Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family — a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck. With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenage performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own — to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before. As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is.I discovered this book on Sue's Book by Book blog, googled the book, and decided to put it on reserve at my library. She wrote:
"On audio, I finished listening to The Lightkeeper's Daughter by Jean E. Pendziwol, an intriguing novel that reminded me a bit of The Orphan Train, with its mix of past and present. A modern teen is sentenced to community service at a retirement home and gets to know one of the residents, who is wondering about secrets from her own childhood spent on a remote island where her father was the lighthouse keeper. It was excellent, with warmth and emotion but also plenty of surprises!"
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. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."I've been on the library's reserve list for many weeks waiting to read this one. In the meantime, I found an article about it: The Novel That Asks 'What Went Wrong With Mankind?' (It was entitled "Rhapsody in Green" in the June 2018 print edition of The Atlantic.)
Formerly the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is increasingly becoming a scientific possibility — and a necessity. Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species. World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in detail the process by which humanity may gradually move away from the planet and develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals how cutting-edge developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars. He then takes us beyond the solar system to nearby stars, which may soon be reached by nanoships traveling on laser beams at near the speed of light. Finally, he takes us beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, to the possibility of immortality, showing us how humans may someday be able to leave our bodies entirely and laser port to new havens in space.Interesting that this book I recently put on reserve arrives at the same time as The Overstory, but this one is nonfiction. And both are about humanity's impending future. I've also read Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible and rated it 9 of 10, so I look forward to reading this one, even though it looks daunting.
In this inaugural volume in the Harmony series, Philip Gulley draws us into the charming world of minister Sam Gardner in his first year back in his hometown, capturing the essence of small-town life with humor and wisdom.When I got home with this book, I pulled Gulley's Front Porch Tales (1997) off my shelf and discovered an article I'd printed out and folded inside the book: "Beyond Belief" (March 31, 2015) from Indianapolis Monthly.
Clawdia watched this whole video, and then watched most of it again. She has NEVER paid any attention to anything on my computer screen. So I decided to buy this toy for her. I like that it has two tracks for the balls. From what Clawdia wrote yesterday, my cat apparently likes the catnip wafting into the air. If this video quits, view it on YouTube.
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1 comment:
Clawdia's toy looks great! I think the book about the minister in his hometown sounds pretty good.
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