Tag Archives: adventure

The Sleeping Beauty

Posted on June 19, 2022 by smellincoffee

A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms #5: The Sleeping Beauty(c) 2010 Mercedes Lackey352 pages Rosamond has the bad luck to be an orphaned princess in a wealthy little kingdom surrounded by larger, hostile enemies, any one of whom will … Continue reading →

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Watership Down

Posted on November 19, 2021 by smellincoffee

Watership Down© 1972 Richard Adams413 pages A small community sits on the precipice of destruction, but the few who realize it are unable to fully warn their comrades. A small band leave everything they’ve ever known behind, to face the … Continue reading →

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Of Captains Courageous, dog-training, and walking amid mountain laurel

Posted on April 20, 2021 by smellincoffee

Late last week I finished Captains Courageous, a coming-of-age adventure story in which a spoiled brat named Harvey Cheyne falls overboard at sea and is rescued by a fishing boat, whereupon he must work for his living and matures rather … Continue reading →

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The Ice at the End of the World

Posted on October 16, 2019 by smellincoffee

© 2019  Jon Gertner 418 pages My reading journeys have taken me to Greenland recently, but instead of reading more about the Viking settlements there,  I wanted to read about another tribe:   the explorers and scientists who willingly endured months … Continue reading →

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Dragon’s Teeth

Posted on August 27, 2017 by smellincoffee

Dragon’s Teeth © 2017 Michael Crichton288 pages Scientific discovery isn’t always a gentlemanly affair.  Dragon’s Teeth, published by the estate of Michael Crichton in his name, inserts a fictional character into the real-life feud of two paleontologists who went to such … Continue reading →

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Cities of Gold

Posted on August 3, 2017 by smellincoffee

Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado© 1992 Douglas Preston (Walter Nelson, Photographs)480 pages Sometimes, history has got to be pursued from the back of a horse.  Douglas Preston wasn’t sure what took him … Continue reading →

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The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Posted on April 8, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood© 1883 Howard Pyle648 pages,  Duke Classics Edition. (Other editions seem to have anywhere from 200 to 400 pages, which is odd.) You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to … Continue reading →

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The Journey Home

Posted on July 22, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West© 1977 Edward Abbey242 pages The desert is no place for decent men, which is why Edward Abbey likes it so much. Born on the eastern seaboard,  on a farm … Continue reading →

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White Fang

Posted on June 29, 2016 by smellincoffee

White Fang© 1906 Jack Londonpp. 1- 101, Tales of the North. “An’ right here I want to remark,’ Bill went on, ‘that that animal’s familiarity with camp-fires is suspicious an’ immoral.’‘It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought to … Continue reading →

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Posted on February 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

2001: A Space Odyssey© 1986 Arthur C. Clark, Stanley Kubrick316 pgs At the dawn of the twenty-first century, mankind makes an extraordinary discovery: unmistakable evidence of life outside the environs of Earth. An object on the moon makes plain the … Continue reading →

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