Blog All About It: Trees

At the end of the day, I drive home along the San Francisco coast. I am treated to the sight of this row of trees in the Presidio.

READ:

The Overstory
by Richard Powers
Amazon | Goodreads
A monumental novel about trees and people by one of our most "prodigiously talented" (The New York Times Book Review) novelists.

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers―each summoned in different ways by trees―are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.

In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."


WATCH:

twenty-one
The Sea of Trees (2015)
imdb | my review | my rating: 4

CRAFT:

Chopped, Loved and Discarded - the life of a xmas tree
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* part of the Blog All About It Challenge (here)

Lovely Books and Things - 4.28.18

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Stacking the Shelves (details)
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

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HAPPY THINGS:

1. Bone Broth to combat a cold

2. Visiting a (new-to-me) bookstore - Russian Hill Bookstore
*** HAPPY INDIE BOOKSTORE DAY ***

3. Done with preparations and packing for an office move. We will be in a new smaller space but in a corporate building setting next week. It will be nice to be in a nice office space, but I will miss the location of the previous place.

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Bought:

You're The Most Beautiful Thing That Happened
by Arisa White
-LGBTQ, Poetry
Amazon | Goodreads
PICKED this up to celebrate April Poetry Month.

Gift:

Art Under Control in North Korea
by Jane Portal
-Photography
courtesy of Artseed -Thanks!
Amazon | Goodreads
NORTH Korea topic grabbed my attention.


Library:

Heart Berries
by Terese Marie Mailhot
-Memoir, Feminism, Native American
Amazon | Goodreads
MARCH/APRIL pick for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club.


Author events:

THE Bindery hosted another fabulous author event - a dramatic reading of a novel in verse, The Others by Matthew Rohrer.

The reading included guest authors per picture above: the Bindery host, Matthew Zapruder, Matthew Rohrer, Bridget Quinn, Arisa White and Daniel Handler.

BOOKS on the Park hosted a reading and Q&A with Richard Powers to feature his latest, The Overstory. He shared his thoughts on trees and experience writing the novel.


Other Happy Mail:

GOT some KPOP, Dean's 130 Mood: TRBL which is an alternative R&B CD. I love the extra swag-like goodies that come with KPOP CDs. This one included artsy photo cards with a description of each song on the back.

AND watched: in theatre

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Screenplay: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Based on comics by: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Stars: Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch
-Action, Adventure, Fantasy | imdb | my rating: 5
The Avengers and their allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.

AMAZING all-star cast of superheroes in this non-stop action film. Loved the fun snappy dialogue. Make sure to stay for the very end for the end credits special preview.


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* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Stacking the Shelves - 2.1.14

Stacking the Shelves
hosted by Tynga's Reviews (details)
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks!

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Just these two...

But excited to mention them!

Library:

The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
audio version
Narrated by: author
-thriller
Written richly. A whodunit as a opposed to a whodunit. I wanted to read this before reading Donna's latest, The Goldfinch.

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From Powell's Indiespensable club package (details):
Powell's subscription club delivers the best new books, with special attention to independent publishers. Signed first editions. Inventive, original sets. Exclusive printings.... Every six weeks, another installment to read and admire.

Plus, every package is stocked with exciting surprises!

This is package #45.

Orfeo
by Richard Powers
-literary, music
The National Book Award-winning author of The Echo Maker delivers his most emotionally charged novel to date, inspired by the myth of Orpheus.

"If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century...he'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big," wrote Margaret Atwood (New York Review of Books). Indeed, since his debut in 1985 with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Richard Powers has been astonishing readers with novels that are sweeping in range, dazzling in technique, and rich in their explorations of music, art, literature, and technology.

In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present. Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab — the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns — has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els — the "Bioterrorist Bach" — pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey. Through the help of his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime collaborator, Els hatches a plan to turn this disastrous collision with the security state into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around them. The result is a novel that soars in spirit and language by a writer who "may be America's most ambitious novelist" (Kevin Berger, San Francisco Chronicle).

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* most of these will be offered as giveaways within the next two months

* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

* per usual, check out the sidebar for my current giveaways offers