en-US Tue, 17 Nov 2015 20:36:55 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 99208 The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief.

The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ("Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period").

Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.]]> 421 Edward Abbey 0061129763 Aaron 5 4.09 1975
author: Edward Abbey
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/11/17
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]]> 7061713 Rare book 144 Paul Gruchow 1571313184 Aaron 4
Gruchow begins by describing the tall grass prairie during winter in southern Minnesota, a time when all but the wind and snow are moving on the prairie; exactly the belief Gruchow contradicts in his opening pages. The attention of the reader is immediately captured by the depiction and life that flourishes in the prairie, above and below the ground. While the plants all wither away and the snow begins to accumulate, Gruchow observes the foxes and deer, the rabbits and coyotes, reminiscing on the bison that would have roughed the winter’s here. The prairie is full of life, if those who are near enough take the time to observe. But Gruchow does more than simply reveal the details and depict the beauty in the tall grass prairie; he describes a troubled childhood, filled with the loneliness and the curiosity of farm life. The life of Gruchow is a fascinating roller coaster that adds to the challenges and misunderstandings of a huge part of his soul: the prairie. The Journal of a Prairie Year illuminates not only the beauty and magnificence of the tall grass prairie, but also the struggles and tragedies of the prairie.

Gruchow’s ability to personify the prairie with such emotion is a craft that few have been able to achieve. All of sudden Gruchow has captured more than a moment on a prairie, but a scene with much more personality, as if someone had stumbled upon Thoreau’s cabin in the woods a century earlier to share a quiet and enjoyable moment with nature. The Journal of a Prairie turns, if only for a couple of pages, to portray a sense of togetherness with nature, that his journey in the prairie over his lifetime is more than a solitary one.

Gruchow’s prose and scientific work with the prairie don’t end with the awe inspiring beauty of the pasqueflower, or the badger, or his examination of the breeding of garter snakes. Gruchow excellently ties the rest of his novel together by combining all the parts and looking at the prairie as a whole. He still continues to underline different species individually, but he shifts into talking about the ecosystem services that the prairie can offer humans, since Gruchow knows that not everybody loves the prairie like he does.

Gruchow ropes in his practical and scientific readers by pointing out how the prairie functions as a whole. During the summer months of Prairie Year, there is a 37 day drought. Gruchow attributes this drought to the fact that most of the wetlands and rivers and streams that have once played a role in the prairie have been drained or diverted, and now the land doesn’t hold the water as it has in the past. He attributes most of this destruction to drainage tiles and drainage ditches for farming. This brilliant analysis of the prairie ecosystem surely gives Gruchow the approval of his scientific community.

The elaborate and poetic prose in which Gruchow uses in depicting the diversity and richness of the prairie in the Journal of a Prairie Year are the main reasons why the book is so well received and impossible to put down for those already in love with the prairie and those interesting learning more about the prairie. Its versatility and broad range of readers gives this book a rating of 4.5/5.
]]> 4.05 1985
author: Paul Gruchow
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/10
date added: 2014/11/16
shelves:
review:
Among the long list of American nature writers, Paul Gruchow’s Journal of Prairie Year stands out as one of the most celebrated books on the midlatitude grasslands of the Midwest. In his forward, Scott Russel Sanders rightly compares Gruchow to Thoreau and Leopold, two of the most renowned nature writers of the 19th and 20th century. Gruchow’s writing style and depiction of the tall grass prairie is just as elaborate as that of Thoreau and Leopold, raising questions about of the prairie starting with what the magnifying glass reveals, before backing up and considering this all but non-existence ecosystem as a whole. As a scientist and writer, Gruchow offers a look into the mystifying beauty of the prairie and all the aesthetic value present, while illuminating the ecosystem services and importance of this complex biome.

Gruchow begins by describing the tall grass prairie during winter in southern Minnesota, a time when all but the wind and snow are moving on the prairie; exactly the belief Gruchow contradicts in his opening pages. The attention of the reader is immediately captured by the depiction and life that flourishes in the prairie, above and below the ground. While the plants all wither away and the snow begins to accumulate, Gruchow observes the foxes and deer, the rabbits and coyotes, reminiscing on the bison that would have roughed the winter’s here. The prairie is full of life, if those who are near enough take the time to observe. But Gruchow does more than simply reveal the details and depict the beauty in the tall grass prairie; he describes a troubled childhood, filled with the loneliness and the curiosity of farm life. The life of Gruchow is a fascinating roller coaster that adds to the challenges and misunderstandings of a huge part of his soul: the prairie. The Journal of a Prairie Year illuminates not only the beauty and magnificence of the tall grass prairie, but also the struggles and tragedies of the prairie.

Gruchow’s ability to personify the prairie with such emotion is a craft that few have been able to achieve. All of sudden Gruchow has captured more than a moment on a prairie, but a scene with much more personality, as if someone had stumbled upon Thoreau’s cabin in the woods a century earlier to share a quiet and enjoyable moment with nature. The Journal of a Prairie turns, if only for a couple of pages, to portray a sense of togetherness with nature, that his journey in the prairie over his lifetime is more than a solitary one.

Gruchow’s prose and scientific work with the prairie don’t end with the awe inspiring beauty of the pasqueflower, or the badger, or his examination of the breeding of garter snakes. Gruchow excellently ties the rest of his novel together by combining all the parts and looking at the prairie as a whole. He still continues to underline different species individually, but he shifts into talking about the ecosystem services that the prairie can offer humans, since Gruchow knows that not everybody loves the prairie like he does.

Gruchow ropes in his practical and scientific readers by pointing out how the prairie functions as a whole. During the summer months of Prairie Year, there is a 37 day drought. Gruchow attributes this drought to the fact that most of the wetlands and rivers and streams that have once played a role in the prairie have been drained or diverted, and now the land doesn’t hold the water as it has in the past. He attributes most of this destruction to drainage tiles and drainage ditches for farming. This brilliant analysis of the prairie ecosystem surely gives Gruchow the approval of his scientific community.

The elaborate and poetic prose in which Gruchow uses in depicting the diversity and richness of the prairie in the Journal of a Prairie Year are the main reasons why the book is so well received and impossible to put down for those already in love with the prairie and those interesting learning more about the prairie. Its versatility and broad range of readers gives this book a rating of 4.5/5.

]]> 4630 To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.
Harshly realistic, yet with one of the most subtle and moving relationships in the Hemingway oeuvre, To Have and Have Not is literary high adventure at its finest.]]> 176 Ernest Hemingway Aaron 0 3.55 1937
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at: 2013/02/12
date added: 2013/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 3675474 227 Don Scheese 0805709649 Aaron 0 currently-reading 0.0 1996
author: Don Scheese
name: Aaron
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 986837 256 Don Scheese 0877457840 Aaron 0 3.74 2001
author: Don Scheese
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/02/05
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]]> 214614 Desert Solitaire is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.

Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.]]> 337 Edward Abbey 0345326490 Aaron 0 4.18 1968
author: Edward Abbey
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 9594
With his trademark wicked wit, Vonnegut addresses memory, suicide, the Great Depression, the loss of American eloquence, and the obsolescent thrill of reading books.]]> 219 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0099267543 Aaron 0 3.72 1997
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> 16902 352 Henry David Thoreau Aaron 0 3.77 1854
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1854
rating: 0
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Aaron 0 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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]]> 4395 The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 455 John Steinbeck Aaron 0 3.88 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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]]> 4799 Cannery Row is a book without much of a plot. Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live "up the hill" in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme violence: suicides, corpses, and the cruelty of the natural world.

The "story" of Cannery Row follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot down on the Row.

Sweet Thursday is the sequel to Cannery Row.]]> 181 John Steinbeck 014200068X Aaron 0 4.06 1943
author: John Steinbeck
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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]]> 10776 200 Ernest Hemingway 0099460955 Aaron 0 3.57 1935
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1935
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/02/05
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]]> 4652
"In Our Time" provides key insights into Hemingway's later works.]]> 156 Ernest Hemingway Aaron 0 to-read 3.74 1924
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Aaron 5 4.41 1952
author: John Steinbeck
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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]]> 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway Aaron 0 4.04 1964
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/02/05
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]]> 46170 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Aaron 0 3.98 1940
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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]]> 10799 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.]]> 293 Ernest Hemingway 0099910101 Aaron 0 3.83 1929
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway Aaron 0 3.81 1926
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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]]> 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Aaron 0 3.81 1952
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Aaron
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/02/05
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]]>