerners that Eudora Welty has. She is right up there with William Faulkner. She has the gift of seeing and conveying the universal experiences of her decidedly regional cast of characters.
Since this is a collection of all of Ms. Welty's novels it is difficult to give a concise review. Suffice it to say that for reading pleasure you will not spend better money. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, but Losing Battles may be even better (the novel centers on all of the family stories told at a huge family reunion--great framing device for so many wonderful tales). The Robber Bridegroom is a southern fairy tale.
Eudora Welty is a giant of literature. This is a great Library of America collection. Buy it!
Average customer rating:
- "I don't know if you can measure love at all."
- Keen observations and exquisite, humorous Southern writing.
- Almost slapstick funny
- Funny little snip of a book
- Edna Earl Tells All There Is To Know About The Ponder Heart
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The Ponder Heart
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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The Optimist's Daughter
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The Robber Bridegroom
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The Golden Apples
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Losing Battles
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The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
ASIN: 0156729156 |
Book Description
Uncle Daniel Ponder, whose fortune is exceeded only by his desire to give it away, is a source of vexation for his niece, Edna Earle. Uncle Daniel’s trial for the alleged murder of his seventeen-year-old bride is a comic masterpiece. Awarded the William Dean Howells Medal of the american Academy of Arts and Letters. Drawings by Joe Krush.
Customer Reviews:
"I don't know if you can measure love at all.".......2003-09-29
"The Ponder Heart"--a short novel written by Southern writer, Eudora Welty--is the story of the eccentric and eternally child-like Daniel Ponder. The Ponders are a wealthy, socially prominent family in the small Southern town of Clay. Edna Earle--Daniel Ponder's long-suffering niece, narrates the story. Edna Earle runs the Beulah Hotel, and this is one of Daniel's favourite hangouts. The hotel was a gift to Edna Earle from Uncle Daniel in a characteristic moment of typical and unstoppable generosity. Daniel's biggest problem--it seems--is his generous and loving heart.
Edna Earle tells the story of how Grandpa Ponder tries to curb Daniel's eccentric and generous impulses by locking him up in an asylum, but Daniel turns the table with his smooth, quick-witted charm. Grandpa Ponder decides that an asylum is no longer an option, so he plots to marry Daniel off instead. There's an irony to this decision, of course--if the asylum didn't work, well... marriage may be the next best means of incarceration. The fact that Daniel is over 40 doesn't deter Grandpa from finding his troublesome son a wife, and Grandpa Ponder declares "I'm going to fork up a good wife for him" With Edna Earle in cahoots, Daniel's father marries Daniel off to Miss Teacake Magee--a widow who sings in the choir every Sunday.
But Daniel isn't the marrying kind, but this does not deter Daniel from taking the plunge yet another time. Daniel's second marriage proves disastrous. His second bride-of-choice is Daisy Peabody--a 17-year-old waif from a large family of grasping ne'er-do-wells. Daniel and Daisy's domestic tribulations are the focus of interest, amusement, and gossip, but ultimately, Daniel finds himself on trial for Daisy's murder.
Edna Earle tells the novel in a very matter-of-fact style laced with practicality & good, solid common sense. Her infinite patience and understanding result in her desire to protect Uncle Daniel--even though she realizes that he has shortcomings. It takes a little time to get used to reading the Southern style of speech, but the novel was very witty. I laughed out loud at several parts, and the courtroom scenes were great fun. The novel was full of marvellous, eccentric, original characters--even the 'dull' characters were interesting. I've read short stories by Welty before, but this was my first Welty novel. What a delightful, good-natured book this is--displacedhuman
Keen observations and exquisite, humorous Southern writing........2003-07-19
"The South impresses its image on the Southern writer from the moment he is able to distinguish one sound from another," Flannery O'Connor wrote in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South," and Eudora Welty expressed a similar sentiment roughly 20 years later in her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings," when she wrote that ever since she had first been read to, and then started to read herself, there had never been a line that she had not *heard* as her eyes followed the words on the page, possibly out of the desire to read as a listener. And indeed, as Flannery O'Connor remarked in the above-mentioned essay, "the Southern writer's greatest tie with the South is through his ear."
While proof of the truth of these statements can be found throughout the literature written by both of these preeminent Southern novelists, Eudora Welty's novella "The Ponder Heart" is perhaps one of the most obvious examples thereof as it is actually written in the form of a monologue, addressed to an imaginary traveler who happens to find himself - by force of circumstance rather than plan - in the small town of Clay, Mississippi, somewhere off the main highway and not quite halfway between Tupelo and the Mississippi-Alabama border, in Edna Earle Ponder's Beulah Hotel; face to face with the hostess. "My Uncle Daniel's just like your uncle, if you've got one ... he loves society and he gets carried away," she immediately tells her visitor about her Uncle Daniel's "one weakness" and proceeds, without further ado, to tell her family's story; thus proving herself afflicted by that same weakness of "getting carried away," and as the reader/listener soon discovers, it is just as impossible to get a word in with her narrative as it is with Uncle Daniel Ponder.
But then, you don't even really want to interrupt her: too often she makes you smile or laugh out loud at her descriptions of family and townsfolk, too much you are getting caught up in the story, and too acute is the appearance of her observations. For no doubt, Eudora Welty was not only a keen observer of Southern society; she also mastered the transformation of her observations into the written word with a skill matched only by a select few of her fellow Southern writers. And true to Welty's reflection in her memoir - and to her desire to write as a listener, as much as she used to read as a listener - it is impossible not to actually hear Edna Earle talking to you as you turn the pages, in that unmistakable drawl which seems to roll past your ears languidly, much like the waves of the mighty Mississippi, and which smells of bourbon and magnolias.
Thus, in the space of less than 200 pages, we make the acquaintance of Grandpa Ponder, whose fortune would become Edna Earle's to watch over and Uncle Daniel's to give away, Uncle Daniel's first wife Miss Teacake Magee nee Sistrunk (who sang at her own wedding, which turned out to be bad luck because the marriage didn't hold), his second wife Bonnie Dee Peacock ("a little thing with yellow fluffy hair," white trash as trash can be, who after a couple months' marriage "on trial" declared the trial over and left town, but was later lured back to Clay, much to her own misfortune) and of course Uncle Daniel himself, a big man with a big heart and only seemingly a simple soul who constantly needs minding, first by his father (Grandpa Ponder), then by Edna Earle - but who surprises you again and again with his unexpected, only half-conscious witticisms and insights: a veritable court jester in the medieval tradition with the flair of a 20th century gentleman raised in the traditions of the old South. And the story that unfolds before your eyes and ears is as colorful as its protagonists, from Uncle Daniel's early commitment to an asylum to his trial for Bonnie Dee Peacock's murder, with an outcome as wildly unexpected as only Daniel Ponder could have caused it.
Flannery O'Connor, who likewise created many a character who could have populated the world of Eudora Welty's "The Ponder Heart," said that whenever she was asked why Southern writers in particular seemed to have a tendency to write about freaks, this was "because we are still able to recognize one." She warned, however, that outlandish as they might be, the heroes of modern Southern literature are not primarily intended to be comic but rather, prophetic figures reminding us of a long-forgotten responsibility, and she noted that *any* fiction coming out of the South was invariably liable to be called "grotesque," unless it actually was grotesque, in which case it would be called "photographic realism." ("The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.") And Eudora Welty, whose keen sense of observation in fact did find expression not only in her writing but also in a number of celebrated collections of photography, called location, in an essay written the same year as "The Ponder Heart," "the crossroads of circumstance" and "the heart's field;" intrinsically linked to the emotions and experiences described in any good piece of fiction writing. ("Place in Fiction," 1954.) In that sense, "A Ponder Heart" is a piece of Southern fiction in the best literary tradition - in addition to which, it is a pure delight to read.
Almost slapstick funny.......2003-04-22
If you like southern writers, if you like Eudora Welty, if you like eccentric characters, if you like a little slapstick in your novels, don't miss this one.
Uncle Daniel goes down in literary history as one of the most engaging and memorable of all characters as he 'just loves to give things away, loves to make people happy.' And, oh, the trouble he causes with his largesse!
Read it and laugh.
Funny little snip of a book.......2002-09-27
This is a cute little book that's very easy to read. I found myself identifying with both the narrator, Edna Earle, and Uncle Daniel. If you're looking for a book that's easy on the brain, then this is the one for you.
Edna Earl Tells All There Is To Know About The Ponder Heart.......2002-05-16
Eudora Welty possessed a remarkable talent for crawling into the skin of her characters--and Edna Earl Ponder is one of her most astonishing creations. Like her widely anthologized short story "Why I Live at the P.O.," Welty's short novel THE PONDER HEART is written as a monologue, giving the reader the unexpected sensation of sitting across the front porch from Edna Earl herself as she determinedly relates the story of how her eccentric Uncle Daniel unexpectedly found himself on trial for murder in their tiny Mississippi town.
THE PONDER HEART is a masterpiece of American humor. The humor of the novel is not, however, so much in the story (amusing though it is) as in the way it is told. Edna Earl has a typically Southern knack for turning a colorful phrase, and throughout her narrative she takes us on a tour of the best of Southern venacular, tossing off several memorable comments and laugh-out-loud descriptions on every page--particularly when it comes to white trash Bonnie Lee Peacock, who marries the addlepated Uncle Daniel on a trial basis. And if you're not Southern enough to completely grasp the definition of "white trash," that most Southern of perjoratives, Edna Earl will leave you in no doubt as to what precisely it means.
Welty wrote considerably deeper works than THE PONDER HEART--her stunning short stories and the Pulitizer Prize winning novel THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER come quickly to mind--but for pure-dee down home humor Edna Earl, Uncle Daniel, Bonnie Lee, and the Peacock family are hard to beat. A touching, hilarious, and extremely memorable work that you'll probably return to again and again! Strongly recommended.
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THE PONDER HEART
Manufacturer: Harbrace Paperback
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HFAECW |
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THE PONDER HEART
EUDORA WELTY
Manufacturer: Dell Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000VB9BAI |
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Ponder Heart
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: HARCOURT BRACE & CO@
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UDYMYM |
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Ponder Heart
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: HARCOURT BRACE & CO@
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SET9RS |
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The Ponder Heart
EUDORA WELTY
Manufacturer: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CIYV9 |
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