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| MUSHROOMS: An Unlikely
Charisma - a whimsical photo-essay & exhibit Beverleigh Barton LeVan |
| 2019: First Edition Copyright 2019 © HoneyRock Publishing ISBN: 978-0-578-45810-6 125 pages, with illustrations. PRICE: 22.95 
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MUCH
like its author, this book defies categories. |
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THIS 125-page book is a photo-essay, memoir-of-sorts for the coffee-table, ripe with imaginative observations translated from hundreds of photos of mushrooms and their fungi cousins, into simile, metaphor, and essay-like anthropomorphized prose. The book is not a scientific, naturalistic, or even psychedelic treatise on mushrooms and fungi. It doesn't catalogue, or list varietals even though a substantial and disparate collection is exhibited therein. |
| APPROACHED with a spot of warmly sarcastic wit, a bit of free-form poetry, fantasy, and dreamy language, it might be a more spiritual book of appreciation than practical, academic, or utilitarian one in tone. Rather, the book is thought by the author to be a representation of the rich and varied natural beauty found in a snippet of the Central Pennsylvania woodlands and countryside. She hopes it might be considered an invitation to engage in her Rorschach Inkblot-like game of Imagine the Mushroom, to encourage imagination and appreciation of natural beauty, in the form of a bunch of mushrooms and fungi. |
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Bev LeVan has been a
writer and editor for over twenty-five years, a third career following
and entwined with a clerical one begun in the olden days of the 70s, and
a scholarly one teaching sociology (with the requisite academic degrees
in psychology and family studies/sociology), throughout the 90s and into
the new millennium. Her broad and inter-disciplinary-trained mind,
spiritually-keen perceptions, and imaginative interpretations of nature
have fluidly given sway to this book. SHE says on the back cover: "This elder-career of mine is colossally fulfilling because even though it is relatively unpaid compared to what most people would call a career, I get to be sort of a dump-cake of characters and emotions, some of them deep, in a daily sitcom, drama, or newsreel, depending on the day. Some days, I take a walk to get away from the too real, and cluttered world of business, bits of it personal with junk mail, cold calls, and customer service entanglements, and other bits of it, the commerce of servicing customers in our day jobs. It's occasionally just too real, utilitarian, complicated, practical, boring or frenzied, for this thoughtful introvert. I have to traipse into the woods. I walk into a natural world, steps from our front door where I turn on the switch to my imagination and look down, up, or around me to always catch a glimpse of a mushroom or fungus-cousin, a flower, a plant, a critter, a cloud, or a tree, that gives me joy that seems more than the circumstance should merit but in comparison to the stuff left indoors, is downright astonishingly beautiful at least for a blessed moment. I have taken to the habit of snapping pics of these moments and some of them I share herein with you. Maybe they will assist in your escape, from the usual, ordinary or challenging days that you face, into a rabbit hole, a fantasy, just long enough to let that momentary joy fuel you for what is next." |
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