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Showing posts with label owl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label owl. Show all posts

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Plot Summaries of Some Stuff I Have Read So Far This Year

"Betty Zane" by Zane Grey, a free ebook:


Fleeing the city for an adventurous life in the country, the young frontier woman in “Betty Zane” encounters battles with Shawnee Indians while while defending Fort Henry and her own private battles of the heart in deciding which brave frontiersman will win her love.  Betty shows formidable grit in this post American Revolutionary story of survival during the dangerous Westward Expansion. Author, Zane Grey, a descendant of Elizabeth "Betty" Zane became famous with this first novel that broke the ground for his career in writing western sagas. 


Mary Phinney Von Olnhausen; The Adventures of an Army nurse in Two Wars; a free ebook:

A descendant of immigrants that stepped off the Mayflower, aristocratic, yet poor and widowed Mary Von Olnhausen is deeply compelled to nurse wounded soldiers for the North at the beginning of the Civil War.   Mary battles against the aristocratic doctors, mistreatment of soldiers, disasterous conditions imposed by the war, and the horrors of corruption found in the running and establishing of Army hospitals in various locations such as Mansion House Hospital in Alexandria outside Washington D.C. I haven't finished reading this one yet!



Wesley the Owl; this book was given to me by my sister and can be found in bookstores.  The book is absolutely absorbing and there is also a website linked to Wesley and his girl. 


Keeping a wild predator as a pet is usually not an ethical decision except in the true story found in the book "Wesley the Owl", where exceptional circumstances take place for Stacey O'Brien, a wildlife biologist, to save a barn owl's life. In the course of near 20 years Stacey documents, records, and has an amazing relationship with Wesley that is unforgettable. 



"Dracula" by Brom Stoker: free ebook.


"Dracula" is an intense look at the "New Woman" in the Victorian era of Nineteenth Century London, England.  Mina Murry fights against an evil that slowly reveals itself once it has been mysteriously transported from it's ancient European roots in Transylvania by boat to London where a devilish vampire sets it's sites on her life blood. Without the devotion she draws from those around her and her clever resourcefulness, the crew of light would not be able to free themselves from their defeat, doubt, and dire straits. (go girl power!)




William Faulkner's short story, "A Rose for Emily": found in many places on the internet. 

Emily, a bossy heir and the last of her family, in Faulkner's short story “A Rose for Emily”, lives in a gossipy town, where she remains alone after years of yearning for love and marriage in post civil war era.   Her high and mighty southern upbringing compels her to keep up appearances even beyond the grave. 






Does this make you want to read?  I think this is really fun.  Here is the game, you have to answer who, what, where, when, why and how in 3 sentences or less without giving the ending away.  I have read other books this year, but these are some of the best ones, or the ones I mostly have finished. 


Leave a comment with your latest read!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Great Gray Owl

Are you in love with owls?  I never had been. Not until I went hunting north of the arctic circle, meeting up with my husband and hunting party did I find my love of such wonderful amazing creatures.  My mother came up to babysit the youngsters back in September 2008 or I wouldn't have been able to go at all.

After a day of scouting through swamps and hillsides for a giant moose, my husband and I came tracking through a burnout area.  As we made a turn in the trail, directly in front of us perched on the only branch of a blackened tree was the largest and my most fierce owl I had ever seen in my life.  In fact, I had never seen an owl THIS close ever. The branch was just 6 feet off the ground and just about 20 feet in front of us. The owls hypnotizing eyes were a piercing lime green.  We just stood there and stared in awe.  I had left my camera at camp another half mile away but tried as hard as I could to etch the beauty of the owl in my mind.  The owl, so close so we could see every detail, had amazingly perfect feathers, not one out of place and ruffed out to make himself appear as large as possible, with so many fascinating shades of gray.  It looked to be the size of a healthy toddler, I mean one of my toddlers, a kid way too big for his age.  He seemed to say to me, "This is MY tree, MY trail, My woodland, and I am guardian." When the spell was broken we quietly left, one step at a time, slowly.  I fell in love with owls that day.

Here is something neat I found on another blog.  It is a calendar of owls by many different artists.  Just select 12 of your favorite owls and then download. It creates a pdf calendar to print.  Click the picture below to make an owl calendar, the kids will love this!!