Pikkukuvaa napsauttamalla pääset Google Booksiin.
Ladataan... The Last Cheater's Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest (1999)Tekijä: Ellen Meloy
- Ladataan...
Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. A book about the author struggle to reconcile the beauty of her desert home surroundings and the fact that the world's most lethal weapons got their start there. I was expecting more about nature and less about nuclear weapons, but was drawn in by the beautiful writing.. I'm interested in the desert southwest, and she's a definite find. The main thrust of the book has more to do with the author's personal struggle than the actual desert, but it's honest stuff, and some of it is very funny. I've already started another one her books, Raven's Exile. ( ) The strength of The Last Cheater's Waltz is in Meloy's command of language and her sense of humor. She focuses on the nuclear testing grounds in New Mexico, and the Map of the Known World, of her property in Utah, all with a keen eye and a true love of the land. Her exploration into the nuances of a place perceived as desolate is an absorbing foray into nature writing that doesn't fetishize the landscape but tries to locate the reason why we're drawn to places we would deem our home. Her essays are a quest and a I was quite happy to take the journey with her. Ellen Meloy is hunkered down in a corner of the desert near the San Juan River in Utah. While she and her husband, Mark, call this barren land home, it is also close to Los Alamos and the White Sands Missile Range. Meloy, using her love for the west and naturalist instincts, explores what this atomic history's proximity means to the environment. As the subtitle implies, it's the juxtaposition of violence and beauty across a landscape that is teeming with the will to go on. Meloy writes with wit, humor, and dare I say, sarcasm. I found a whole slew of passages I wanted to quote. I knew I was in for a good ride when I read that Meloy had just poured scalding hot water over coffee grounds and, inadvertently, a sleeping lizard: "I sat on the front steps of the screenhouse with sunrise burning crimson on the sandstone cliffs above the river and a boiled reptile in my cup" (p 3). näyttää 3/3 ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
In this abundant space and isolation, the energy lords extract their bounty of natural resources, and the curators of mass destruction once mined their egregious weapons and reckless acts. It is a land of absolutes, of passion and indifference, lush textures and inscrutable tensions. Here violence can push beauty to the edge of a razor blade. . . . Thus Ellen Meloy describes a corner of desert hard by the San Juan River in southeastern Utah, a place long forsaken as implausible and impassable, of little use or value--a place that she calls home. Despite twenty years of carefully nurtured intimacy with this red-rock landscape, Meloy finds herself, one sunbaked morning, staring down at a dead lizard floating in her coffee and feeling suddenly unmoored. What follows is a quest that is both physical and spiritual, a search for home. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
Current Discussions-
Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)917.904History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in North America West Coast U.S. TravelKongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
Oletko sinä tämä henkilö? |