Because I give copies of my photo books to hotels where I stay, friends who stay there later find one of my book like with this photo of a friend’s daughter holding up one of my books at Hotel Cristal Ballena, Uvita, Costa Rica. And if you ever stay at Xandari Resort in Alajuela, they are the only hotel that has a complete set of all my Costa Rica Photo Books! 🙂
Friend holding up one of my books found at Hotel Cristal Ballena, Uvita, Costa Rica.
It was in October of 2018, the peak of the rainy season, that I first visited Esquinas Rainforest Lodge at La Gamba Research Station, Piedras Blancas National Park, north of Golfito, Puntarenas. It rained pretty hard every afternoon with the mornings and short spaces between rain full of wonderful birds to photograph! And the planned boat trip to Rio Coto Mangroves turned impossible with high winds and heavy rain on Golfo Dulce, but the ingenious boat captain took me back into the smaller Gulf of Golfito (shielded from heavy wind by trees) for some of my better bird shots in between downpours – an unplanned but excellent substitute for an always good mangrove tour! Making Lemonade from Lemons! 🙂 And how could you not in this incredible rainforest? See more photos from my first trip there & a video link below . . .
for the next two days, June 21-22, 2023 by using the Discount Code: BSTORE15 when checking out from the Blurb Bookstore. Check out all 79 of my photo books with the most recent on top and save 15%! Go directly to my bookstore at: https://www.blurb.com/user/cdoggett or click this image of the first page:
CLICK IMAGE to go to my bookstore where you can preview every page of every book!
And by the way, I will have 14 of my photo books available this Saturday, 24 June, at my Coffee & Art show at my house, 105 Roca Verde #2, 9-12am! See you there! 🙂
It is a collection of positive stories of what both individuals and organizations are doing to help reclaim the earth that we as humans are currently killing. It is mostly about actions in Vermont where the compiler lives, but all is applicable to anywhere else in the world. It reminded me of the many good things being done here in Costa Rica to plant trees, save forests and prepare for our grandchildren’s future. We can all at least plant a tree! 🙂
I just completed my latest photo book, the second one on Blurb’s “Lay Flat Pages” (no gutter) with 100# Premium Lustre Photo Paper containing 16 sunrise photos in my favorite sunrise place, 14 are two-page spreads! I made it for both the fun of creating and as a gift to the Hotel Banana Azul where all photos were made! There are now several hotels like this across Costa Rica that feature my photo books about them in their lobbies. 🙂 And by the way, this is one I think is worth taking advantage of my bookstore’s “Free Preview” electronically by clicking the cover image below or going to this address and just click the pages to turn them! 🙂
CLICK cover image to go to a free electronic preview!
¡Pura Vida!
And by the way, that other “Lay Flat Book” was done way back in 2018 and titled Costa Rica Sunrises and Sunsets. It too is worth taking time for the “Free Preview” with mostly sunsets in that book! Just click that title to go there!
Costa Rica Expat Living: My Story of Being a Dependent (With an Unexpected Twist)Story of a “dependent” (wife) of a legally working husband and how new law opened up legal work for her (which wasn’t allowed before). CR welcomes us retirees who bring our retirement income with us, but younger working adults who might compete with locals for jobs have many more hoops to jump through! 🙂 But from this story it seems to be getting easier! And I am seeing a lot more working young adult expats, even in little Atenas now, though still most of them work on the internet which is non-competitive to local workers.
Amazon Kindle had a special on the electronic Tarzan books, all 10 of the original stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, for only 99¢ (1.08 with tax) and I grabbed them! 🙂 The early Tarzan movies had
CLICK cover image to see on Amazon.com.
a big effect on me as a child, while most of the later ones I did not consider as good and since books are almost always better than their movie counterparts, I decided for the first time in my life to read the original stories by the author. Glad I did!
I have finished the first three books and boy is it true that, in this case, the books are so much better than the old or new movies. It is hard to believe how cheesy some of those old movies were that I remember liking so much as a child! 🙂 You can watch most of the old Tarzan movies free online now. And the newer movies made up their own stories, ignoring the books!
Then last week I read a climate change article in The Washington Post that really “clicked” with me and merged with my book readings caused me to decide there was a definite “Tarzan Effect” on me in my childhood of Saturday matinee Tarzan movies and that motivated me to start writing again. I now have a new set of web pages under ABOUT on my website simply titled The Tarzan Effect. They share some of the ways I think Tarzan affected me for the better and at one point I even link to stories and essays on how he affected several other people including Jane Goodall who is reported to have said “I fell passionately in love with Tarzan — this glorious creature living out in the jungle doing all the things I wanted to do, and what did he do? He married the wrong Jane.”
My favorite hotel in Costa Rica’s Caribbean South is Banana Azul and I just completed a new book which I will take copies of on my next visit there in September for other patrons to enjoy in the lobby along with others of my photo books about the area that are already there.
This new book has photos of 28 species of butterflies photographed on the Banana Azul property or at nearby locations. Enjoy thumbing through it for free electronically at my bookstore by clicking the cover image below or just going to this web address:
It’s the same photos I’ve reported with on this blog and are in my trip gallery, but it is another creative opportunity for me that I find fun and will enjoy having a copy of the book and sharing a couple of copies with the lodge which they will share with other guests, so a nice creative use of my photography from a trip like this and the first trip book I’ve done in a year or two.
You can click the book cover below and see an electronic preview of the whole book for free without having to buy it! 🙂 Or you can go directly to this web address to see it: https://www.blurb.com/b/11499801-wowlife-tortuguero
CLICK this cover image to go to book in bookstore.
Assuming they let non-members in to the Goodreads pages, see what they prepared for me as My Year in Books on their website. Fun stats! In short, my goal for the year was a book-a-month or 12 books and they have me down for 15 books which is not bad, but I read Little Women which is a part of one huge electronic book Ten Books You Must Read Before You Die and I haven’t read the others yet, so they did not count it. And I just finished the fifth book of The Chronicles of Narnia series which Goodreads has not counted because the electronic book is all 7 books + a bonus Lewis book all together counted as one. So that would make 20 books! Not as good as my 24 books in 2021, but that was a year of both cancer treatment and a world-wide pandemic! 🙂 Here’s this year’s list and I’ve already started the 6th book in Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair! 🙂
Miss Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly by Agatha Christie
To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie
Diablo Mesa by Preston & Child
Easy Spanish Step by Step
Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
The Complete Fairytales of Hans Christian Anderson
Birds of Central America by Andrew Vallely
Trees of Panama and Costa Rica
The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman
Niksen by Annette Lavrijsen
Rebugging the Planet by Vicki Hird
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Green Ember by S.D. Smith
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Possibly my favorite read of the year! Both a great adventure and a mystery! But comparing books is like comparing apples and oranges! 🙂
And oh yes, I have a lot more to share about my Christmas trip to Arenal Volcano, but been swamped with things that must be done on my return, so more after the New Year is in!