3 Free eBooks – October 2016

There were some beautiful books I looked through online in October. Here are my picks for the top 3.

Brooke, E. Adveno. The Gardens of England. London: T. McLean. 1858. Available from the Internet Archive here. The illustrations are a step back into the mid-1800s both in terms of the grand gardens that surrounded large estates and how people interacted with them.

Harrap, Anne and Simon. Orchids of Britain and Ireland: A field and site guide. London: A&C Black. 2010. Available from the Internet Archive here. Skipped ahead by almost 150 years…and color photography! I am always partial the slipper orchids.

Duncan, James; Cuvier, Georges. The Natural History of British Butterflies. Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars. 1840. Available from HathiTrush here. As I looked through the images in this book, I wondered how many of these butterflies still exist. A lot has happened to the environment since 1840.

Enjoy!

3 Free eBooks – August 2016

It always is hard to choose 3 favorites….there are so many available from the online repositories these days.

Roberts, David; Brockedon, William; Croly, George. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, Nubia. London: Day and Son. 1856. Available in 6 volumes from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. Some of the places are familiar from modern pictures but were more covered by sand in the 1850s…like the inside of Abu Simbel in the picture I clipped for this post.

Gruelle, Johnny. Raggedy Ann Stories. Chicago: P. F. Volland Company. 1918. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here (Raggedy Andy Stories are available here). When I found these it prompted me to look up the author on Wikipedia. Apparently he was an artist, political cartoonist, children’s book author and illustrator, and songwriter. But Raggedy Ann and Andy are his most enduring works. One of my sisters was particularly interested in the dolls…but I don’t think I’d ever seen the books until now.

Marshall, Nina Lovering. The mushroom book. A popular guide to the identification and study of our commoner Fungi, with special emphasis on the edible varieties. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1905. Available from Internet Archive here. I was interested in the quality of the photography of the mushrooms in this volume published in 1905. This fly amanita (poisonous) is in color and includes the shadows. I wondered if the picture was taken in the field or carefully brought back into a studio.

3 Free eBooks – April 2016

My picks this month range in publication date from 1850 to 2015!

King, Derrick. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand – 9900 km, 7 Weeks. 2015. Available from Internet Archive here.  I liked that this was a book with lots of pictures of these countries…and relatively recent (early 2012). Many of the pictures included people that provides scale to the rest of the structures – such as the tree and ruin in the one a clipped to include with this post. There are other books about his travels that he has posted on the Internet Archive as well.

Thomas, Edward; Cameron, Katherine. The Flowers I Love. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1910. Available from Hathi Trust here. I didn’t look much at the poetry…the visuals were too wonderful.

Bacon, M.A.; Jones, Owen. Fruits from Garden and Field. London: Longman & Co., 1850. Available from Hathi Trust here. Skip the poetry (the font makes it a challenge to read and just enjoy the visuals. I liked that the flowers and fruit were almost always included….then maybe an insect as well.

Learning Log – February 2016

There are so many ways that we learn new things. Since I started logging something new I learn every day – I am more conscious of how varied what I’m learning and the way I am learning it really is.

Observation is a way to learn new things. Birds were very active in February in our area and two ‘new to me’ observations were mourning doves making and geese climbing from open water up onto ice!

Experience. Several items on my learning log fit this category: 1) I started experimenting with not wearing my glasses and discovered that I rarely need them when I am working at my computer…and the neck/shoulder discomfort I had started to feel sometimes later in the day has completely disappeared. 2) Another learning experience this month was having a thyroid nodule biopsy; it was not bad but I really am not keen to have another one. 3) I learned to use a laminator (to make a tree identification guide more durable). It isn’t a big thing but was ‘new to me.’

Books. I started looked at the Hathi Trust collection of online books; there are so many items there is it overwhelming; botanical prints are my first ‘theme’ for browsing. On the physical book side, I read several books about Wild Life Refuges and have already started applying what I read to vacation planning; we’re going to visit the 4 National Wildlife Refuges on the Eastern Shore (of Maryland and Virginia) in March: Eastern Neck, Blackwater, Prime Hook and Chincoteague. In the Internet Archive arena my theme for browsing in February was ‘wallpaper’ with particular focus on wallpaper catalogs from the year I was born!

Udemy’s Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography). I finished as much of the class as I was interested in. I learned a few things but realized that I am spoiled by the quality of the courses I’ve taken on Coursera and Creative Live. The 4 Udemy courses I have taken are just not up to the same standard in terms of production or content.

Coursera’s Soul Beliefs (Unit 1). I finished the 11 ‘weeks’ of lectures for this portion of the course and will start on the Unit 2 lectures in March.

Coming up in March – there are already some other types of learning coming up: travel and ‘live’ classes.

3 Free eBooks – January 2016

So many books to choose from...so little time....

Denon, Vivant. Egypte : documents d'art Egyptien d'aprés la Description de l'Armée Francaise sous Napoléon Ier, L'Expédition d'Egypte, dessins du Baron Denon, et le Musée Egyptine. Paris: A. Guerinet. 1900. Available from the Internet Archive here. Vivant Denon produced a lot of sketches during Napoleon’s time in Egypt and this book is a collection of them. They include a lot of detail.

Walcott, Mary Vaux. North American Wild Flowers. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. 1925. Five volumes available on the Internet Archive: one, two, three, four, five. I am always thrilled to find books with botanical prints…flowers particularly.

Young, Bonnie and Malcolm Varon. A Walk through the Cloisters. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1979. Available on the Internet Archive here. The art and architecture of Medieval Europe as displayed the Cloisters Museum and Gardens. The gardens – bounded by arches and columns – are always appealing. This book may be a little dated but the photography of the place as it was in the late 1970s is quite good.

Enjoy some good online books!