Clarke Books

If you are open and can get past some of the fluffy stuff there are some very valuable passages that hit the mark. Often times you really have to analyze what you just read, your reactions and let it sink in for awhile, and then it could take awhile for you to actually fully understand what it is trying to teach.

COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.I HAVE READ IT TWICE ALREADY.FANTASTI

'Tube-sock Tricks, and 101 Other Tips for RVing Success' gives you just that; 101 RV and pet travel tips as well as things you can do with tube socks aside from wearing them. There are `essential first timer tips' and `doggy tips' sprinkled throughout. The tube sock tricks are put in black boxes so you can't miss them. The last several pages are blank for you to add more tips you learn along the way.

The writing style of 'Tube-sock Tricks' is very engaging. The tips given are practical and useful to RVers and others who travel. Several refer to others listed later on, which encourages you to continue reading.
The illustrations are delightful and capture the essence of what Chaucer is telling you with great humor. He leads you through the book with a cute picture of himself that let you know what page you are on. Asterisks followed by a tiny illustration at the bottom of the page let you know if the tip is for newbies or dog owners. Some of the tips are common sense things for seasoned travelers but invaluable for beginners.

Having been a soccer mom, camper, currently a live-aboard sailor and a future RVer, I found 'Tube-sock Tricks, and 101 Other Tips for RVing Success' to be chock full of good ideas. This is a great gift and a must have for anyone setting out on an adventure, whether by RV or boat.

We just bought a new RV this year. As previous tent campers we are so green at RVing it is funny. Along comes Tube-Sock Tricks. A funny and yet very useful book for the new RVer. Great tips for outfitting your RV for the first time. Several of these tips are worth thousands of dollars! (Putting down the awing for instance! Must remember to do that!) My kids even read it and got some useful tips. A great house warming gift for the new RVer!

this is a great picture book with a little bit of reading to help young children up to first or second grade to understand the importance of taking care of your teeth. I highly recommend this book to anyone who just enjoys reading to the youngsters, or is working 0n a class room theme about teeth. Easy book to read to a group.

Wilbur the Walrus has a tusk that hurts, but he resists going to the dentist - until his wise Grandfather presents another option. Many a child will relate to the story of a young walrus who resists treatment - until he sees for himself the results of avoiding it!

Written by a relative of Clement Clarke Moore, the author shares the history of the famous Christmas story. Done all in rhyming poetry with explanations of phrases used throughout like "threw open the shutters". Beautiful illustrations as well. Makes you want to crawl into a warm bed and read it again. My 8th grade students enjoyed hearing it very much! Worth the purchase.

I came upon this book after the holidays were over and regret that I didn't find it before Christmas. This book was so enchanting that I went back to purchase more as gifts for next Christmas and was disappointed when they were sold out. This story is written in poem form as recalled by Dinghy Sharp, the great-great-grandaughter of Clement C. Moore, author of the famous poem, The Night Before Christmas, written on Christmas Eve of 1822. The story captures the history and origin of his poem that was passed down from generation to generation in their family. Many verses from the poem are explained in the story to help readers understand the poem's meaning. The story ends with a copy of The Night Before Christmas, handwritten by Clement C. Moore along with his signature, dated 1862. This story will become a new family tradition in my home for many years to come. It will be read on Christmas Eve, among other stories that are currently read as tradition in our home. I intend to pass this wonderful version of Moore's poem on to my children with the hope that it will be passed on from generation to generation as it was told in the Moore family.

This book is precious! Our 26 friends have never been better represented in the spirit of yuletide. Morice packs his readers into the Night Before Christmas train, and takes them on a memorable jouney from A to Z, dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's. St. Alphabet belongs in the stockings of every U and I.

Dave Morice's A Visit from St. Alphabet is a beautiful small press book that I enjoyed even though Coffee House Press now markets it as a children's book. Yes, I read it to my children and they enjoyed the alphabet play: "'Twas the night before X, when all through the Y/ Not a letter was stirring, not even an I...." Once a child learns or is learning the alphabet and has heard ""Twas the night before Christmas" they love to play with the knowledge of both in this beautiful illustrated little book. I can still remember the little darlings: "The Z's were nestled all snug in their beds,/ While visions of W's danced in their heads;/ And U in your kerchief and I in my cap..."-anyway you can picture it-actually Dave Morice pictures it. He is the artist and playful poet of Poetry Comics, a wonderful comic book anthology assault on well-known poems.

Morice can draw and, as the author of The Dictionary of Wordplay and The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet (a book about fun with poetry in the schools), he loves the play of language. I am also pleased that Morice designed the book so well. The words and images sit nicely on the page and scan nicely as you flip through the pages. You can see wonderful detail in the pictures, a great aspect of a book so concerned with writing ("When out on the paper their rose such a clatter, / I sprang from my sentence to see what was the matter.") The concern with the play of poetry and writing makes this a good small press book for adults as well as children.

When Coffee House Press was Toothpaste Press twenty-five years ago they printed A Visit from St. Alphabet. My wife and I found the book then, in 1980. We got another copy when Toothpaste reprinted it in 1982 and I sent one to my nephew in 1992 even though by then it was a very rare book. We are now sending one to my grandnephew since Coffee House has reprinted it. The 2005 version is brighter than ever, more durable in hardcover, and with the green endpapers, the cover illustrations, and the bright red wrapper, a much more attractive book. Actually, I am getting another one for myself as well as the new baby

Voyages of the Soul is a masterpiece that integrates spirituality,creativity,philosophy and truth.The author is abviously an edified human being,that understands the true meaning of the word.This work of art answers the questions that haunt our minds,hearts, and emotions "The Soul" ,and leaves them unanswered all over again.What an appropriate title! This work is necassary for this period in time,and will find favor with the reader who is open minded and flexable.

We need more from this author !

Conrad M. Clarke
C.E.O Northwest Investments
Seattle, WA USA

This is a fantastic collection of self-reflective prose poetry (thankfully not a rhyme in sight) that bounces between soul searching and raging cynicism. Clarke is brutally honest with herself, her peers and her surroundings, and she writes with a distinct voice. This voice carries the reader through each journey of her mind and spirit. Most of the time the writing is desperate, but once in a while Clarke does display a smidgen of optimism. However, it seems that even in her most optimistic moments she is aware that her present happiness is only a temporary condition, but then isn't it that way for us all? Personal favorites include: "The Drug", "Elegy" and "Pain".

More Please.

Potential readers may hold two reservations. How could the last years of a dog, no matter how cherished, fail to seem slight in comparison to Chris Clarke's masterful nature essays at Creek Running North? How could material initially contained in blog posts be ordered or shaped?

I believe that you will find both concerns unfounded, and love this book, unalloyed.

I.

First (and perhaps shockingly): this is not a dog book. Rather, Clarke has written a memoir on his enmeshment, his overlapping boundaries with the natural world. Clarke himself admits only that he writes "about wildlife, family, paleontology and Zeke through the lens of how I feel about my relationship with myself." I would submit that Zeke is not truly a subject at all, but rather a joint-venturer and co-author. His royalties, one presumes, were paid in advance, in filet tender.

Clarke (with Zeke) walks through landscapes -- the Bay Area, the Mojave, Northern New York State -- with an unmatched ability to inhabit the growing and the breathing, the fossil and its stone. His writing is umami, and so triggers those newly-discovered receptors. The reader tastes the savory, the yum.

There are the careful observations, which you want to carry away and sleep with, as Freda the rat does with dollar bills from Clarke's wallet. After a Christmas tree is sacrificed, "[t]he shredder smells of conifer sachet." A fire in the Oakland Hills spews "[l]ive embers the size of chickpeas." Soaproot leaves are "frozen splashes around imagined points of impact." Gardening on a hill of diatomite (fossil Miocene plankton) is like "walking on very stale halvah."

There are the pervasive seams of esoteric knowledge: botany, gardening, corvid behaviors, paleontology, geology. Clarke displays the world's workings: the mechanism of cholla barbs; co-evolution of dogs and humans; how soaproot's saponin-filled leaves suggest assignment to the Agave family; Mayan legends of the coyote; the altitudinal range of the Joshua Tree. Clarke obviously loves the physical world with his head as well as his heart. Each detail flows seamlessly from the narrative, yet lends weight and authority.

There is throughout, one must note, a witty, inimitable authorial voice for which Zeke is blameless. A vet suggests opiates for pain. The author fears that Zeke will write "senseless dream fever poetry," and riffs a "Kibble Khan" Coleridge parody. Clarke finds a tail shed by a Western Fence lizard, likely under feline duress. He uses it to boost the growth of a potted cactus, in hopes that the plant someday will fall on a cat and effect "the revenge of the tail." Musing on a Buddhist approach to environmental protection, Clarke opines: "I want no part of any enlightenment posited on the nonexistence of bird song, of capsicum, of salt water or libido or tooth enamel."

Do we hear Clarke speak about his dog? Absolutely, his book sings just as he sang to Zeke on every walk: "[n]onsense, mainly, about the squirrels as we walk past them or about his bad breath or dirty feet or general fuzziness". But Zeke is but one strand of Clarke's braided love of the physical world. On hands and knees in January, Clarke grazes the miner's lettuce of the California hills: it "tastes like home, and spinach."

II.

We also read, of course, of Zeke's decline and Clarke's grief. At book's end, Zeke's world is his bed; the author's world-gaze is similarly blindered. This is exactly where Clarke made an unerring decision: to maintain blog-post order.

The posts themselves had not been journal snippets, but rather had knit past, present and future. Posts meditated on memories, current events and anticipation of loss-- "[a] long life is a landscape of holes where things once grew." Clarke marries these layers of the human temporal with observations on geologic time. The result is a deep earth perspective of aging, death and grief.

This perspective wrings out tears and self-pity, and instead impresses a dry but detailed story into the land. The sorrows of life on earth are the earth. Passages like this preserve our brief human lives, and the even shorter lives of the dogs who leave us behind:

"Green serpentine from the earth's mantle, sand laid down on the bed of a Miocene sea, shale made of silt washed down from the Sierra, diatomite from a deep trench off Monterey: all mix as pebbles in the bed of Pinole Creek. All of them will wash out to the bay, eventually. A gravel delta runs fifty yards out from the creek mouth now. It was not there last year. At quarter to three tomorrow morning, the tide will wash over it again."

(This review first appeared on [...].)

Chris Clarke calls "Walking with Zeke" an edited compilation of "several years of writing about my best friend's life and death." It's pretty safe to say that "Walking with Zeke" is the best self-published book of the year, and the best "book that grew from a blog" of all time. Lifted straight from the author's acclaimed Creek Running North web log (blog seems too coarse a word for the fine writing he's done here) with only a little reworking, it's surprising how well the story coheres, told in the original journal entry format.

This is a great animal book, but also much more than an animal book. It's filled with the author's love for his companion, deft characterizations of Zeke, and moving accounts of the author's near-heroic efforts to care for him until the end. As an old writing instructor once said, "If you're not risking sentimentality, you're not even in the ballpark." Treading on inherently sentimental ground, Clarke rises above sentimentality to deliver honest and often gripping emotion.

But beyond the central core of Zeke's story, this is also a book filled with careful observations of nature in the author's Bay Area community of Pinole, in the Sierra, in the Mojave, and elsewhere. There are also odd moments of humor, fascinating meditations on the convergent evolution of humans and dogs, and thoughts on the intersection of wild and tamed nature.

Walking with Zeke achieves what all good nature writing should: it reminds us simply to pay attention.

A beautifully illustrated book that reinforces the important roles that animal dads play in protecting and providing for their young. A great book for kids 5 and younger. My 7-year-old daughter loved it, too.

What a great way to show the importance of fathers in the animal kingdom! This fun, well-illustrated picture book is a wonderful father-child connector. An absolute MUST for Father's Day buying! Teachers will enjoy sharing the simple facts about animal fatherhood with their students, too.

If you are interested in understanding the mechanics of greyhound racing and aspire to winning then I would strongly encourage you to buy this book. It was written in the 1970's, is mainly concerned with British racing and is somewhat out of date. These factors aside, it is a beautifully written book and contains some excellent theory on the selection of winners.

[...]

If you are in any way interested in betting on greyhound racing then this book is a must read. It is by far the best book of it's kind. The book was written in the 1970's and as such is a little outdated in the tracks and types of racing surfaces mentioned. (This outdated information is, however, interesting from an historical point of view).

On the plus side, the authors insight into greyhound racing is beyond parallel and I would implore you to get a copy if you can. I know that this book is in limited supply so if you get the opportunity take it.

As with most books on betting none ever seem to be truly complete but the author has addressed many important issues.

I also recommend Greyhound Racing To Win by Victor Knight (another English book) and Winners Guide to Greyhound Racing by Prof Jones

Clarke's stories are an examination of how people will deal with future technologies. They are largely open ended and create a scene around the science, a framework into which the reader can immerse himself. It's a very unique style, and one that can take getting used to. The overall effect is very wistful.

The stories here cover sailboat racing (aluminum sails in the solar wind); marooned ships (after launching from the Moon); voyages of discovery to Jupiter, using fusion powered hot air balloons. This is classic SF from a master, showing us how different things will be regardless of which direction the future takes, while the human factors will remain the same. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

These stories are quick, meaningful and not burdened with angst or attempts at deep meaning. They are stories of people living their lives, or dying, against backgrounds somewhat familiar and strikingly strange. Every student of classic SF should have this in their library.

Clarke's stories are an examination of how people will deal with future technologies. They are largely open ended and create a scene around the science, a framework into which the reader can immerse himself. It's a very unique style, and one that can take getting used to. The overall effect is very wistful.

The stories here cover sailboat racing (aluminum sails in the solar wind); marooned ships (after launching from the Moon); voyages of discovery to Jupiter, using fusion powered hot air balloons. This is classic SF from a master, showing us how different things will be regardless of which direction the future takes, while the human factors will remain the same. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

These stories are quick, thought-provoking and not burdened with angst or attempts at deep meaning. They are stories of people living their lives, or dying, against backgrounds somewhat familiar and strikingly strange. Every student of classic SF should have this in their library.