Download or read book Harpoon at a Venture written by Gavin Maxwell and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, the Scottish naturalist and author of Ring of Bright Water recounts his post-World War II life as a shark fisherman in the Hebrides. A shark fishery based on the tiny Hebridean island of Soay was the beginning of Gavin Maxwell’s enduring love affair with the west coast of Scotland. This, his first book, tells the whole story—the challenge and drama of the shark hunt, the development of catching techniques and equipment, the men who worked with him, and some of the frustrations of starting a new enterprise in post-war Scotland. Every chapter is packed with action and anecdote. In each there are also beautifully observed descriptions of sky, sea and the individual islands of the Hebrides as well as their wildlife—from gannets, puffins, Manx shearwaters, and fulmars to seals, dolphins, and whales.
Download or read book Ring of Bright Water written by Gavin Maxwell and published by David R. Godine Publisher. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume weaves together the Scottish otter stories from Gavin Maxwell's three non-fiction books, Ring of Bright Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963), and Raven Meet Thy Brother (1969). Maxwell was both an extraordinarily evocative writer and a highly unusual man. While touring the Iraqi marshes, he was captivated by an otter and became a devoted advocate of and spokesman for the species. He moved to a remote house in the Scottish highlands, co-habiting there with three otters and living an idyllic and isolated life – at least for a while. Fate, fame, and fire conspired against this paradise, and it, too, came to an end, though the journey was filled with incident and wonder. Maxwell was also talented as an artist, and his sinuous line drawings of these amphibious and engaging creatures, and the homes they occupied, illustrate his story. This book stands as a lasting tribute to a man, his work, and his passion. It was received and has endured as a classic for its portrait not only of otters but also of a man who endured heartaches and disappointments, whose life embodied both greatness and tragedy. He writes with rare eloquence about his birth, his devotion to the beloved Scottish highlands, and the wildlife he loved, while refusing to ignore the darker aspects of his nature and of nature in its larger sense.
Download or read book Ring of Bright Water written by Gavin Maxwell and published by Longman. This book was released on 1999 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the author's life in Camusfearna, a wild and remote area of Scotland, and of three otters, Chahala, Mijbil and Edal, who became his constant companions.
Download or read book A Sea Monster s Tale written by Colin Speedie and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few marine creatures as spectacular as the Basking Shark. At up to 11 metres in length and seven tonnes in weight, this colossal, plankton-feeding fish is one of the largest in the world, second only to the whale shark. Historically, Basking Sharks were a familiar sight in the northern hemisphere – off the coasts of Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the USA, for example. In an 18th Century world without electricity, they became the focus of active hunting for their huge livers containing large amounts of valuable oil, primarily used in lamps. Catch numbers were small enough to leave populations largely intact, but during the 20th Century a new breed of hunter joined the fray, some driven as much by a need for adventure as for financial gain. With improved equipment and experience, they exploited the shark on an industrial scale that drastically reduced numbers, leading to localised near-extinction in some areas. From the 1970’s onward a new generation took to the seas, this time with conservation in mind to identify where the shark might still be found in the waters around the British Isles, employing new technologies to solve long-standing mysteries about the behaviour of this elusive creature. Using the best of both old and new research techniques, the case was built to justify the species becoming one of the most protected sharks in the oceans. Today, the Basking Shark is a much-loved cornerstone of our natural heritage. There are positive signs that the population has stabilised and may even be slowly recovering from the damage of the past, proving that timely conservation measures can be effective. Join us on a journey amidst wild seas, places, people and conservation history in the battle to protect this iconic creature – a true sea monster’s tale.
Download or read book Harpoon at a Venture written by Gavin Maxwell and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book British Literature in Transition 1940 1960 Postwar written by Gill Plain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines debates central to postwar British culture, showing the pressures of reconstruction and the mutual implication of war and peace.
Download or read book Loneliness and Time written by Mark Cocker and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1992 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Refreshing, original and eminently readable" (The Literary Review), Loneliness and Time is a pioneering study of travel writing as a literary form and of travel as a cultural phenomenon. Mark Cocker offers a fertile mixture of biography, history, and literary criticism in his portraits of some of the most prominent twentieth-century British explorer-writers - including Wilfred Thesiger, Laurens van der Post, Gavin Maxwell, and Lawrence Durrell - and of the places - Greece, Tibet - that obsessed them." "In scrutinizing the deep drives that impelled these men to the outer reaches, Cocker makes clear the immensely powerful idea of the journey as quest, as pilgrimage, and how it has come to carry mythological and spiritual import. In each portrait, the journey's meaning is unearthed layer by layer, and we see not only how it operates in the lives of the travelers themselves but its importance to the modern industrial and largely secular societies from which these figures emerge." "Cocker shows how foreign landscapes and their inhabitants have been used by travel writers as a means to self-definition as well as a source of image, fantasy, even self-image. Loneliness and Time illuminates the appeal of travel - the desire to explore the unfamiliar and the strange - that captivates us all."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book The Wee Book of Calvin written by Bill Duncan and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-11-04 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays and aphorisms about Scottish Calvinism. This is Scottish literary humour at its finest. 'A work of contemporary shamanism, with all the bluff, poetry, deranged humour, sleight-of-hand and real magic that implies.' Don Paterson. This is the first (and maybe the last) self-help guide that promises to make you feel a lot worse after you read it. A hilarious satire on freeze-dried mysticism and off-the-shelf enlightenment, it is also a haunting and lyrical reflection on places, voices and memories -- a literary journey into the heart of North-East darkness. 'A perfect evocation of Scotland's mysterious love affair with loss and sorrow. A powerful dram of Zen Calvinism.' Richard Holloway
Download or read book Submergence written by J. M. Ledgard and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning foreign correspondent’s cerebral spy novel-cum-love story exposes humanity’s tenuous hold on a vast and relentless world.
Download or read book Harpoon Venture written by Gavin Maxwell and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1952 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are the wonderful islands, the strange facts of shark life, birds, and other fish in vivid brilliance; here too the men and the boats and the excitement and the disappointments in the working life". -- Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Anthracite written by Matt Thomas and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deadbeat Kevin Jones finds himself kidnapped to an alternative reality where Wales is the single global superpower. Abducted from his mundane existence by the mysterious Gwen, she tells him there are forces seeking his destruction – he has to run or die. It turns out Kevin’s story holds the key to why all worlds but ours turn out the way they do – Pax Cambria. Featuring a host of mysterious characters, cheese-on-toast based fast food, alt-right druids and the deadly all-knowing Taffia, Anthracite begins the battle to address the woeful lack of Welsh themed comedy cyberpunk. The fearsome Jones-Corporation might run the world but they have a dirty little secret they don't want to get out. Swansea has never looked more like near-future LA. It's already got the rain.
Download or read book God Protect Me from My Friends written by Gavin Maxwell and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the life of Salvatore Giuliano.
Download or read book The View from Lazy Point written by Carl Safina and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exhilarating journey of natural renewal through a year with MacArthur fellow Carl Safina Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina's The View from Lazy Point takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again. We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden above the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to formerly devastated reefs that are resurrecting as fish graze the corals algae-free. "Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding," Safina writes, "it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection." He shows how problems of the environment drive very real matters of human justice, well-being, and our prospects for peace. In Safina's hands, nature's continuous renewal points toward our future. His lively stories grant new insights into how our world is changing, and what our response ought to be.
Download or read book Birdseye written by Mark Kurlansky and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While working as a fur trapper in Labrador, Canada, Clarence Birdseye encountered an age-old problem: bad food and an unappealing, unhealthy diet. However, he observed that fresh vegetables wetted and left outside in the Arctic winds froze in a way that maintained their integrity after thawing. As a result, he developed his patented Birdseye freezing process and started the company that still bears his name. Birdseye forever changed the way we preserve, store, and distribute food, and the way we eat. Mark Kurlansky’s vibrant and affectionate narrative reveals Clarence Birdseye as a quintessential “can-do” American inventor—his other patents include an electric sunlamp, a harpoon gun to tag finback whales, and an improved incandescent lightbulb—and shows how the greatest of changes can come from the simplest of ideas and the unlikeliest of places.
Download or read book The House of Elrig written by Gavin Maxwell and published by Birlinn Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the personal story of Gavin Maxwell's boyhood, most of which he spent, in fact or in fancy, at the House of Elrig, a lonely, windswept house on the moorlands of Galloway. This is the house which, together with the influence of his relations, shaped his interest in living creatures and his love of wild country and wilderness, and led the way to the life he describes in Ring of Bright Water. It covers his boyhood, public school education in England, and return to Scotland.
Download or read book The Old Man and the Sea written by Ernest Hemingway and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Download or read book Shucked written by Erin Byers Murray and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Buford's Heat meets Phoebe Damrosch's Service Included in this unique blend of personal narrative, food miscellany, and history In March of 2009, Erin Byers Murray ditched her pampered city girl lifestyle and convinced the rowdy and mostly male crew at Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Massachusetts, to let a completely unprepared, aquaculture-illiterate food and lifestyle writer work for them for a year to learn the business of oysters. The result is Shucked—part love letter, part memoir and part documentary about the world's most beloved bivalves. Providing an in-depth look at the work that goes into getting oysters from farm to table, Shucked shows Erin's fullcircle journey through the modern day oyster farming process and tells a dynamic story about the people who grow our food, and the cutting-edge community of weathered New England oyster farmers who are defying convention and looking ahead. The narrative also interweaves Erin's personal story—the tale of how a technology-obsessed workaholic learns to slow life down a little bit and starts to enjoy getting her hands dirty (and cold). This is a book for oyster lovers everywhere, but also a great read for locavores and foodies in general.
