Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.
Laddar... Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptileav Verlyn Klinkenborg
Ingen/inga Laddar...
Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. It is difficult to pretend that Gilbert White’s tortoise Timothy had the same literary skills as his ‘owner’. However, picking up a copy of Timothy’s book: notes of an English country tortoise by Verlyn Klinkenborg whom I took first to be a publisher rather than the author, I was spurred on to things that I thought might be great. It was the handwritten inscription that provided the spur. ‘For Kurt on his 19th birthday. You’ll learn a lot from this book. Love Rachelle and Anastasia’. Gilbert’s observations are seen through Timothy’s eyes. I soon came across a corner of a page turned over, a despicable habit. This was on pages 3 and 4 out of a total of 181 pages. I realised too that it was the only such instance of a turned over corner. That is as far as I got myself. The device of an observant Timothy is clever but just did not work for me. ( ) i like the idea of this book, and klinkenborg is obviously a good writer (just mostly not my style), but i couldn't get into this at all, or be made to care about any of it. still, i liked this: "He picks me up one day in Ringer. Idle question on his face. Feels my tail and feet and as much of my neck as I allow. Concludes that I have no perceptible pulse. As if I would keep my pulse where a human could touch it. What would be the point of all this armor then?" This is an American, current companion volume to Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne, narrated by Pastor White's own tortoise Timothy. Many times Timothy cites what Mr White said as there is such "a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived...that one cannot safely relate any thing from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion" (85). Timothy soon adds, " Mr White's true music is the repeated, unresolved music of birdsong. Melody that never finds the tonic again"(90). Klinkenborg is a deft and skilled writer, a journalist of course, though not in this book. Associative, fragmentary disjunctive and surprising writing. inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Prestigefyllda urval
Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg--with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him--has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile. This is the story of a tortoise whose real life was observed by the eighteenth-century English curate Gilbert White, author of The Natural History of Selborne. For thirteen years, Timothy lived in White's garden--making an occasional appearance in his journals. Now Klinkenborg gives the tortoise an unforgettable voice and powers of observation as keen as those of any bipedal naturalist. The happy result: Timothy regales us with an account of a gracefully paced (no unseemly hurry!) eight-day adventure outside the gate ("How do I escape from that nimble-tongued, fleet-footed race? . . . Walk through the holes in their attention") and entertains us with shrewd observations about the curious habits and habitations of humanity. "To humans," Timothy says with doleful understanding, "in and out are matters of life and death. Not to me. Warm earth waits just beneath me. . . . The humans' own heat keeps them from sensing it." Wry and wise, unexpectedly moving, and enchanting at every--careful--turn, Timothy will surprise and delight readers of all ages. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag
Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
Är det här du? |