Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design – A Review

biophilicThe world unto itself is a work of art, with its natural beauty and majestic landscapes. Too often, modern society tends to forget the world we live in, failing to preserve the beauty that we were given from the beginning. Biophilic Cities explores the importance of incorporating wilderness and nature in our urban lives. City living makes it easy for us to forget what nature is like, everything from its beauty to its power to heal even the most jaded of city landscapes.

About Biophilic Cities

In his book, Timothy Beatley argues for the greening of future cities, stating that renewable energy and better public transit are just one part of what a green city is. More importantly, urban planning needs to begin to focus around coexisting with the natural world instead of constantly impeding on it. A biophilic city, argues Beatley, plans in conjunction with nature. It incorporates the natural world into its buildings and planning.

It is imperative that as we move towards the future, we begin to take into consideration the importance of doing so because nature is an important part of sustainable living and thus, overall existence. What is most notable about Beatley’s ideals for a future planned city, is that it not only incorporates the nature that was already there in the first place, but it also strives to replenish and revive what has already been lost and degraded by poor planning in the past.

Including Nature in Urban Design

Timothy Beatley offers many solutions to how urban planners can incorporate nature into urban development. Beatley includes essays and beautiful photographs of roof-top gardens, green walk-ways, living walls and sidewalk gardens. His ideas for what a city can be, does not make it difficult to put these new ideas into place. Rather, his ideas for the greening of urban living are about coexistence and even a beautification of drab urban settings.

Overall, Biophilic Cities presents interesting ideas on what future cities could strive to become. The essays though interesting, can be a bit dry in places. However, Beatley does make up for that by including beautiful nature and urban photography which often enhance his ideas on what a city can be and what the issues with past urban planning have caused. It will be interesting to see how many of Beatley’s solutions begin to redefine what we have known as the urban landscape.

Biophilic Cities by Timothy Beatly is available for purchase with ISBN 1597267155. It was originally published on October 25, 2010 through Island Press.

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Book Review: The Swan Thieves

Elizabeth Kostovaswans was first published in 2005 with her best-selling historical vampire thriller, The Historian. Today, there are more than 1.5 million copies in print and a Sony film adaptation is in the works. Much like that novel, Kostova sets up The Swan of Thieves.

The Artist and the Academic

Here, Kostova creates a central, academic hero that becomes engrossed within a mystery. Each chapter ranges in time from past to present, encompassing the lives of painters Beatrice de Clerval and her uncle Olivier Vignot, whose lives are beautifully described and played out through their art and letters.

Juxtaposing the past with the present, Kostova creates her academic hero in Andrew Marlow, a trained psychiatrist who is bent on asking the tough, prying questions and unraveling the mystery that is key to the plot of the novel. The mystery being that one of Marlow’s patients, renowned painter Robert Oliver, tried to slash a painting in the National Gallery. Marlow becomes increasingly obsessed with Oliver and his reasons for attempting to do what he did, when he uncovers Oliver’s obsession with a stolen batch of letters written in French that he continually reads and obsesses over himself.

Living Up to The Historian

Fans of Kostova have waited with great anticipation for her next novel. Fans of The Historian will not be disappointed by The Swan Thieves, in fact, it is rather easy to see much of Kostova’s budding writing style continue on into her latest novel.

The intrigue and ability to build a deep and entangled plot is clearly evident in Kostova’s second novel. Accompanied with the lush world of Impressionism and 19th century life, Kostova delivers with The Swan Thieves: A Novel. Kostova has a great gift for writing. It will be a long wait to see what her third novel will bring to her already impressive quality of work.

About the Author – Elizabeth Kostova

Kostova was born New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She went on to complete her undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

According to a press release, in May 2007, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation was created to help support Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors.

The Swan Thieves: A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova was published by Little, Brown and Company on January 12, 2010 with ISBN 0316065781.

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Book Review: The Botticelli Secret

secretSteeped in the turmoil of the non-unified Italy of the 1400’s, Marina Fiorato skillfully weaves a detailed and evasive mystery around one of Botticelli’s more famous paintings, Primavera or Allegory of Spring. The painting is packed with meaning alone, but Fiorato takes the painting to an entirely new level in her book, The Botticelli Secret.

Primavera

Painted in 1482, the Primavera was created by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. He was of the Florentine school and worked during the Early Renaissance or Qauttrocento. It is suggested that the allegory had been petitioned by the Medici family.

The work is largely accepted as an allegory of springtime, however, other themes and meanings have been explored, including the idea that the painting illustrates the ideal of Neoplatonic love. For Fiorato, the painting serves as the basis for her art history mystery in her novel.

The Plot

Fiorato opens her novel with the introduction of her heroine- common whore by the name of Luciana Vetra. She is described as a classical beauty, with long flowing ringlets and a sharp tongue from the four years that she spent on the streets of Florence. She is aptly named for how she arrived in Florence. Her origins for much of the novel are unknown, but from the beginning Luciana speaks of her uncommon arrival in the city- as a baby washedup on the shores of the city in a glass bottle.

The reader is quickly drawn to her, despite her abrasiveness and crassness that are abundant in the earlier part of the novel, but softens as she finds herself and finds love during the course of the story. Her flaws make Luciana realistic and easy to relate too, despite the over-the-top mystery and life that she eventually gets swept up in to.

Fiorato’s story of Luciana, Primavera and the mystery that engulfs everything is skillfully rendered and so lush that the reader easily gets immersed in the world of what Italy was like during the early part of the Renaissance. Fiorato leaves nothing to the imagination and stays away from romanticizing the period, leaving the reader with a raw and detailed depiction of what life was like during the time that Botticelli lived and worked.

The Botticell Secret by Marina Fiorato was originally published in April of 2010. It is available for purchase through St. Martin’s Griffin, New York with ISBN 978-0-312-60636-7.

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Book Review: The Women

womenMany creative geniuses have a torrid past with the women that loved them. Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock are just two examples. However, in T.C. Boyle’s The Women, he focuses on the madness and the passion that engulfed much of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s life.

The Four Women

T.C. Boyle brings to life Frank Lloyd Wright’s life by telling it through the four women who loved him in life. He begins with the failure of Wright’s marriage to his wife, Miriam, an older, passionate southern woman who had a heavily hidden addiction to morphine.

Boyle goes on to infuse the the novel with heat and passion when Wright meets the woman that would take him away from his wife. Exotic and fiery, Olgivanna Milanoff became dubbed the “Dragon Lady” by Lloyd’s apprentices. She lived with him at his famed estate, Taliesan first under the lie that she was his maid, but her pregnancy quickly gave away their affair.

More sweetly, Boyle also recounts Wright’s relationship with his first wife, Kitty Tobin with whom he had had six children with. More idealized and poignant, the passages on this relationship humanize Wright while the other women seem to make him more tortured and lost.

What is most tragic about the novel is the inclusion of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright’s mistress who was tragically murdered at the Taliesan estate in 1914 along with her two children.

Downfall of The Women

As scandalous and impetuous much of the historical basis for the novel is, what is the downfall of Boyle’s novel is the narrator. The story is told from the viewpoint of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Japanese apprentice which just does not fit the novel. Moreover, the over-usage of footnotes to ensure that all information even parts that do not seem to matter take the reader away from the meat of the story. They often are confusing and stuck in places that would be better suited without them. It becomes rather difficult to get through the story in some parts.

All in all, T.C. Boyle does a great job of making The Women seem more of an actual biography than a historical fiction novel. It would have been better served if Boyle had reserved himself with regards to the amount of information he felt necessary to include with the text and with the foot notes.

The Women by T.C. Boyle was first published in 2009 by Viking Publishing with ISBN 978-0-670-02041-6.

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Book Review: The Sidewalk Artist

sidewalkA blocked writer, unhappy with her life and relationship takes off for a Parisian vacation. It is there that Tulia Rose encounters beautiful chalk drawings of some of Raphael’s most beautiful and famous creations of cherubs and light. The chalk drawings’ artist Raffaello, intrigues Tulia. She quickly finds herself asking if she loves him? Or is he a stalker? Or could he even be the reincarnation of the Renaissance artist Raphael?

Dreamy Settings

Tulia’s story and eventual love-affair takes her across Europe to lush settings that are both dreamy and romantic. Readers are indulged in sensual Paris, dream-like Tuscany and beautiful Venice as Tulia navigates herself through her budding affair and eventual break-up with her New York boyfriend, Ethan.

The settings are beautifully described and detailed by an author with a keen eye for the intricacies that the romance of Europe offers its visitors. Buonaguro writes, “What truly moves Tulia is not the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral or any of the wonderful sights. It is the little things. A windowsill with a pot of geraniums and a glimpse of lace curtain, the way the sun glances off a puddle, the echo of her heels as she walks down a narrow cobblestone street, the taste of coffee at an outdoor cafe, the sound of children calling out to each other in French,” making it easy for the reader to fall in love with Paris even if they haven’t had a chance to make it there yet.

The Failing Hero

The downfall of The Sidewalk Artist, in my opinion was Raffaello – Buonaguro’s hero. Instead of being the romantic artist that was meant to sweep readers off their feet as they read, I found Raffaello to be more creepy than to be someone with whom I would want to disappear into the European countryside with. I kept waiting for a plot twist wherein the entire story line became something sinister and it was with that thought that kept me from completely falling in love with the story though I did find the idea of the parallel plot and romance to be creative and intriguing.

The Sidewalk Artist makes for a quick read and is great if you’re looking for a sweet story to spend a day at the beach with.

The Sidewalk Artist by Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk is available for purchase through St. Martin’s Griffin with ISBN 031237805X. It was released on April 1, 2008.

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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Edging out the 9th spot on my 100 book challenge is Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist. I bought this book at Heathrow airport to read in 2014 when we were headed home from our big Euro-trip. I wound up being allergic to the person in front of me on the plane. I seriously still would like to know what kind of perfume it was…so, I wound up sleeping thanks to benadryl for the entire flight home. I never even opened the book.

And from there I moved around and it sat in my bookshelf and in a box for sometime, before I finally picked it up again this summer. I really wished I had read it sooner. I love the Netherlands. When I do go back to Europe, I want to spend a good chunk of time in the Netherlands, riding bikes and eating copious amounts of cheese. It’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

TheMiniaturist

In Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist, we follow a young girl, Petronella Oortman, who is recently married to one of Amsterdam’s most well-off merchants, Johannes Brandt.  The two barely know each other and it becomes clear about Nella’s arrival that all is not what is seems in her new home. She has a sister-in-law who appears devout and overtly religious, a mix of servants that owe their lives to Johannes and a husband that has little interest in Nella as a wife.

It’s pretty easy to figure out almost immediately that Johannes is gay and pretty much only married Nella out of duty to give his family a proper facade. They do develop a friendship in their marriage, that for me, I felt was more about Nella constantly protecting her new family instead of herself. It was a good, quick read and it paced very well, with a lot of tension as well as suspense driving most of the book.

The ending however, had me wondering what the point of including the sub-plot of the miniaturist was? Outside of driving suspense for the novel, the ending really had her fizzle out without much reason as to why she had even been there in the first place. It was pretty interesting how she sent messages to Nell through the miniatures that she ordered from her for her doll house, but it is not even explained how the woman knew some of the things she warned Nella about or what her motivation for doing any of it was? I found her ending confusing at best.

I was really surprised to learn that this novel was based on real people: Johannes and Nella were a merchant couple, who married and lived in Amsterdam in the late 1600’s. Learning that, I thought it was a bit salacious to write the events of the novel as they were, seeing as there is no historical evidence of a sham marriage to hide a man’s homosexuality. And yes, there is even a real dollhouse that had inspired the author when it was on display at a museum:

Dolls__house_of_Petronella_Oortman

The dollhouse at the time, had cost the same as buying a real canal house in Amsterdam. Can you imagine that? So crazy! People like Peter the Great even attempted to buy it, but wouldn’t rise to the crazy price that the family was trying to sell it for.

This is definitely good for a quick summertime read. I’ve recently started the much controversial Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

 

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Into the Wild & The Wild Truth

I found Into the Wild when I was going through the last breakup I would have before I would meet my future husband. The end of the that relationship was awful, but it also made me view a lot of what my dating life had been like up until that point. I loved toxic relationships, I loved the drama, I loved choosing emotionally unavailable men. It was a dark time in my life when it came to building healthy relationships.

I have no doubt that stems from earlier events in my life and perhaps one day, I’ll finally write about those. Sometimes, when I think back, I can almost pinpoint the moment that the toxicity seeped into me from my limited world around me. I just never really knew what a strong hold it took or how long it would take to get away from the causes and get it out of me.

I identified so strongly with:

“Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

It really spoke to me and at times, when I am reflecting back on those parts of my life, I still feel like that was lesson I took away from that time and unconsciously carried with me for many years. I completely understood why a young man from a “good” family would pack a bag and disappear into the wilderness. It had nothing to do with young adulthood rebellion, but in so many ways a need for a rebirth from what he was born into. It just made sense to me and for awhile, I seriously considered putting all of my efforts into becoming an Alaskan Bush teacher.

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The Wild Truth, by Carine McCandless

In 2014, Chris’s sister, Carine published The Wild Truth which delves deeply into her family’s dysfunction, the lies and toxicity and really shows exactly why  Chris died in an abandoned bus in the Bush.

I immediately had bought it and read a chunk before I had to stop to focus on my master’s thesis. I finally got to finish it today and quite simply put: wow. I can’t remember the last time that I had tears streaming down my face as I finished a book. If you thought you identified with Chris, you need to read Carine’s side of things. I felt so many things and I just understood so much of what she went through and how as an adult, it largely became her, navigating her own life and making her own rules.

I highly recommend this memoir. In fact, I think I’m going to go home to day and re-watch the film adaptation of Into the Wild for the umpteenth time.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment

Stephen King’s IT

As a child of the 80’s and 90’s, I was pretty much like a lot of children of my generation– I grew up watching creepy dark comedies and shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? Which at the time, were super scary to me and to this day, I can not forget the Melissa Joan Hart episode with the ghost-boy that would randomly pop up and whisper “I’m cold” until he was reunited with his lost red hoodie. TV  and movies used to be a lot more than what they are today, for sure.

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Stephen King’s IT was another thing all together. I was either 11 or 12 when I was forced to watch it with my little brother who, though only 7 or 8 at the time, lived for shit like that. As for me, I was completely terrified by both Tim Curry and clowns and showers and drains and storm drains and….for YEARS following having watched it. I’m 30 years old now and to this day, I get the urge to fast-walk passed storm drains. It doesn’t help that there is one right by where I park when I get home…at night? I fly into my house. What? I’m a writer, I am forever cursed with a very real over-active imagination that believes in the possibility of all things. Including that Tim Curry in full-blown It makeup will be in the storm drain, offering me a red balloon so he can rip off my arm.

Imagine my shock when I was older and sat down and actually read the 1,000 page novel with just how much more detail was in the actual story. And as with anyone who has read the novel, the gang bang scene with them as kids was probably one of the more uncomfortable parts of a Stephen King book that I had to get through. Then, as a writer by that point in my life, it also got me to think. This was an extremely long book to begin with and to allow the gang bang scene involving adolescent kids into publication? Like, was this the book where they finally said to him, you’re off the leash just go with it because we know it will sell? It has to be.

 

It took me over two weeks to re-read it. The novel is a really great example for character development and using detail in writing. I had to keep taking breaks from it because at times it was almost too much. I also was very confused about what happened to Tom Rogan, Bev’s abusive husband who follows her to Derry after beating her up and her friend, only to kidnap Bill’s wife Audra to take her to It, only to seemingly disappear before the final battle. I had to pull up book spoilers to find out his fate. Has that happened to anyone else? I seriously felt like I blinked and missed an entire section, but when I went back, it wasn’t there. Oversight or is it just that quick?

I can’t wait until September when the new movie comes out even though, I feel like the new film has a lot to top from the Tim Curry 1990 version. It’s also hard to see Pennywise being portrayed as so obviously evil when in the novel, Pennywise was an illusion, a mask for it’s true form because it was how It was able to get the children it needed to feed. I think we all need to go into the new version thinking of it as an entirely different take all together.

What I can’t forgive though? The fact that this will be two parts and we’ll have to wait even longer to see the Losers reunite as adults.

What’s the freakiest part though? It comes back every 27 years to wreak havoc on Derry. 1990? Oh yeah, that was…wait for it…27 years ago.

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100 Book Challenge

For lent, I decided that I want to do something that helps me grow rather than giving up diet coke for the umpteenth time. I decided to give up some of my lazy free time. I’ve set a goal of reading 100 books by January as my wish for lent. (300 pages will equal 1 book).

I will update this as I finish novels:

1.) Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

2.) Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

3.) Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite

4.) IT by Stephen King

5.) IT by Stephen King

6.) IT by Stephen King

7.) IT by Stephen King

8.) The Wild Truth by Carine Mccandless

9.) The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart2 Comments

Big Little Lies

This is one of the few times where I watched the show/movie before I read the book. I was about half way through the HBO limited series namely because of my celebrity doppelganger, Reese, was starring in it when I picked up the novel at Target.

I read it within two days. That is, after long hours at both jobs while preparing to present my research for my dissertation next month. Oh, and, take that crazy $400 praxis exam. Life has been a little crazy lately especially when you add in our wedding and selling our townhouse– we’ll recover next year..right?

Big_Little_Lies_Cover

Anyway, despite the insanity, I found myself reading Big Little Lies on my lunch break, in my car waiting for my next class to start and even in bed after these crazy long days. Last night, I read until I literally fell asleep. It’s been awhile since I was just so into a book.

I liked how you knew someone was going to die, but you didn’t know how or why. You learn fairly early on that is it going to be Perry or Celeste because this is the story of domestic violence, wrapped up rather nicely in its white-bread vanilla topping. I was just shocked by the ending, of which one was to die and more importantly, who the killer was and why.

It’s a shock, but in so many ways, it is that shock that up-heaves the vanilla topping and underneath it, you find yourself exposed to the raw chunky violence that as Celeste herself says, “This can happen to anyone.”

It’s a powerful book. I think any young woman needs to read it and then watch the limited series on HBO. It made me think of my own time within an abusive relationship.

I can’t even really say it was a relationship, it was a fleeting moment in my life, thankfully. It was after that big love that I shut down after. He was the first guy I really attempted to date. In many ways, he was the first person I attempted to care about, to actually try with. In the end it lasted only a couple of months. I ended it, I totally cut him out. It took me a few tries to get to that point though, because much like Celeste, it was like I was dating two different people: there was the over indulging side who appeared protective and kind, going out of his way to me and my friends, but then there was that time alone where like a switch that person went away and in his place was someone who enjoyed hurting other people, especially when he felt wronged or embarrassed or betrayed. All of which seemed to happen more in his head than in reality.

There had been hints leading up to his eventual full-turn, but he was good in that he was so manipulative that he would have you second guessing. Was that real? Did he just say or do that? No, he had to be joking because look how sweet he is now, every relationship has its bumps, but maybe this is worth that bump? [it’s not] Abusers are great like that, they are excellent liars because I think to a point, they believe what they are saying and feel entitled to whatever they can steal from someone– materially, physically and emotionally.  It’s almost like they know that they are doing these awful things, but in their minds, they make up for it because they are so amazing for the next week or two before the next bout of abuse. One thing he was always good at, was how quick to tell you what a wonderful, giving person he was even to those that wronged him which largely were women from his past.

When Celeste visits a counselor, she tells her that is takes someone six or seven times before they leave an abusive situation. I believe that. While my experience was relatively short, within that time it took me about three times before I finally did. When I did it, I didn’t even tell him. We had parted ways earlier that day, I knew it was important that he think he still “had” me. He kissed me on my check and asked me if everything was alright, I knew he knew that it wasn’t and that he had taken it to an entirely new level that morning. This was the calm following the storm.

I assured him how wonderful he was, and how wonderful we were, trying not to gag the entire time I did so. He has already revealed himself and I had already found out his other secrets, he was done but he didn’t know how far I knew or how much strength I really had. My next stop was to AT&T where I blocked him from all contact. Then I went straight home and followed suit on social media. I hadn’t even thought about e-mail, because who in 2011 e-mailed anymore? Apparently him. It began so nicely as always, then when I never responded they got nastier and nastier until he dumped me. That was the one piece of humor I got out of the entire ordeal. I had cut all contact, ghosted him for lack of a better word and here he was, after calling me all kinds of names, after threatening me and the like, all he had left was to tell me how it was over and it felt so good to be single. I burst out laughing at that point, because dude, you’d been single for awhile by then.

The next stop was to the printer to print off all of his harassment and then to the police station to finalize my report that I had started several days before.

This really can happen to anyone.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment