Every week as a part of SunLit — The Solar’s literature part — we function employees suggestions from e book shops throughout Colorado. This week, the employees from Poor Richard’s Books in Colorado Springs recommends books that includes a day with Nicola Tesla, a Fountain Creek expertise and a memoir of falconry.
Tesla’s Stroll
By Jimmy Sena
Environment Press
$22.99
July 2024
Buy
From the writer: Nikola Tesla’s eight-month go to to Colorado Springs in 1899 is integral to his evolution as a genius inventor. But, for a lot of, it nonetheless exudes an charisma and fable. By means of a meandering poem and gorgeous historic images, stroll together with Tesla one autumn day as he descends the entrance stairs of the Alta Vista Lodge on Cascade Avenue as he interacts with residents in Acacia Park, on Tejon Road, and alongside Pikes Peak Avenue — as he arrives at his Experimental Station on Knob Hill and engages the thunderous may of his electrical marvels on the Jap Plains, and as he ends the evening in what’s going to change into Memorial Park.
Each particular person, place, and picture we encounter is discovered amongst our metropolis’s major sources and historic artifacts. After the journey, we will discover detailed explanatory notes and interval photos that give authenticity to the story. A interval map guides us alongside Tesla’s path by city as we think about Colorado Springs 125 years in the past.
From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail supervisor: Jimmy Sena brings a contemporary perspective to Nikola Tesla’s historical past on this inventive and imaginative stroll round city in a day of the lifetime of Tesla. The e book, written in prose, which lends so a lot to how the story is instructed, is a Longlist winner on this 12 months’s Studying the West e book awards within the Poetry class.
We observe Tesla, recognized for his eccentricities, in his interactions with folks and locations all through the day. From waking up within the morning to assembly with metropolis leaders at a prestigious personal membership then lastly ending the day in a metropolis vast blackout (was it his fault?), we’re given perception into this man’s thoughts. By no means have I learn a narrative with so few phrases that feels utterly instructed. The prose styling matches this narrative extremely properly. The nod from the Studying the West of us is well-deserved.
Fountain Creek: Large Classes from a Little River
By Jim O’Donnell
Torrey Home Press
$19.95
November 2024
Buy
From the writer: Over the previous 200 years, society has taken what was as soon as a sacred relationship with water and morphed rivers into trashed, overused commodities. Now, the rivers people depend upon might now not be as much as the duty. Now what?
Colorado’s Fountain Creek is a waterway that lived by the worst of human interplay. It has been dammed, diverted, poisoned, diminished, and far more and but, it has endured. “Fountain Creek” seems each to the previous and the long run for steering and asks people to rethink the connection with the brooks, streams, creeks, and rivers that give us life.
From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail supervisor: It was the stink that hit me, kind of a very ripened apple, vinegary. That was my first impression of Fountain Creek some 30-odd years in the past after I first arrived in Colorado Springs. The odor nonetheless lingers on some days. Fountain Creek perplexed me. It slices by the western fringe of Colorado Springs in Monument Valley Park, a serious inexperienced house and linear park on this busy city. The creek might be a sparse trickling strip of water on a spring day or, after a summer season monsoon storm, a raging river stuffed with anger.
Jim O’Donnell’s “Fountain Creek: Large Classes from a Little River” offers us a well timed historical past of the storied stream and delves into the wrestle to maintain the creek wholesome and important. With a wealth of analysis and plenty of private reflections and expertise, the e book brings a “deeper respect and understanding of why (it) is an important important useful resource which can not and shouldn’t be discounted or ignored”.
The Hawk’s Approach: Encounters with Fierce Magnificence
By Sy Montgomery
Atria Books
$20
Might 2022
Buy
From the writer: When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, house to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the beginning of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, 4-year-old feminine Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of greater than 4 toes. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that might pierce pores and skin and bone and but, she was prepared to work with a human to hunt. From the primary second Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather-based gloved fist, Sy fell beneath the hawk’s magnetic spell. Over the following few years, Sy spent extra time with these magnificent creatures, attending to know their extraordinary talents and instincts.
From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail supervisor: And sure, earlier than you ask, I am on a Sy Montgomery streak at present….this time the main focus is on hawks or birds of prey generally.
In “The Hawk’s Approach,” we tiptoe into the mysterious and regal world of falconry the place the winged ones are in management. We two-legged beasts are a mere lesser participant, just about only a limb (metaphorically and bodily) the place the effective feathered beings deem an arm a roosting spot earlier than launching off for his or her kill. We be taught to not mission human feelings and emotions onto such noble beings as a result of we will all the time be disillusioned. And defend your eyes, particularly with goshawks.
In true Montgomery type, we willingly fall into the rabbit gap of raptors. (Enjoyable reality: a hawk is not going to let go of a rabbit if it goes underground, it’s going to die earlier than letting go. That’s dedication.) She navigates coaching in turning into a falconer. Montgomery, a vegetarian, juggles these ethics in opposition to a fascination for the “hunt” and we’re drawn into her obsession. We wrestle along with her as she makes the ultimate choice whether or not to pursue the noble artwork. One other finely written mix of non-public memoir and nature writing from the writer.
As a part of The Colorado Solar’s literature part — SunLit — we’re that includes employees picks from e book shops throughout the state. Learn extra.
