The snowstorm

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Comfort food, warm shelter and a gripping book are part of the blizzard survival guide. A day of forced seclusion is the perfect time to catch up on reading. Once you’re done shoveling, forget the snowstorm raging outside with one of these snowy, chilly novels and read it, in the comfort of your home and every blanket in sight. his personal story regarding his mother who had a breakdown and brother who committed suicide was a sad one but I struggled to marry the two narratives together. In a remote house in the middle of Dartmoor, six shadowy figures huddle around a table for a seance. Tension rises as the spirits spell out a chilling message: "Captain Trevelyan . . . dead . . . murder." When I first joined Goodreads fourteen years ago (it feels longer) I entered many of the giveaways and was the happy winner of seventeen books. I dutifully wrote a review for each one, even a few cookbooks. Then, seven years ago, the winning stopped. (No more sparrows?) Seventeen books in the first seven years; zero books in the next seven years. This is probablistically impossible. This is long before I pissed Ms. Underwood off. Perhaps it's because I ignored instructions and quoted from an uncorrected proof.

This is a very good read from one of our finest writers about the natural world. I think Mike could write well about anything – certainly anything he cared about. But notice, that he is not, and would not claim to be, an expert on nature. Maybe that’s one reason why he sees the joy more clearly than some of us who ‘know’ more. Perhaps that knowledge compromises how much we can feel for nature. Does the head too often get in the way of the heart? I hope not, but if it does then this book reminds us of the richness of nature from an emotional point of view as well as an intellectual one. It is this: there can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy, and when I talk of the joy we can find in nature, this is what I mean...That the natural world can bring us peace; that the natural world can give us joy: these are the confirmations of what many people may instinctively feel but have not been able to articulate; that nature is not an extra, a luxury, but on the contrary is indispensable, part of our essence. And now that knowledge needs to be brought to nature's defence." Hyperbole? You could say so, I suppose. But what can I do, other than speak of my experience? Once, on a May morning a few years ago, I came out on to the banks of the Upper Itchen, at Ovington in Hampshire, and the river with its flowers and willows and the serenity of its flow and its dimpling trout in its matchless, limpid water, all gilded by the sunshine, seemed to possess a loveliness which was not part of this world at all. On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers. I have a few issues regarding his writing (there was some repetition of points) and his overall point - I wholeheartedly agree, but it felt like he didn't base it on anything but intuition. And intuition is rarely enough if you want to convince the rest of the world, even if your intuition is right.Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.

He means a time before flowers, a time when the world was just shades of green. Then some plants began to use insects instead of the wind to move their pollen around. Voila! It didn't have to happen, he says. Nothing said it had to happen before we came along: we might well be living happily - in so far as we can live happily at all - in an all-green world still, and perhaps we would never miss what we never had. his argument is that we have to learn to love nature, again. Because for 5,000 generations from the plesteceine period we lived off the tundra and survived because of nature it is our ancestral home but within a generation we have become computer dependent. As the power goes out and we become completely cut off from the mainland I suddenly realise that I’m surrounded by people I can’t trust. So I have to face the facts: did one of us do this? Can I find the answers in this raging storm? And if I do, will I be next? So he had some corny moments. And some inconsistencies. He spends considerable effort proving that China is by far the worst pollutant country in the world. Then he blames capitalism for global warming.I wanted to share that feeling with a fellow human, and know that I am not alone in that upwelling. That is a part of this thoughtful book, along with some solid points about the evolution of humans as a part of the world. The connections to our mental health and the world around us are also well spoken for here. Joy has a component, if not of morality, then at least of seriousness. It signifies a happiness which is a serious business"

I thought my best friend’s death must have been an accident. But as I look down at the footprints in the deep snow, I suddenly see the truth: my oldest friends have been lying to me and one of them was the killer… but which one? The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.Or a moth he happened upon on a hike. Or a butterfly. Or perhaps it is within his DNA, and not just his. But it is not in any way my contention that the love of nature is universal. What is universal, I believe, is the propensity to love it; the fact that loving it is possible for people.

And it’s a book about wonder. The loss of nature matters, at least in part, because we lose the opportunity to have ‘Wow!’ moments where we see things that we couldn’t have imagined and that are so beautiful and are part of our, yes our, world. Our only world. I heard the author interviewed by Krista Tippett on her On Being podcast and wanted to hear more from him. I learned so much about what's going on in the natural world that I either don't pay attention to or isn't widely published. So many fascinating stories, including many from his life. Wow! So many crazy twists and turns! This book had suspense, intrigue, action, great police work and a great who-done-it!… Had me glued to my Kindle!’ Sassy Southern Books Alongside this joy is anger, impotent anger, as he describes the pointless despoilation and destruction of Saemangeum in South Korea by the construction of a 23 mile long seawall which has annihilated the rich mudflats upon which countless thousands of migrating birds had depended.An amazing and enjoyable read!!… You could almost feel the cold winds of the raging storm and see the smashing waves of the sea… almost impossible to put down… I didn’t want the book to end. If you like thrillers, twists, and atmospheric storytelling, I think you’ll love this one!’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ There are, however, several tropes that I wish could be left out of such books. This is just one of several books about the glory of nature to be, in part, about the complicated adult relationships we have with our parents. I wonder what it is about the reverie of nature that surfaces those feelings as well? He writes of Joy and Wonder, but also Doom: We were the generation who, over the long course of our lives, saw the shadow fall across the face of the earth. This is a book about loss – and about joy, and about wonder, and about hope. There’s a lot about the loss of nature over the last few decades and the author mixes this with memories of personal loss. A love of nature can be a support and strength during one’s life. it is clear that the earth did not have to be beautiful for humans to evolve; we could have had a planet which perfectly well sustained us with air and water and food and shelter, without offering us aspects of itself which also lift the spirit and catch at the heart.