I seem to be in a Northwest frame of mind these past few days.

One of my favorite GUR classes in college was Geology, so, when I saw Cascadia: the Geologic Evolution of the Pacific Northwest by Bates McKee on the shelf of the bookstore I didn't think twice, I bought it! Filled with pictures, maps, graphs as well as interesting text, if it wasn't used as a text book, it should have been.

Even though I'm pretty sure you can no longer find glass floats on a beach, I still read (and enjoyed) Beachcombing for Japanese Glass Floats by Amos L. Wood. There's the history of glass floats (there are many styles), how they ended up on Washington beaches, where they were found and the best times and ways to search for them. Sort of a 'blast from the past' read. :-)

I've always enjoyed learning how something is named (person, dog, town) so Washington State Place Names by James W. Phillips is one of my most favorite and oft used books. An excellent book just to browse, look up where you live, the names you see as you drive down the freeway .... and be sure to look up Pysht.

Art of the State: Washington: the Spirit of America is one of a series of books about art that is unique to a specific state. At some point there should be one for each state. (I'm sure glad they didn't publish them in alphabetical order!) I like that 'art' is given a very broad definition here so everything from folk art, to photography, gardens, totem poles, dance and literature are included.

This is the sort of book that just might need to go to my Ohio relatives. It's a quirky, silly (and some times serious) journey that will entertain even a non-resident. You Know You're in Washington When ... 101 Quintessential Places, People, Events, Customs, Lingo, and Eats of the Evergreen State by Sharon Wootton and Maggie Savage is also part of a series about various states.

And, for some fun on some in-state road trips, try Washington Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities and Other Offbeat Stuff by Harriet Baskas or Turning Down the Sound: Travel Escapes in Washington's Small Towns by Foster Church. Curiosities features many of the strange and yes, quirky things found within the borders of the Evergreen State. There's the giant ginseng root, a nutcracker museum, cranberry bogs, and the second largest Frisbee collection.

Turning Down the Sound is an enjoyable travel book highlighting many of the small towns that are usually passed by, or through, on the way to somewhere else. There's a history and points of interest for each of the towns as well as where to stay and the best place to eat. I would have enjoyed more pictures, but this was a fun read.

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Several books on women have crossed my reading path in the past few months.

After moving Rocket Girl: the Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist, by George D. Morgan back and forth between a few 'trails' I finally put it here since it's mostly a biography, and about a woman. Because his mother's job was top secret the author actually knew very little of what she did so some of this book is conjecture and re-creations of what happened. Since he tells the reader he is doing so, it did not bother me, and it was a tale that needed to be told. Mary's early life was hard, but she managed to escape and go on to college. She was good at math, and chemistry and was recruited (to make bombs in WWII) before she had a chance to finish her degree. She went on to be the only woman (amongst 900 men) at North American Aviation and was the one who invented Hydyne, the fuel that powered the Jupiter C rocket (the one that put the Explorer 1 into orbit). Because of all the secrecy surrounding her work, her projects, and her life, she was almost forgotten by history (and the credit for her work going to a man). Hopefully now she'll be remembered for the amazing person she was.

Starting with the time when a woman needed her husband's signature to get a credit card and ending with Hilary Clinton's run for President, When Everything Changed: the Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins is a great romp through (fairly) recent history. It covers politics, fashion, family life, and birth control ... and education .... law schools, medical schools, vet schools opened their admissions to include women (there were a few early pioneers, of course). From 'Father Knows Best' to 'Roseanne' this is a great review of the changing roles of women.

Sex With Kings: Five Hundred Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge, by Eleanor Herman. I used to chuckle when someone told me they were related to royalty but after reading this book, they just might be telling the truth. The kings of the title were certainly a randy bunch! (It would have been nice to have a spread sheet to keep up with all the comings and goings)! At this time it was expected, and accepted, that a King would have a mistress. Being a mistress was hard work, and with little or no security such as a royal wife had. (Well, sometimes). Some became involved in the politics of the day, some were spies for another country. Most of them would be sought out and welcomed, until they fell out of favor with the King, others were shunned and on occasion even killed.

When I mentioned the above book to Char, she recommended a book she'd read a few years ago: A History of the Wife, by Marilyn Yalom. It turned out to be much more than I expected! A thoughtful, well-researched and detailed, almost text book that starts with Adam and Eve and ends in the 2000's. From chattel (it was okay for a husband to beat his wife as long as the branch was smaller than the size of his thumb) to equal partner (well, we're working on it, at least) (!) this was an engrossing book. It takes a while to read, but it's worth it, and there's no test at the end!

I found this 'side-trail' from Sex With Kings while I was reading 'Wife': The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer. This is an excellent place to start before you climb into the Wayback Machine (or TARDIS, or ....) ;-) You will learn what you need to know to fit in, such as how to greet people (complicated); what to wear (layers and layers of clothing) for your position in society; what, and how, to eat and so on. Mortimer has done a wonderful job of explaining the era from the richest (the queen) to the poorest and what that life was like. It will be very quiet (no planes or cars yet), the roads will be narrow and either dusty or muddy. Oh, and Don't Drink the Water!

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I like reading short stories. These have a PNW connection.

Whatcom Scenes: A Miscellany of Prose and Verse by Residents of the Fourth Corner, with Illustrations by Local Artists and Photographers. Dorothy Koert did a wonderful job gathering and editing this collection filled with stories by a grand variety of local yokels! Happy, sad, nostalgic, factual, fanciful ... there's something here for just about any reader.

Whatcom Scenes was so well received, the Fourth Corner Registry followed it with Whatcom Images: an Illustrated Collection of Prose and Verse, edited by Dorothy Koert and James W. Scott. I found it fun to look for the names I knew best and read those first.

The only way to 'meet' Dirty Dan Harris these days is with the sculpture of him sitting on one of the benches off the Fairhaven Green (rather one sided, yes, but it makes for a fun photo), but his stories live on The Fairhaven Folktales of Dirty Dan Harris, by Michael Sean Sullivan with illustrations by Kent Shoemaker. Dan Harris was a man with a dream ... a town named Fairhaven. He was also a grand story teller and fortunately, these have been saved and collected into this book. My favorite tale is the one about Fairhaven truffles. And pigs.

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It's summer and as I walk through my neighborhood I see a great variety of gardens, from those that take a lot of work, to those are designed to be easy to maintain, to a very few that have been made into parking spots.

Like many of us (I'm pretty sure), I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett at a young age. Orphaned by the cholera outbreak in India, Mary Lennox is sent to live with her Uncle in England. She finds a neglected garden behind a wall. That's it, that's all I'm saying! If you've read it, you know how it turns out, if not, you are in for a treat! In 1991 Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon turned the book into a Tony Award winning musical. (It deserved it, the musical was wonderful).

There is an apple tree with an attitude, edible flowers that will help children be more thoughtful, and nasturtiums that will help someone keep a secret growing in this small garden in South Carolina. Tended by the same family for generations it will help heal two estranged sisters. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen as it's not something I'd normally read. Just proves that it's good to try something different! :-)

During World War I a young child arrives in Australia from London with nothing more than a small suitcase and a book of beautifully illustrated fairy tales. She is raised by the dockmaster and his wife who, on her 21st birthday, tell her this. She returns to London in search of her real identity. Eventually her granddaughter continues the search, discovers the garden in the title and solves the mystery. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is one of those books that will keep you reading far into the night.

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A suggestion from a reader friend in California took me to The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World, by Paul Collilns. Once the folio sold for less than the cost of having it printed, it now sells for millions. History, mystery, and travel are combined as the author follows copies through time and around the world.

This, of course, took me back to my copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (mine is illustrated by Rockwell Kent) and an evening of skimming through some of my favorite plays. (Remember Nancy Pearl and "setting, characters, story, language"?)

On the shelf next to that is Twisted Tales From Shakespeare, by Richard Armour and illustrated by Campbell Grant. Here are six well known plays told in a new light (because, according to the author, the old light blew a fuse). Fun puns, witty wordplay, and crazy spins will keep you chuckling as you read.

For an otherworldy take on the Bard, try William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily a New Hope, by Ian Doescher (inspired by the work of George Lucas and William Shakespeare). For the best results, read this book out loud with a friend or two,it makes the iambic pentameter more obvious. What fun! Be sure to read the Afterword where Doescher makes all the necessary connections .... from Joseph Campbell (Hero of a Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth) who studied Shakespeare to Lucas, who studied Campbell.

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Beginnings and endings ... not just first or last lines, necessarily, but a start or a finish that made me smile, made me feel good. I'm starting with just two books, ones I've read or read again recently. It wasn't until now I realized they had some common themes. :-)

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson. The title is the beginning! Not wishing to celebrate, make that endure, his 100th birthday celebration at the retirement home, Allan Karssohn climbs out his window and walks away. Like his life, this becomes an adventure including a suitcase of money, several interesting characters (who join him on his journey) and an old bus. And an elephant.

Jacob Jankowski, the main character in Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen, is also in a retirement home. He too, has has a life filled with adventure -- orphaned during the Depression, he finds work with a traveling circus. There are some distressing moments in this book, survival during that time was hard. The ending of this book made me want to cheer, it was that good.

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This was a quick, short trail ... the books followed each other immediately. It started with The Caves of Perigord by Martin Walker, a mystery. Three stories intertwine: one from 17,000 years ago when the paintings were made, one from World War II when the paintings were first found (among other things), and one from present day and a unique piece of art.

This took me to the non-fiction book, Cave Painters, by Gregory Curtis. This is one of those non-fiction books that reads like fiction. It's a journey through the known caves with art, who found them and when, and various interpretations of the artwork. I loved the descriptions of what the area would have looked like and what animals the artist would have seen all those many years ago.

Then, I then had to find a coffee table type book so as to get a good look at the paintings. Dawn of Art: the Chauvet Cave: the Oldest Known Paintings in the World, by Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschanmps and Christian Hillaire is one such book, and includes a family connection, but any book with good photographs will do.

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I remember my teacher reading the class The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth. In the dim recesses of my mind I also remember this as an overlap with the small plastic dinosaurs that came in the lunch pack box of corn chips. As much as I enjoyed the book (and went on to read it a few times on my own), I would have preferred a dragon hatching out of that egg! (I'd read My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett some years earlier).

Martin Greenberg has put together dozens of wonderful collections of short stories in a variety of themes, and Dinosaurs: Stories By Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Many More is no exception. The stories by the lesser known authors were good, too. ;-)

I have not read Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park, but after seeing the movie I read The Making of Jurassic Park: An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making, by Don Shay and Jody Duncan. Not the same, to be sure, but a very interesting book. And, learning how things were done did not diminish the magic of the movie in any way.

Cowboys and dinosaurs make for an unlikely combination but come together nicely in Dinosaur Hunter by Homer Hickam. An amazing discovery on Montana BLM land sparks the 'dinosaur bug' in a local cowboy (a former cop) who joins the team, and then helps bring the bad guy to justice when there is a murder. Good descriptions of Montana and nice character development.

My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road With Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs, by Brian Switek turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I was intrigued from the start, but the further I got into the book, the harder it was to put down. It is obvious that the author loves dinosaurs, has since he was a kid, actually. Much has changed in his life time in what is known about dinosaurs, including the Brontosaurus and this book explains these changes (many dinosaurs, even those who did not become birds), may have had a sort of fuzz. They may have had much more colorful skin than we first thought. Perhaps they were much more social ... and so on. There is a lot of humor here, too, which makes it all the more fun to read.

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Two recent reads (plus a few from winter time) put me back on my WWII trail again.

50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany, by Steven Pressman. It's hard to know where to start when talking about this seemingly impossible project. Gil and Eleanor Kraus had to prove that the children would be well cared for when they arrived in the states, then they had to go to Germany, select the children and return home. This meant tackling reams of paperwork, a labyrinth of (ever-changing) laws, immigration quotas, visas, passports, all checked over and over and over, much of it done under the watchful eye of the SS, and knowing that the project could be stopped at any time. Parents were asked to hand their children over to strangers, and yet they came by the hundreds for the chance of getting one of the 50 openings. When (if) the parents made it to the U.S. they would be reunited with their children. On the final day, at the railway station, they parents couldn't even waive good bye (they could be arrested for doing so). A tense, amazing read!

I learned about Churchill and the King, by Kenneth Weisbrode, on Constant Reader's blog. It started as a working relationship -- the shy George VI (who never expected to be King) and the more flashy Churchill, but developed into a friendship as the King of England and the Prime Minister guided England through WWII. Well written and easy to read.

My first book about WWII just might have been Snow Treasure, by Marie McSwigan. (It's too far in the past to be sure)! To keep Norwegian gold from falling into Nazi hands, plans were made to move it to America. The question was how to get it to the boats. Based on actual events, this tween read was just as good now as when I read it as a kid. (No spoilers here, read the book, it's a quick read)!

A book like I'll Be Seeing You: 51 Songs of World War II can, (and does) have me humming for hours. This collection includes a time-line of events and photographs of the era.

This a book about a plane that crashes in Nazi occupied France. Not all that unusual. At least one of the passengers is a spy. Not all that unusual. One of them is captured and in order to live has to give up the details of the mission or be executed. Again, not all that unusual. What makes this book different is that the pilot and the spy involved in the crash are young women. Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein is a carefully researched and well written teen read.

I was, and still am, amazed by some of the camouflage techniques used to hide factories, planes and even rivers. There were fake tanks used to make the enemy think the army was gathering *here*, nets to hide what was underneath, and even highly detailed, painted tarps to cover entire neighborhoods. I read Masquerade: Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World War II, by Seymour Reit after seeing a similar show on the Military Channel. Wow!

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