- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: HarperPerennial; Reprint edition (19 April 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061861685
- ISBN-13: 978-0061861680
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.7 x 2.4 cm
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
243,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Books > Science & Nature > Food & Farming > Forestry & Silviculture
- #84 in Books > History > Britain & Ireland > British Heads of State > Richard I
Seeds
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
""Seeds" reads like a talk between John Muir and Bill Bryson. Horan takes an unlikely premise and takes a journey that's poignant, insightful and unexpectedly humorous. More than a book about seeds--it's about literary heroes, forensic forestry and self-discovery."--Spike Carlsen, author of A Splintered History of Wood
Product Description
"Seeds" is the chronicle of novelist Richard Horan's quest to gather seeds from trees at the homes of America's most beloved authors. A heartfelt paean to the writers of America's past, "Seeds" is equally a wise, funny, and enthralling memoir of one man's reconnection with nature. Horan crisscrosses the country while also traversing the wide gamut of American literature, from the wooded road of yellow hemlocks leading to L. Frank Baum's childhood home in upstate New York; to the silver maples ringing Jack Kerouac's one-time house in Lowell, MA (the same majestic giants, Horan reflects, that Kerouac was likely thinking of when he wrote that felt most at peace when in the presence of trees); to the invasive tree that grew in Betty Smith's Brooklyn. Horan is a passionate, insightful, and eminently likeable narrator, and his search to connect trees and writers-and his failure, at times, to do so-as well as the generally fun tone of his adventures (he nearly gets arrested more than once) is both fascinating and endearing. Horan's destinations include the homes of: Jack Kerouac, Rachel Carson, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Henry Miller, Krishnamurti, Ken Kesey, John Muir, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Thoreau and Emerson, Robert Frost, Herman Melville, Pearl S. Buck, Shirley Jackson, L. Frank Baum, Esther Forbes, Helen Keller, Tennessee Williams, Sherwood Anderson, Louis Armstrong, William S. Burroughs, Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, and William Faulkner, as well as historically significant locations such as Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Gettysburg.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A great spring read!
25 April 2011
Format:Paperback
Mr. Horan has taken a GREAT idea (really, it's amazing that nobody thought of this before!) and written a book that leaves you feeling a real connection to the writers he explores. It's always a treat to discover an artist's inspiration, but the fact that it's right there in the trees they grew up with is simply enchanting. My favorite chapter was the one on Thomas Wolfe, but really, all of the seed-collecting adventures are a good mix of anecdote, information, and charm. I'm one of those people who is always amazed that spring manages to come every year, and reading this book was a wonderful way to celebrate all things that grow and otherwise prosper. You don't have to be a "nature lover" to love this book, just a small appreciation for the outdoors will do just fine!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
for book lovers AND nature lovers!
20 April 2011
Format:Paperback
This book is a fun travelogue in a most unusual way. The author visits the homes of his favorite American writers and with an open mind, looks for what trees are there that may have influenced their life and writings. Sometimes the visits are a bust (which is part of the serendipity of this entire venture), but most of the time there are revelations to be found, both in the trees and the people who join him along the way. From the park ranger almost scaring the author out of his boots, to skinny-dipping in Walden Pond, to confronting his own childhood fears, SEEDS is a very, very entertaining road trip.
Fans of Bill Bryson will dig this, as well as fans of the authors featured in the book: Cather, Welty, Melville, Frost, Kerouac, Wharton, Muir, Kesey, Faulkner, and more - as well as some unusual non-literary but equally poignant stops on the way. Just enough look into each author's work without being pedantic; quite the opposite. I wanted more, and the author says at the end he could've kept going, save for the book deadline and the bags and boxes of tree seeds and dirt piling up in his house, which is a part of this story all its own. Spoiler alert: there's a happy ending.
There are laugh-out-loud moments here, a-ha moments, and very touching moments. You will make your own list of favorite visits in this wonderful book. I loved it!
Fans of Bill Bryson will dig this, as well as fans of the authors featured in the book: Cather, Welty, Melville, Frost, Kerouac, Wharton, Muir, Kesey, Faulkner, and more - as well as some unusual non-literary but equally poignant stops on the way. Just enough look into each author's work without being pedantic; quite the opposite. I wanted more, and the author says at the end he could've kept going, save for the book deadline and the bags and boxes of tree seeds and dirt piling up in his house, which is a part of this story all its own. Spoiler alert: there's a happy ending.
There are laugh-out-loud moments here, a-ha moments, and very touching moments. You will make your own list of favorite visits in this wonderful book. I loved it!
Great idea, executed poorly
15 Feb 2012
Format:Paperback
The author had a good idea; to visit the homes where some pretty great people have lived, and collect seeds from the trees near those homes. The people he chooses to investigate are often, but not always, best known as writers. His exploration leads him to the homes of Rachel Carson and Robert Frost, but also George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, even to historic civil war battle sites. So the "Famous American Writers" of the title is a bit muddied. That quibble aside, this should have been a terrific book. Once he decides to write it though, he involves the reader in his continuing indecision over whether it is a book worth writing. Several chapters have him pondering whether this book is a good idea. Get over it, write it, do not involve the reader in your angst. As other reviewers have pointed out, he seems to head off on these trips with no knowledge of trees at all. He arrives at places eager to collect seeds, completely out of season for this effort and is terribly disappointed. The book makes sketchy outlines of the sites he visits, the people who inspired his journey, his family life, and his complete bafflement as to what to do with the seedlings that inevitably sprout when he plants his harvested seeds. More focus would have helped this book tremendously.
The most disappointing element to me though, was each famous person presented (sketchily) is hardly linked to the trees at all. There is a list of nice quotations by people in the back of the book, but it is more of an appendix, separated from any description of the trees themselves. Why did these people value trees? For their economic value, aesthetics, scientific curiosity? We have no idea. I am certain there are powerful quotations from each of these people about their appreciation of some kind of flora. To have this begin each chapter would have linked the person much more with the trees the chose to have near their homes.
This book is an outline for a very good book indeed. But that book remains to be written.
The most disappointing element to me though, was each famous person presented (sketchily) is hardly linked to the trees at all. There is a list of nice quotations by people in the back of the book, but it is more of an appendix, separated from any description of the trees themselves. Why did these people value trees? For their economic value, aesthetics, scientific curiosity? We have no idea. I am certain there are powerful quotations from each of these people about their appreciation of some kind of flora. To have this begin each chapter would have linked the person much more with the trees the chose to have near their homes.
This book is an outline for a very good book indeed. But that book remains to be written.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Britain & Ireland > British Heads of State > Richard I
- Books > Home & Garden > Gardening > Plants > Trees & Shrubs
- Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Botany & Plant Sciences
- Books > Science & Nature > Food & Farming > Forestry & Silviculture
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
