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Three Singles To Adventure
''Three Singles to Adventure'' (American title: ''Three Tickets to Adventure'') is the second book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell about trips collecting animals for zoos. It is the chronicle of a six-month collecting trip in 1950 to the South American country of British Guyana, now Guyana. Adventure was the name of a town. Animals captured by Durrell in the book include iguanas, anacondas, squirrel monkeys, sloths and an anteater Anteaters are the four extant mammal species in the suborder Vermilingua (meaning "worm tongue"), commonly known for eating ants and termites. The individual species have other names in English and other languages. Together with sloths, they ar .... Durrell wrote books to pay for his expeditions and, later, his conservation efforts. His first book '' The Overloaded Ark'' was a huge success, with its mix of comic exaggeration and serious natural observations, leading him to follow up with other accounts. References 1954 books Books by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biographical Novel
The biographical novel is a genre of novel which provides a fictional account of a contemporary or historical person's life. Like other forms of biographical fiction, details are often trimmed or reimagined to meet the artistic needs of the fictional genre, the novel. These reimagined biographies are sometimes called semi-biographical novels, to distinguish the relative historicity of the work from other biographical novels The genre rose to prominence in the 1930s with best-selling works by authors such as Robert Graves, Thomas Mann, Irving Stone and Lion Feuchtwanger. These books became best-sellers, but the genre was dismissed by literary critics. In later years it became more accepted and has become both a popular and critically accepted genre. Some biographical novels bearing only superficial resemblance to the historical novels or introducing elements of other genres that supersede the retelling of the historical narrative, for example '' Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter'' f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faber & Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro. Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. History Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originated in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine ''The Nursing Mirror''. The Gwyers' desire to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Durrell
Gerald Malcolm Durrell Order of the British Empire, OBE (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservation movement, conservationist, and television presenter. He was born in Jamshedpur in British India, and moved to England when his father died in 1928. In 1935 the family moved to Corfu, and stayed there for four years, before the outbreak of World War II forced them to return to the UK. In 1946 he received an inheritance from his father's will that he used to fund animal-collecting trips to the British Cameroons and British Guiana. He married Jacquie Durrell, Jacquie Rasen in 1951; they had very little money, and she persuaded him to write an account of his first trip to the Cameroons. The result, titled ''The Overloaded Ark'', sold well, and he began writing accounts of his other trips. An expedition to Argentina and Paraguay followed in 1953, and three years later he published ''My Family and Other Animals'', which became a bestse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guyana
Guyana, officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern coast of South America, part of the historic British West Indies. entry "Guyana" Georgetown, Guyana, Georgetown is the capital of Guyana and is also the country's largest city. Guyana is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Venezuela to the west, and Suriname to the east. With a land area of , Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign state by area in mainland South America after Uruguay and Suriname, and is the List of South American countries by population, second-least populous sovereign state in South America after Suriname; it is also List of countries and dependencies by population density, one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. The official language of the country is English language, English, although a large part of the population is bilingual in English and the indigenous languages. It has a wide variety of natural habitats and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iguana
''Iguana'' (, ) is a genus of herbivorous lizards that are native to tropical areas of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The genus was first described by Austrian naturalist Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti, J.N. Laurenti in 1768. Two species are placed in the genus: The green iguana, which is widespread throughout its range and a popular pet; and the Lesser Antillean iguana, which is native to the Lesser Antilles. Genetic analysis indicates that the green iguana may comprise a species complex, complex of multiple species, some of which have been recently described, but the Reptile Database considers all of these as subspecies of the green iguana. The word "iguana" is derived from the original Taíno people, Taino name for the species, ''iwana''. In addition to the two species in the genus ''Iguana'', several other related genera in the same family have common names of the species including the word "iguana". The species is a popular quarry for pets, and no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anaconda
Anacondas or water boas are a group of large boas of the genus ''Eunectes''. They are a semiaquatic group of snakes found in tropical South America. Three to five extant and one extinct species are currently recognized, including one of the largest snakes in the world, ''E. murinus'', the green anaconda. Description Although the name applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species, in particular, the common or green anaconda (''Eunectes murinus''), which is the largest snake in the world by weight, and the second longest after the reticulated python. Origin The recent fossil record of ''Eunectes'' is relatively sparse compared to other vertebrates and other genera of snakes. The fossil record of this group is effected by an artifact called the Pull of the Recent. Fossils of recent ancestors are not known, so the living species 'pull' the historical range of the genus to the present. Etymology The name ''Eunectes'' is derived from . The So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Squirrel Monkey
Squirrel monkeys are New World monkeys of the genus ''Saimiri''. ''Saimiri'' is the only genus in the subfamily Saimiriinae. The name of the genus is of Tupi origin (''sai-mirím'' or ''çai-mbirín'', with ''sai'' meaning 'monkey' and ''mirím'' meaning 'small') and was also used as an English name by early researchers. Squirrel monkeys live in the tropical forests of Central and South America in the canopy layer. Most species have parapatric or allopatric ranges in the Amazon, while ''S. oerstedii'' is found disjunctly in Costa Rica and Panama. There are two main groups of squirrel monkeys recognized. They are differentiated based on the shape of the white coloration above the eyes. In total there are five recognized species. Squirrel monkeys have short and close fur colored black at the shoulders, yellow or orange fur along the back and extremities, and white on the face. Squirrel monkeys have determined breeding seasons which involve large fluctuations in hormones and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sloth
Sloths are a Neotropical realm, Neotropical group of xenarthran mammals constituting the suborder Folivora, including the extant Arboreal locomotion, arboreal tree sloths and extinct terrestrial ground sloths. Noted for their slowness of movement, tree sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down in the trees of the tropical rainforests of South America and Central America. Sloths are considered to be most closely related to anteaters, together making up the xenarthran order Pilosa. There are six extant sloth species in two genera – ''Bradypus'' (three-toed sloths) and ''Choloepus'' (two-toed sloths). Despite this traditional naming, all sloths have three toes on each rear limb – although two-toed sloths have only two digits on each forelimb. The two groups of sloths are from different, distantly related families, and are thought to have evolved their morphology via parallel evolution from terrestrial ancestors. Besides the extant species, many species of ground sl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anteater
Anteaters are the four extant mammal species in the suborder Vermilingua (meaning "worm tongue"), commonly known for eating ants and termites. The individual species have other names in English and other languages. Together with sloths, they are within the order Pilosa. The name "anteater" is also commonly applied to the aardvark, numbat, echidnas, and pangolins, although they are not closely related to them. Extant species are the giant anteater ''Myrmecophaga tridactyla'', about long including the tail; the silky anteater ''Cyclopes didactylus'', about long; the southern tamandua or collared anteater ''Tamandua tetradactyla'', about long; and the northern tamandua ''Tamandua mexicana'' of similar dimensions. Etymology The name ''anteater'' refers to the species' diet, which consists mainly of ants and termites. Anteater has also been used as a common name for a number of animals that are not in Vermilingua, including the echidnas, numbat, pangolins, and aardvark. Anteate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Overloaded Ark
''The Overloaded Ark'', first published in 1953, is the debut book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It is the chronicle of a six-month collecting trip, from December 1947 to August 1948, to the West African colony of British Cameroonnow Cameroon and Nigeriathat Durrell made with aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland. Their reasons for going on the trip, he wrote in the book, were twofold: "to collect and bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles that inhabit the region", and secondly, for both men to realise a long cherished dream to see Africa. Its combination of comic exaggeration and environmental accuracy, portrayed in Durrell's light, clever prose, made it a great success. It launched Durrell's career as a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, which in turn financed his work as a zookeeper and conservationist. '' The Bafut Beagles'' and '' A Zoo in My Luggage'' are sequels of sorts, telling of his later returns to the region. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1954 Books
Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – 1954 Blons avalanches, Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau rebellion, Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the , is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
