Travel

From Here to There and Back Again by Sue Hubbell

Waltzing the Magpies by Sam Pickering

From Here to There and Back Again

Sue Hubbell

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

"Sue Hubbell's From Here to There and Back Again is stylish and thought-provoking. As her brother I have long admired her mince pies and her ability to knit her own thermal underwear."—Bil Gilbert

"The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life."—New York Times Book Review

"A latter-day Henry Thoreau with a sense of the absurd."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Sue Hubbell writes splendidly."—William Least Heat-Moon

"Prose as clear, languorous and beautiful as honey poured from a jar."—People

From Here to There and Back Again is the much-anticipated collection of essays on an array of offbeat and engrossing subjects by magazine essayist and nature writer Sue Hubbell, author of A Country Year, Shrinking the Cat, and Waiting for Aphrodite.

Reading Sue Hubbell is like embarking on a journey of discovery with a close friend. Her writing is witty, learned yet unassuming, intensely personal, and pointedly honest as she ranges far and wide on such topics as after-hours truck stops, the country's best pie restaurants, bowling shoes, Costa Rica's blue morpho butterfly, earthquakes, and the honey trade. Several of her pieces take place in Michigan locales as well, including Elvis sightings in Vicksburg and the magicians' convention in Colon. In the end you'll return from these travels refreshed, enlightened-and wiser.

Sue Hubbell's books include A Country Year, Shrinking the Cat, and A Book of Bees, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in Maine and Washington, D.C. She is the sister of nature writer Bil Gilbert.

August 2004
192

Waltzing the Magpies: A Year in Australia

Sam Pickering

Rights: World*
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Sam Pickering, best known as the inspiration for Robin Williams' character in Dead Poet's Society, seized the opportunity for a year-long sabbatical from teaching, and took his family on a trip to Australia. The result is Waltzing the Magpies, a tour de force of sensual observation.

Pickering has the curiosity of a scientist and the soul of a poet. And whether he's cataloging the cost of transferring nearly his entire family to the other side of the planet, describing the call of a lorikeet, or reveling in the beauty of a coral reef, no detail escapes his eye.

Waltzing the Magpies invites us to participate in, not just observe, the author's vision of life's gorgeous pageant. It is Sam Pickering at his finest.

From Waltzing the Magpies:
"Of the three places we snorkeled, my favorite was Turquoise Bay. . . . Here I drifted wantonly, beneath me groves and bowers, seraglios, caverns, evenings of rose red twilight, golden sunrises, and fish, looking like birds one moment, the next petals ticking through the air. Plate, cabbage, lichen, and brain coral slipped luscious beneath me, pink and blue, sometimes hard-shelled, other times downy. A green turtle paddled past. A moray eel wound through stone, its skin pale lattice. . . ."

". . . I spent much of the afternoon looking at birds. A barking owl swallowed a mouse head first. A grass owl stood motionless in a bower. Torres Strait pigeons cried 'you.' The call of a Macleary's fig parrot sounded like water spurting from a faucet. Peaceful doves bubbled, and the chatter of red-collared lorikeets smoothed into weeping. Noisy pits wore tails through brush, and bush thick-knees stood motionless in profile, single blue eyes staring. Apostle birds clustered in cup-shaped nests, feathers sticking out like slivers of decorative chocolate. Bills of long-tailed finches seemed the clearest orange I've ever seen, and the blue adorning fairy wrens was so bright the sky seemed white-washed. For a few moments I forgot cages, but then a Muir's corella stared at me, cocked his head, and said, 'Hello.'"

Sam Pickering is Professor of English at University of Connecticut in Storrs. He's the author of more than a dozen books of essays, including Trespassing, The Blue Caterpillar and Other Essays, and The Last Book. He is married and has three children.

May 2004
296 pages

*Australian rights are not available.
*New Zealand rights are not available.