Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 158
Some people need to ease into a holiday mood in order to embrace all the trimmings. I just jump right in and immediately enjoy it all. The lights, the music, the overwhelming number of Hallmark movies. I especially enjoy the books. I first turn toward the classics. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens remains a world treasure as the story of miserly Ebenezer Scrooge (first published in 1843) survives numerous re-writings and performances, on both stage and big screen, by many actors over the...
Why is the raven like a writing desk? That is the important first question in the novel "The Wishing Game" by Meg Shaffer. I was delighted to find this book because it had a raven in it and fit so nicely with the Raven serial in this issue. The raven in this story is both a riddle and real. Author Jack Masterson is an eccentric man who wrote a series of very successful children's books about Clock Island and the adventures of children searching for wishes. Masterson has a pet raven he rescued...
Wouldn't it be wonderful to see the world with new eyes? As a baby grows and learns, it sees the world for the first time. The baby explores all the simple wonders that we now take for granted as we whiz right by. We most likely no longer marvel at our own shadow, the leaf of a tree, a piece of straw, how the breeze feels so soft, how fuzzy soft a bee looks. Living here for a time sadly takes the wonder edge off of our daily lives. If you are lucky to have a baby in your life, you may be...
The difference between cozy and gritty mysteries is immense. Would you rather snuggle with a teddy bear or a cholla cactus? Yes, that extreme. Cozy mysteries coax you into the story with a comfy chair, soft blanket and a steaming mug of hot chocolate. The gritty mystery grabs you and won't let go, even when you try to put it down and run. Both are layered in degrees, building to their conclusion. I suppose it depends on what kinds of books you enjoy the most, whether you can be satisfied with a...
Serials were discussed a few years back in a previous book review. At the time we sponsored our own Loop serial called "Valley of Light" with contributions from the community. It's time to try it again! A serial is where a story is divided up into segments and given to readers a bit at a time. Charles Dickens wrote his novels and published them in serial form, some weekly, others monthly, leaving his readers yearning for more. Serials have a constant story arc that proceeds forward over time,...
Have you ever wished for a machine that time travels? Where would you go? Do you want to know the future? Or would you rather experience the past? Can we learn from the past to make our future better? Museums are a time capsule that promotes time travel. Displays, photographs and sometimes even audio recordings tell us the "story" that was. Our Tehachapi Museum has such displays and a wealth of literature that can be looked through and purchased, materials that highlight the twists and turns of...
I love a good story and hate when it ends. Have you ever felt that way? Do you miss your favorite characters and wish to know what else they might be doing? Or perhaps something happened in your book and you want it to have a different result? I am forever altering stories in my head, especially to create happy endings. There is actually a name for this process. It is called fan fiction. There is a controversy whether the term itself should be fan fiction or fanfiction. Either way, it...
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) better known to the reading world as C. S. Lewis of Narnia fame, published in 1950, was a voracious writer of more than 30 books. What is not as commonly known, Lewis wrote "The Space Trilogy" between 1938 and 1945, the first of the series titled "Out of the Silent Planet." This time in history was tumultuous. Hitler became German Chancellor and then Fuhrer. His troops marched through Europe. There were concentration camps built and filled. Ghettos of deportees...
Have you wondered if there are books out there for kids that don't involve magic, fantasy, wizards, vampires, werewolves or aliens? There are plenty, with themes that educate, fascinate and encourage young people to develop curiosity, build self esteem and lean into wonders of the world around them. Adventures in the realm of reality starts with "Britfield" by C. R. Stewart. The reader first finds children at the mercy of devious adults running an orphanage in northern England. In a deterioratin...
Did you ever think you would be encouraged to "embrace your inner donkey?" Evidently there is a pretty full collection of donkey books that lead to that advice, from Socrates and Shakespeare to "The Bible" and the adventures of Don Quixote. Mentions of donkeys are widely spread through both literature and history. The donkey was domesticated as early as 5,000 to 7,000 B.C. in Africa, and has been used as a working animal since. A beast of burden. Their bodies are strong, their spindly legs...
I don't usually seek out the macabre or scary things when choosing a new book. But as the heat grows this summer, I decided I could use some cooling goosebumps. Goosebumps are the raising along the skin when one is blasted with cold air, or when suddenly confronted with a startling or eerie situation. Bumps rise up on the skin with a chill and sometimes travel down the neck along the spine. This is where the term "spine tingling" comes from. We need not wait for the chilly winds of fall and...
In 1455, a moveable type printing press gave the world the Gutenberg Bible. Since that time, the preparation of printed words for the purpose of both providing information and reading for pleasure has changed tremendously through the centuries. We now have books printed on a variety of papers in a myriad of fonts, bound in cardboard to leather. Some books are typed and sent directly from screen to screen, no paper needed at all. There is certainly more than one way to tell a story and write a...
The use of computer apps and the availability of self-publishing has been a gift to the reading community. Instead of meeting rejection at every step in the publishing world, new authors can have the satisfaction of seeing their characters come to life, page by page, when publishing their manuscripts themselves. The opportunity is also available to create book covers, ones that truly reflect the author's stories in ways that intrigue the casual browser. With the ease of new technology, art is...
Lions and tigers and bears, plus magnificent elephants, giraffes, monkeys and the wonders of the sea are within range of day trips to most Californians. In San Diego you find both the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wildlife Park ... plus SeaWorld. The Los Angeles Zoo provides good views of your favorite wild animals, reptiles and birds. Fresno has the Chaffee Zoo and is worth the trip as it even has a few dinosaurs in the mix. The Santa Barbara Zoo cannot be beat for its location. One can see a...
In the time before hand held tech games and easy computer access, children used their long summer days indulging in simple games. Bare feet running through the warm grass, they would form opposing teams, winding their arms around each other in a human rope, then call "Red Rover, Red Rover, let Timmy come over!" Timmy would run as hard as he could toward the human wall and try to hit the arms loose to make a break in the line. If he succeeded, he went back to his own team. If unsuccessful, he wou...
On blistering hot summer days my mother would call out to me and my friends languishing and complaining on our front porch, to come in and sit around our kitchen table. She would have her coffee cup filled and give us each a mug of Kool-Aid. Then she would begin telling us stories of her childhood. They were filled with country roads and a Model T Ford, her grandfather's rural mail route, asking a stranger for a drink of cold water from an old fashioned hand pump, opening a gated road with a wil...
Joan Baez first thought of herself as an artist, drawing and selling pictures of cute animals to her schoolmates for three cents a piece. Only after bluffing her way through awkward teen moments in high school, playing a ukulele and mimicking others in song, did she find her own voice. And then did she sing! With the ability to reach three octaves, the highest being in the realm of angels, she has shared her voice around the world for over 60 years to both royalty and commoners. For the poor...
In 2007 I was gifted the book "Hugo Cabret" written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. With extraordinary imagination, Selznick was able to fold us into his creation, weaving the story about a French train station, an orphaned boy and a mechanical automan holding the key to several mysteries. Selznick's words drew us in, but it was his simple drawings that captured us. Who would not like the adventure of living within the walls of a great train station? Or making a friend like Isabelle who...
A definition of time from Wikipedia states, "Time is the continual sequence of existence and events that occur in an apparently irrevocable succession." Time can creep when waiting in anticipation and fly when having fun, but you cannot stop time. It is continual, just keeps marching on. Or, so it seems. People have had a fascination about time travel, moving back in time or forward, depending on need and desire. Some people would like to go back to fix something they deem broken. Others want...
I sometimes ponder on how to say enough about a book I review without giving away too much. It's always a precarious balance, enticing the reader into the story while leaving enough yet to be found. This week I am in a conundrum because the topic of my main book is fairies, or faeries in the author's choice of spelling. Do you believe in faeries? I chose the new publication "Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries," a novel by Heather Fawlett, because it is March and I like to reference the...
When does a house become a home? When you sign the papers? When you are handed the keys? When you carry your bride over the threshold? Or maybe not until your furniture arrives, hand me downs or new from the furniture store, or belongings hauled hundreds of miles by a trailer or moving truck. People today are on the move constantly, and each time they land somewhere, they put down some kind of roots. They buy a house, or perhaps rent one, or rent an apartment or just one room. They move in...
In the book of "Genesis," the biblical characters of Adam and Eve named animals in the Garden of Eden. Man has been naming not only animals since the beginning of time, but plants, minerals, microbes and stars across the universe. Did you know that the word dinosaur wasn't coined until 1842? Before that, this species was generally referred to as terrible lizards. But the more man discovered about these mighty beasts, it became important to choose a more definitive name. Names clarify, giving a...
What could be better than a cheery red holiday to brighten the bleak days of winter? Valentine's Day, celebrated on the 14th of February, began as a Christian feast day honoring Christian martyrs. It has morphed into a cultural and commercial celebration of romance and love, whether one is religious or not. For some, this is a day for pretty cards, flowers, candy and perhaps a nice dinner out with a sweetheart. Others use the day to express more platonic love, doing something nice for a friend o...
Archaeology is the study of human history. Excavating ancient sites where civilizations used to live unearths artifacts and other physical clues to be studied and analyzed. Is anyone ready to participate in an archeological dig? Books and movies provide us with a rich and entertaining experience of humanity's exciting past. The movie "King Solomon Mines," first introduced as a book by Sir H. Rider Haggard, brought us the story of Alan Quartermain searching an unexplored region of Africa for gold...
Do you dream? Do you have a dream? These are actually two separate things. Some nights we have dreams and wake to remember them. They can be happy, sad, scary and dark or full of light and love. Consciously, awake, we can also dream. We can dream of a better life, dream of finding love and happiness, dream of winning the lottery or an Olympic gold medal. Those dreams are purposeful hopes, building our desires like Lego bricks with layers of possibilities. The more plausible the hope, the more...
