Here is a travel book with a difference: ten chronological chapters from a year of wandering, from the Pacific Northwest to Tuscany and back again to the trout-laden streams of California. Join Bill Barich as he travels the globe, from the trout streams of Northern California to the auction ring at Saratoga, where millions of dollars may be gaveled away for a yearling thoroughbred; from seedy London pubs to a run-down Florentine palazzo during a glorious Italian spring. Learn the science of English beer brewing, the art of fly tying, how to generate hydroelectric power, the proper analysis of the Daily Racing Form, and the best way to eat artichokes.Freshness, wit, and Barich's distinctive voice create a luminous travelogue crackling with an inimitable curiosity and an elegance of style that marks every step of this remarkable journey. Views: 39
A classic memoir from Ireland's favourite storyteller. Here Taylor follows To School Through The Fields with these equally captivating recollections of family life in pastorial County Cork. Infused with wit and lyricism, the story centres on the 1950's when the author and her friends were teenagers. She describes the past vividly and without complaint as the years of hard labour for herself, parents and siblings, were also filled with fun in the close knit community. Views: 33
When Bill Barich moved to Dublin, he began searching for a traditional pub to serve as his local. Although he had no shortage of choices, he had trouble finding one that measured up to the archetypal ideal. As he roams from hectic urban pubs to their dwindling rural counterparts, he chronicles the state of the 'Irish' pub today, both in Ireland itself and all over the world. Entertaining, charming and full of insight, A Pint of Plain chronicles Barich's quest for the perfect pint, at the same time examining Irish culture at a time of great change. Views: 30
Bill Barich burst onto the literary scene more than twenty-five years ago with this remarkable account of racetrack life. Holed up in a cheap motel in Albany, California, only a few miles from Golden Gate Fields, he looked to the track to help him make sense of his life during a dark peiod of loss and challenge. With rare sensitivity, he captured the gritty world of the backstretch, and also its poetry, as few other writers have done. Laughing in the Hills, which was first serialized in the New Yorker, has become a classic of sporting literature and a must for anyone who loves horses and the world they create.It is a lovely, valuable book, introspective without being self-servingly so, affectionate but never saccharine in its evocation of racetrack life, witty and perceptive throughout." —Jonathan Yardley, Sports Illustrated Views: 20
A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky. For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined. Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page. Views: 20
In a series of vignettes of life in her village, Alice Taylor reasserts the priorities of public space and local community. The Parish evokes and explores the positive values of community, which could be renewed and reinvigorated for a present and future that achieves harmony between comfort and the pressing need to respect the environment. Views: 13
Once is the journey from boyhood to the threshold of manhood of poet Andrew McNeillie. From an aeroplane crossing north Wales the middle-aged writer looks down on the countryside of his childhood and recalls an almost fabulous world now lost to him. Ordinary daily life and education in Llandudno shortly after the war are set against an extraordinary life lived close to nature in some of the wilder parts of Snowdonia. Continually crossing the border between town and country, a fly-fisherman by the age of ten, McNeillie relives his life in nature during a period of increasing urbanisation. Once is a beautifully written eulogy for a retreating countryside now valued more for its leisure potential than as a repository of nature and source of human fullfilment. The narrative is underlain by a way of thinking informed by the natural world and by nature poetry, and is an evocative and memorable book about the nature of experience of memory and writing. Views: 11
The land of opportunity, a golden Eden, the last frontier. What is this place that has given rise to countless metaphors but can still quicken the imagination? For Bill Barich, the question became a quest when he realized that home was no longer New York, where he had grown up, but California, to which he had been lured twenty years earlier. Now, in this account of his journey through California, he captures the true nature of the state behind the stereotypes.From the fogbound fishing towns of the North to the Mexican port of entry at San Ysidro, Barich describes an amazing diversity among people who have staked a claim to California's promise. He introduces us to a Native American hairdresser and the head priest of a Sikh temple; we meet loggers, bikers, an aging lifeguard, and the prison warden whose job it is to keep Charles Manson behind bars. He follows the traces of John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan, and weighs the impact their... Views: 9
'A delightful evocation of Irishness and of the author's deep-rooted love of the very fields of home' Publishers Weekly Alice Taylor's classic account of growing up in the Irish countryside, the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland, beautifully reproduced with photographs from Alice's life. If ever a voice has captured the colors, the rhythms, the rich, bittersweet emotions of a time gone by, it is Alice Taylor's. Her tales of childhood in rural Ireland hark back to a timeless past, to a world now lost, but ever and fondly remembered. The colorful characters and joyous moments she offers have made To School Through the Fields an Irish phenomenon, and have made Alice herself the most beloved author in all of the Emerald Isle. A must-have for fans of Alice Taylor. Views: 7
