Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees
by Nancy Ross Hugo, Robert Llewellyn
Genre: Nature, Trees
Publisher: Timber Press
Publish Date: August 15th 2011
Format: Hardcover | 244 pages
Rating: 5 of 5
Trees are all around us. We see trees everywhere, whether we live in the city or the country, but do we really look at them and appreciate them? Or have they become commonplace, a part of the scenery? Seeing Trees takes a close up look at many trees we pass by everyday.
As a bird watcher I am familiar with a lot of trees as both a home for the birds and as their food source. I spend a lot of time seeing the trees up close through my binoculars or camera lens as I’m following the birds. I have gone on nature trail tree walks and observed the trees and their structure, but this book goes a step further and delves into the fascinating detail of the smallest individual parts of the tree.
Seeing Trees is not just descriptions of trees, it is also a fantastic display of photography. Using special software, photographer Robert Llewellyn has produced gorgeous close up images of various parts of the tree. The images were produced by stitching together multiple photos taken at different focal points to create incredibly sharp and detailed photos.
The book is divided into two main parts, the first third discusses the different traits of trees such as leaves, flowers, fruit, buds, bark and twigs and the remainder is an intimate look at ten featured trees (American Beech, Ginkgo, Red Maple, Southern Magnolia, Tulip Poplar, White Oak, White Pine, American Sycamore, Black Walnut and Eastern Red Cedar), all common in North America. Interesting facts are presented in an easy to understand, conversational format. Spread throughout the text are the beautiful, detailed photos that I can’t say enough wonderful things about.
The more you look at a tree the more you will see. Two of the ten featured trees are ones I have in my own yard. My Eastern Red Cedar is a magnet for birds. Every year a bird will build a nest in it and in the autumn Robins and Cedar Waxwings flock to it to eat the berries it produces. Those berries are like fast food for birds! I thought I knew a lot about my tree but I learned that it is a female tree, males don’t produce berries, they only produce pollen. Other trees like my Black Walnut are both male and female. And those walnuts that rain down on me every autumn, they are edible if you want to go through the trouble of getting to them through the fruit. I’ll leave mine for the squirrels.
This is a gorgeous book, a great reference and a beautiful addition to the nature lover’s bookshelf. My copy was from the library and I hated to have to return it. Now I can put it on my holiday wish list!
Almost Wordless: Continuing my nature series, I saw this hornet’s nest yesterday at Cantigny Gardens. It appeared to be vacant but I wasn’t going to poke it to find out. (Click for sharper image.)
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More Wordless Wednesday.
The White Devil
by Justin Evans
Read by: Christian Coulson
Genre: Gothic Thriller
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publish Date: May 10, 2011
Format: Downloadable Audio | 12 Hours 53 Minutes
Rating: 3½ of 5
Set at Harrow, a 400 year old British Boarding school known for educating England’s finest families, this book is part mystery, part thriller and part ghost story.
Andrew Taylor’s parents have shipped him off to this prestigious school with the hopes that the strict discipline there will help with their son’s troubled past, but trouble seems to follow Andrew. Within days of his arrival one of his schoolmates has mysteriously died. To make matters worse, Andrew begins to see a ghost, a rather moody and nasty ghost. Andrew bears an uncanny resemblance to Lord Byron, and that is what is causing the 200 year old ghost to appear. Andrew becomes obsessed with Lord Byron and the ghost and soon he and his friends are in mortal danger.
The story was well-written and has all the ingredients for a scary ghost story, however I found it to be more of a mystery than a ghostly thriller. The book starts out slowly and as the characters develop the pace begins to pick up, accelerating quickly in the final chapters. By this time I was more focused on the mystery than the haunting and wanted to know what it was that the ghost wanted from Andrew and why. In the end we do get our answers although I did find the conclusion to be a little abrupt.
I listened to the audio version and perhaps listening while walking around in the daytime rather than reading in the evening gave it a less than scary feel. The audio production was good and the narrator, Christian Coulson, did a nice job. His reading was clear and easy to listen to, and an American accent for Andrew made him easy to distinguish from the other characters. As a side note, Christian Coulson is the actor that played Tom Riddle in the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Overall I liked the story even though it wasn’t as scary as I was expecting. It had enough creepy and ghostly moments to entertain me and should please most gothic fans. 
The White Devil was one of my choices for the R.I.P. Challenge. For more reviews from participants in the RIP Challenge, head over to the RIP Review Site.
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Source: Downloadable audio provided by the publisher for review.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The October host is Savvy Verse & Wit.
From Europa Editions for review:
Three Weeks in December
by Audrey Schulman
In 1899 Jeremy, a young engineer, leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across British East Africa. In charge of hundreds of Indian laborers, he becomes the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men in nightly attacks on their camp. Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria, and alienated by a secret he can tell no one, he takes increasing solace in the company of an African man who scouts for him.
In 2000 Max, an American ethnobotonist, travels to Rwanda in search of an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. more
From Doubleday for review:
The Dressmaker
by Kate Alcott
Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young woman who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic’s doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men… more
From Little, Brown for review:
See Mix Drink
by Brian D. Murphy
This unique, illustrated guide graphically demonstrates how to make 100 of today’s most popular cocktails. For each drink, color-coded ingredients are displayed in a line drawing of the appropriate glassware, alongside a pie chart that spells out the drink’s composition by volume for intuitive mixing. No other cocktail book is this easy or fun. Instantly understandable 1-2-3 steps show exactly how each drink is prepared, and anecdotes, pronunciation guides, and photographs of the finished drinks.
How was your week?
For the past week I’ve been seeing White-throated Sparrows in my backyard and in the nature parks where I go for walks. This is a sure sign of the changing seasons as I only see these birds in spring and autumn with an occasional winter visitor. They are a short distance migrant leaving their breeding grounds in Canada as they move south into the eastern and southern US and California for the winter.
I saw this bird last weekend while walking on a trail. He or she (males and females look alike) was singing and flying between the branches but was nice enough to pause for a moment.
The White-throat is a full-bodied, pretty sparrow with long legs and a long narrow tail. They have distinctive facial markings in the white crown, black eyestripe, yellow markings above the eye (called lores) and of course, the white patch on the throat.
The bird in the photo to the right was in my backyard under the feeders scratching the ground for dropped seeds. (Click to enlarge and you will see he has a sunflower seed in his mouth.)
They also like to forage in leaf litter and wood chips kicking back and forth. They readily come to feeders and often can be found mixed in a flock of other sparrows.
I link up my bird photos on Saturday Snapshot hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
The Lantern
by Deborah Lawrenson
Read by: Kristine Ryan and Gerianne Raphael
Genre: Gothic Mystery
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publish Date: August 9, 2011
Format: Downloadable Audio | 10 Hours 36 Minutes
Rating: 4 of 5
The Lantern is a modern gothic ghost story set in an old farmhouse in the South of France. The story is told from two points of view: Eve, who currently lives in the house and Bénédicte, the former owner who resided there years ago.
Eve has recently moved into the house with Dom, a man she is madly in love with but whom she knows little about. At first Eve is enchanted by the house and the beautiful grounds but in time she begins to fear the house is haunted and that Dom is keeping horrible secrets from her. In alternating chapters Bénédicte tells her story of living in the house decades ago with her family and the tragedy that surrounded them.
I liked the use of two first person narrators and could feel the story taking place in both the past and the present. Bénédicte’s story in the past was the stronger of the two tales. A gothic just seems to work better in the past. Maybe I watch too much CSI but if I were Eve I’d have done some background checks on Dom rather than just obsessing about what he might be hiding. In Bénédicte’s time when someone went missing they were often missing forever. Her story was more believable. In the end, the two stories began to converge as the mysteries are solved.
This a nicely written, entertaining story but not very ghostly and not too suspenseful. It’s dark and moody and haunting but I did not find it riveting. I listened to the audio and initially had a little difficulty with the French/English accent of the narrator who portrayed Eve. This probably says more about my lack of familiarity with French pronunciation than the narrator, and after a while I didn’t have to skip back and listen to words a second time. The narrator who did Bénédicte also had a French accent but was easier to understand. Despite my initial problems with the accents, I’m glad I listened rather read the book. The descriptive imagery was pleasant to hear but it might have become tiresome to read and then I would have ended up skimming over some beautiful passages.
The Lantern was one of my choices for the R.I.P. Challenge. While this wasn’t a creepy or scary book it was a good choice for the season and a book I would recommend. For more reviews from participants in the RIP Challenge, head over to the RIP Review Site.
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Source: Downloadable audio provided by the publisher for review.
Almost Wordless: Quite lovely to look at, just don’t touch it.
(Click for sharper image.)
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More Wordless Wednesday.
Under My Apple Tree 