HOBBIES by Alvin Schwartz: “Filled with practical

HOBBIES by Alvin Schwartz: “Filled with practical information and guidance, bringing into focus all the details for getting started on a new hobby, this comprehensive book introduces a wide variety of today’s most popular leisure-time pursuits. HOBBIES is a book to refer to again and again before any investments are. made in time, space or materials. Each chapter covers a specific hobby, describing every aspect of what is involved—how you go about it; what equipment you will need and where to buy it; clubs to join and organizations to contact; books, periodicals and out-of-the-way places to find out more....Any one of the hobbies included can become a fascinating lifetime involvement, or lead the way to numerous other activities described.”

DAUGHTER OF EARTH AND WATER by Noel B. Gerson: This is a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and a “story of love and of genius, of faith and of rebellion....Mary Wollstonecraft was 15 when, in 1813, she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley himself was only 20, though he was married and soon to be a father. Mary and Shelley fell in love the next summer; several months later they ran away together....The beautiful, contradictory Shelley went on writing the poetry that was to make him one of the immortals. And Mary, as the result of a contest to see who among several people could produce the best tale of the supernatural, wrote the classic Frankenstein, the first of numerous successful books by her.

Though they married in 1816, following the suicide of Shelley’s wife, Mary and Shelley were for all their time together considered scandalous for their behavior. Their lives were dogged tragedy; suicide in both families, the early deaths of their first two children, and, finally, the death by drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the age of 29.0