Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Another in my series of books about nature, walking, and much more. Title : In Praise of Paths: Walking Through Time and Nature Author : Torbjørn Ekelund. English translation by Becky L. Crook. Publication info: Greystone Books 2020, 240 pages. Source : library Publisher’s Blurb: An ode to paths and the journeys we take through nature, as told by a gifted writer who stopped driving and rediscovered the joys of traveling by foot.  Torbjørn Ekelund started to walk--everywhere--after an epilepsy diagnosis affected his ability to drive. The more he ventured out, the more he came to love the act of walking, and an interest in paths emerged. In this poignant, meandering book, Ekelund interweaves the literature and history of paths with his own stories from the trail. As he walks with shoes on and barefoot, through forest creeks and across urban streets, he contemplates the early tracks made by ancient snails and traces the wanderings of Romantic poets, amongst other musings. If we still...

 Relevant reading as a response to my Africa trip (including hike around Mt. Kenya). This book was originally published in Italian in, I think, 1947, and soon after translated into English. It has been reissued many times.     Title: No Picnic on Mount Kenya: The Story of Three P.o.W.s' Escape to Adventure Author: Felice Benuzzi. I can't find info about the translation. Publication Info: See note above. My Kindle edition was put out by Quercus in 2017, and has an unknown number of pages, though the paperback appears to have 320. Source : Library Publisher's Blurb (from Overdrive web site): In the shadow of Mount Kenya, surrounded by the forests and creatures of the savannah, life drags interminably for the inmates of POW Camp 354, captured in Africa during World War II. Confined to an endless cycle of boredom and frustration, one prisoner realizes he can bear it no longer. When the clouds covering Mount Kenya part one morning to reveal its towering peaks for the fi...

I owe the author and publisher of Into Siberia an apology, as I apparently got this book through NetGalley, not from the library as I assumed by the time I got around to reading it. So I'm overdue with the review. Title: Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia Author: Gregory J. Wallance Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2023. 304 pages. Source: Netgalley ARC Publisher's Blurb: In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the...

I hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day holiday. I skipped posting because hey, a holiday (okay, and it was my birthday). I'm back now, though, with a review of Marmee & Louisa, a biography of Louisa May Alcott and her mother, Abigail May Alcott. Title: Marmee & Louisa Author: Eve LaPlante. Narrated by Karen White Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2012. 14.5 hours. Hardback, Free Press, 2012, 384 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: Since its release nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved "Marmee" have shaped generations of young women. Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those ...

Title:  A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II Author: Sonia Purnell Publication Info: Viking Press, 2019. 368 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty ...

Title: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II Author: Liza Mundy. Publication Info: Hachette Books, 2017. 432 pages (Kindle edition). Source: Library digital services Publisher’s Blurb: In the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, Code Girls is the astonishing, untold story of the young American women who cracked key Axis codes, helping to secure Allied victory and revolutionizing the field of cryptanalysis. Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surv...

  Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary Author: Simon Winchester Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003. 288 pages. Source: Library used book sale Publisher's Summary: From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman , The Map That Changed the World , and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits o...

Title: Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the fate of the American Revolution Author: Nathaniel Philbrick; read by Scott Brick Publisher: 2016, Books on Tape. Original by Viking, 2016, 427 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Summary: In September 1776, the vulnerable Continental Army under an unsure George Washington (who had never commanded a large force in battle) evacuates New York after a devastating defeat by the British Army. Three weeks later, near the Canadian border, one of his favorite generals, Benedict Arnold, miraculously succeeds in postponing the British naval advance down Lake Champlain that might have ended the war. Four years later, as the book ends, Washington has vanquished his demons and Arnold has fled to the enemy after a foiled attempt to surrender the American fortress at West Point to the British. After four years of war, America is forced to realize that the real threat to its liberties might not come from...

  Title: Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult Author: Bruce Handy Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2017. 307 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Summary: An irresistible, nostalgic, and insightful -- and totally original -- ramble through classic children's literature from Vanity Fair contributing editor (and father) Bruce Handy. In 1690, the dour New England Primer , thought to be the first American children's book, was published in Boston. Offering children gems of advice such as "Strive to learn" and "Be not a dunce," it was no fun at all. So how did we get from there to "Let the wild rumpus start"? And now that we're living in a golden age of children's literature, what can adults get out of reading Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon , or Charlotte's Web and Little House on the Prairie ? In Wild Things , Bruce Handy revisits the classics of every American childhood, from fairy tale...

  Title: Year of No Clutter Author: Eve O. Schaub Publisher: Sourcebooks, 2017. 290 pages Source: Library Publisher's Summary: Eve has a problem with clutter. Too much stuff and too easily acquired, it confronts her in every corner and on every surface in her house. When she pledges to tackle the worst offender, her horror of a "Hell Room," she anticipates finally being able to throw away all of the unnecessary things she can't bring herself to part with: her fifth-grade report card, dried-up art supplies, an old vinyl raincoat. But what Eve discovers isn't just old CDs and outdated clothing, but a fierce desire within herself to hold on to her identity. Our things represent our memories, our history, a million tiny reference points in our lives. If we throw our stuff in the trash, where does that leave us? And if we don't...how do we know what's really important? Everyone has their own Hell Room, and Eve's battle with her clutter, along wi...

Title: Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time Author: Andrew Forsthoefel Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2017. 371 pages Source: Library Publisher's Summary: Life is fast, and I've found it's easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I'm slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us. At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read -Walking to Listen.- He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered...

  Title: The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap   Author: Wendy Welch Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2012. 291 pages Source: Purchased Publisher's Summary: A book about losing your place, finding your purpose, and immersing yourself in what holds community, and humanity, together—books Wendy Welch and her husband had always dreamed of owning a bookstore. When the opportunity to escape a toxic work environment and run to a struggling Virginia coal mining town presented itself, they took it. And took the plunge into starting their dream as well. They chose to ignore the “death of the book,” the closing of bookstores across the nation, and the difficult economic environment, and six years later they have carved a bookstore—and a life—out of an Appalachian mountain community. A story of beating bad odds with grace, ingenuity, good books, and single malt, this memoir chronicles two bibliophiles discovering unlikely ways in which daily living and literature intertwine. Th...

So Chuck Wendig is back at his post, throwing out weekly writing challenges. This week we had a list of ten randomly-produced titles, and the command to go forth and write. He gave us 2000 words, but I stopped at 1200. I also looked at the title, and in my mind it kept running to real events, not fiction. So I decided to write a bit of creative non-fiction. Everything in this piece happened, pretty much the way I have told it. The River’s Mask Every river wears a mask. The surface hides much of what lies beneath, though experience teaches us to read it, at least a little. If you are lucky, you survive the experiences. If you are very lucky, along the way you learn a thing or two about yourself. My first stream-based learning experience came when I was about six. Happily, this was a discovery mostly about my own limits, without danger to more than my dignity or reference to the mysteries of deep water. Deep mud, on the other hand, was definitely involved. My brothers and I were the youn...