Although I didn’t officially participate in Bloggiesta last weekend, reading about everyone’s progress motivated me to take care of a few changes I had planned for the blog. One of the big ones was to move to my own domain name. Beginning today, Under My Apple Tree now has its own domain name. The new URL is:
Most of the changes should be behind the scenes. For now I am still hosted with Wordress as I am not quite ready to take on the challenges of self-hosting. Someday, yes.
The old feed will be directed to the new name but it would be a good idea to update your readers if you follow the feed. It seems to be working ok although I am having a few issues previewing from the dashboard and WordPress says it can take a day or so to completely switch over. Let me know if you are experiencing any problems.
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. This month’s host is Rose City Reader.
Last week’s new books were:
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain from the publisher for review.
No twentieth-century American writer has captured the popular imagination as much as Ernest Heminway. This novel tells his story from a unique point of view — that of his first wife, Hadley. Through her eyes and voice, we experience Paris of the Lost Generation and meet fascinating characters such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. The city and its inhabitants provide a vivid backdrop to this engrossing and wrenching story of love and betrayal …
Frankenstein’s Monster: A Novel by Susan Heyboer O’Keefe, a win from Read It Forward.
What becomes of a monster without its maker? At the end of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the creator dies but his creation still lives, cursed to a life of isolation and hatred.
Frankenstein’s Monster continues the creature’s story as he’s compelled to discover his humanity, to escape the ship captain who vowed to the dying Frankenstein to hunt him down—and to resist the woman who would destroy them all.
The Wonderful Future That Never Was
by Gregory Benford
and The Editors of Popular Mechanics
Genre: Science
Publisher: Hearst
Publish Date: October 5, 2010
Format: Hardcover | 208 pages
Rating: 4 of 5
Between 1903 and 1969, scientists and other experts made hundreds of predictions in Popular Mechanics magazine about what the future would hold. Their forecasts ranged from ruefully funny to eerily prescient and optimistically utopian. Here are the very best of them, culled from hundreds of articles, complete with the original, visually stunning retro art.
This is a fun, entertaining book with lots of artwork on glossy pages put together in a coffee table book format. It’s divided into six sections by topic rather than presenting the articles in chronological order. I would have preferred that it didn’t jump back and forth between the years, but it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the book. I’ve always had an interest in science and inventions so this book was a real treat for me.
Some of these predictions were so outlandish I had to laugh as I was reading them, some may yet occur and others were remarkably prescient. In 1925 scientists predicted that a cure would be discovered for the common cold and cancer within the next 25 years; we’re still waiting but cures are probably coming in the not too distant future. Predictions of things that seem commonplace today such as 100 story skyscrapers, ultrasound machines, videophones, GPS systems and frozen food dinners were only wistful thinking at one time. Some of the funniest predictions were about ‘the home of tomorrow’; how it would be built and how we would live. One of the more outlandish ones was that a rooftop lake would become a method of air-conditioning for the home.
Back in 1968 I remember watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and believing we would have space stations and rocket ships and all kinds of marvelous inventions by the year 2000. While a lot of predictions did come true, I’m still waiting for my flying car.
Fascinating, entertaining and a good conversation starter, I recommend this book to anyone who’s curious about science, technology and inventions or is curious about the future we thought we’d be living in today.
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I participate in Book Review Party Wednesday. Click the link to read more great reviews.
I took this photo last January while on vacation in Mexico near Playa del Carmen.
My bird guide tells me this bird is native to tropical and subtropical areas; Mexico, Central America and the Texas lowlands, and is a member of the flycatcher family. I had never seen one before. This guy was making noise high up in a tree when he attracted my attention. He was nice enough to pose for a few seconds before flying away.
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Saturday Snapshots is hosted by Alyce. Head on over to At Home With Books to see more great photos or add your own.
BTT is a weekly meme about (mostly) books and reading. I haven’t posted in this meme for a while but this week’s questions is about a topic I was planning to write about anyway: Magazines.
What magazines/journals do you read?
I enjoy magazines that correspond with my interests and hobbies. I have to be careful not to order too many of them because they seem to start arriving faster than I can read them. Then I end up with piles of magazines all over the house. Another problem I have with magazines is I hate to get rid of them; I may need that article or recipe in the future if I can remember what issue it’s in and I can find it again. I guess that makes me a magazine hoarder!
One of my future projects is to go through those piles of magazines, scan the articles and recipes I want to keep and organize them neatly on my computer. I suppose a solution would be to receive my magazines as ‘e’ versions and ultimately I may do that, but I don’t have an e-reader yet and mentally I’m not quite there yet with e-books.
One pile of magazines I will never part with is my nearly complete and treasured collection of Omni Magazine, one of the most magnificent science fiction / fantasy magazine ever published. It was only in existence from 1978 to 1995 but it packed a lot into those years. It featured science fiction, science fact, high quality art and photos.
In addition to all the Omni Mags I have a few years of Wired, another beautifully done magazine that I can’t seem to part with, a stack of Better Homes and Gardens and Eating Well, a very nicely done food magazine with lots of healthy recipes with photos.
So what do I currently subscribe to? That would be Wild Bird and Birds and Blooms. Both of these magazines have such beautiful photos of birds that I can’t bear to throw them away resulting in more piles of magazines.
There are more than these lurking around my house and stashed on shelves and in closets, but you get the idea. So, yes, I’m a magazines hoarder and the solution is probably electronic versions unless anyone has a better suggestion, and bonfire is not one of them.
Photo taken January 2010 in Riviera Maya, Mexico, during a brief respite from the cold and snow in Chicago.
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More Wordless Wednesday.
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. This month’s host is Rose City Reader.
This week I received two books that I had been expecting for a while. The first one was an order at The Book Depository that took five weeks to arrive. It either got lost or was delayed by the extra security placed on airmail into the US. The second was an August Early Reviewer selection from LibraryThing.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr. A purchase for the discussion group The Women of Science Fiction.
These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. Revisions from the author’s notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work.
Blind Man’s Alley by Justin Peacock, for review from LibraryThing.
From the author of the Edgar Award–nominated legal thriller A Cure for Night, an ambitious and compulsively readable novel set in the cutthroat world of New York real estate. A concrete floor three hundred feet up in the Aurora Tower condo development in SoHo has collapsed, hurling three workers to their deaths. The developer, Roth Properties (owned by the famously abrasive Simon Roth), faces a vast tangle of legal problems, including allegations of mob connections.
Under My Apple Tree 