Writing the Garden, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Purchase on Amazon No less an authority that the mighty Cicero opined: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” And how true that is, especially if that library contains at least a few really good gardening books. But where to begin? In […]
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Book Review: The Longest Silence, 12-4-16
The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing, by Thomas McGuane. Purchase on Amazon If you both like to read and like to fish, this is a book that must be on your shelves, and in your backpack. It is a truly lyrical book about the mysterious, I might almost say mystical, sport of angling. McGuane’s […]
Book Review: From Marie-Antoinette’s Garden, 11-14-16
From Marie-Antoinette’s Garden, by Elisabeth de Feydeau Purchase on Amazon It’s good to be queen…until it isn’t. In the late 18th Century, in France, it was very good to be queen for a long time. The feudal pyramid of France was an indefensible socio-economic structure that was fast disintegrating, but in its heyday those privileged […]
Book Review: Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, by Barbara Paul Robinson
The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, by Barbara Paul Robinson Purchase on Amazon This is a charming biography of one of the 20th Century’s great gardeners, and it is told in an engagingly simple, straight-forward prose narrative, by the author who was a very prominent New York lawyer and who, like Verey, came […]
Book Review: More Scenes from the Rural Life
More Scenes from the Rural Life, by Verlyn Klinkenborg Purchase on Amazon This is the second volume (the first was The Rural Life) from this author, who is the popular columnist for the New York Times and also teaches creative writing at Yale. What you get with Klinkenborg is two estimable things: superb writing and […]
