The Roseledge Books Blog

With changing appetizers available from the Produce Lady, summer eases into August. Little carrots, sugar snap peas, and native strawberries have passed, but green beans and broccoli florets dipped in cabbage slaw are a new favorite, grape tomatoes are still good but only ’til the sweet little orange jewels ripen on the porch, and wild blueberries are with us again. Of course, it’s a little tricky figuring out how to make blueberries be finger food, but maybe if they are in the cabbage slaw dip, they’ll stick to the dipped.

I’ve been looking for the next best summer read, and so far results are only so-so. Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End is okay, but slow. I think I was looking for the philosophical haunts of Rebecca Goldstein and ended up with the excess daily-Craig Johnson’s Kindness Goes Unpunished ness of an Ann Beattie short fiction I read some time ago in the NY’er. Craig Johnson’s Kindness Goes Unpunished with Sheriff Walt Longmire was a worthy diversion. A reviewer called either Sheriff Longmire or the series “good-natured,” which is true but not sufficient. It is also about long-term friendship, rare, important, and apparently difficult to capture; about Wyoming, as with C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett also, always a plus; and about father/adult daughter adventures. Okay, I’m of an age.

I went back to Wit’s End for about thirty more pages, then skipped to Sean Chercover’s Big City Bad Blood, but found its story focus on the Outfit (Chicago’s name for the Mafia and maybe the Mob, too, though I don’t remember it from the seven years I lived nearby, one year in a house owned by Mob nephews) too limited and his characters not interesting enough, though the P. I. was a reader. So I put it down and went immediately to another new series. This one is by Cara Black and features Aimee LeDuc Investigation and contemporary Paris. I’m reading Murder in the Sentier which, so far, centers on Aimee LeDuc’s search for her mother who left Aimee at age eight and her father and who may or may not have been part of a 70’s radical, revolutionary gang. So far, so very good. I especially like learning, in daily detail, about parts of Paris. I’ll get back to Wit’s End, just not today.

With my summer emphasis on new series, I may be trying to replicate the ongoing, annual pleasure of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s series featuring Chief Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson in upstate New York.  Her latest and maybe most worthy paperback in the seriesa is All Mortal Flesh.  Or maybe I’m just trying to be sure Roseledge Books Regulars keep coming back.

Fig. #59. This summer ('09), Roseledge Books readeristas should probably bring warm socks, a muffler or turtleneck, a second pair of shoes, and a rain poncho or lawn and leaf baggy to make sure a perfect book and a perfect chair result in a perfect afternoon.

LIST ALERT: Here comes another list of Items Ordered.  I inserted it in this post because I’m not sure where else to put it with the blue “order me” covering. Skip it if you are not a list person and note on the webcam that it is foggy, sometimes wet, and two-shirt weather yet again.

Hubka, Thomas.  Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England

Nesbo, Jo.  The Redbreast: A Novel

Heinrich, Bernd.  The Snoring Bird

Hanff, Helene.  Q’s Legacy

Johnson, Craig.  The Cold Dish

Johnson, Craig.  Death Without Company

Fowler, Christopher.  White Corridor: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery (Peculiar Crimes Unit Mysteries)

Reich, Christopher.  Numbered Account

Reich, Christopher.  The First Billion

Reich, Christopher.  The Devil’s Banker
Reich, Christopher.  The Runner
Mowat, Farley.  Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

Johnston, Wayne.  The Colony of Unrequited Dreams: A Novel

Coulter, Catherine.  TailSpin
Coulter, Catherine.  Double Jeopardy (FBI Series)

Toll, Ian.  Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy

Menzies, Gavin.  1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.)

Smith, Martin Cruz.  Havana Bay: A Novel

Silva, Dankiel.  Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon)

Berenson, Alex.  The Ghost War

Berenson, Alex.   The Faithful Spy: A Novel

July 09 order

author	title
Hubka, Thomas.	Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England
Nesbo, Jo.	The Redbreast: A Novel

Tenants Harbor doesn’t change much summer to summer, and neither does Roseledge Books. This pleases me and the browsers who were last here at least ten years ago and still recalled the Samuel Eliot Morison book they bought then. They re-found RB because the sign on the tree at the corner of Sea Street is still there with RB name, hours and arrow, though now it is a handsome new sign. (Thanks to N-M’s still nifty, but now grown-up kids and friends.) Also Roseledge Books still has books, like but also different from the one they chose earlier, books based on the sailing adventures of authors, e.g. Tony Horwitz, Tim Severin.* I love returning readers. We’re all getting older, better of course, and pokier. Maybe fussier, too. But never crabby.

*As I write this, RB has the following books by the two authors:

Horwitz, Tony.  A Voyage Long and Strange
Severin, Tim. The Brendan Voyage (It almost supports my theory that Irish were here before Vikings.)
Severin, Tim. In Search of Moby Dick
Severin, Tim. In Search of Robinson Crusoe

Fig. #58. Your chair is there, the harbor,too. You have to leave tomorrow, but you want two more weeks of coastal mind-meld. Showers are probable, so you get your rain gear, put your book in a baggy, and head out. What book do you take? Roseledge Books recommends The Road to Ubar, a vicarious adventure with Nicolas Clapp as he searches for a lost city in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia.

July 24:  More rain, hard driving rain. I think that tropical storm or hurricane wannabees veered up the Atlantic Coast, lost their chance to be named or to drench Minneapolis, and settled for hemming us in between rain and fronts from the west.

July 25:  SUN, GLORIOUS SUN.  Check the webcam, but quickly.  Fog approaches across the trees to the south.

It’s a slow summer on Sea Street. Not many cottage renters, boaters, or even Tenants Harbor regulars are walking by, which means only that Roseledge Books sales are few and precious and that I miss you all. Today is warm, and cloudy now, and, good grief, the road is wet. I didn’t even hear the raindrops on my uninsulated roof.

The Jackson Memorial Library (JML), our local public library, is in the throes of reducing size and cost of a much wanted new building that began being planned when economic times were better. You may remember a post from last fall about Jamie Wyeth’s exterior rendering of a possible larger building. I liked it a lot for three reasons: a) it was ordinary, but “of Maine” (classic farmhouse), b) it was almost articulated (buildable in parts), and c) it included something special (a sort of “grounded” widow’s walk with a half-circle of windows and metal roof). I hope that whatever reduced proposal is put forward still has these aspects.

The annual library meeting will be held this Thursday and people attending will be asked what about their favorite library made it their favorite (or somanswer, browsing.

Sea Street is almost empty. Where are you?

Browsing allows the user to go beyond the alreething like that). I would ask it a little differently. What about any library visit is most important to you? And I would ady known — and perhaps already reserved — into the realm of the possible additional items or ideas. An LL Bean spokesperson mentioned (last summer on public radio) that with the advent of non-Maine bricks and mortar stores, the Company hoped to have 1/3 of their business come from the catalog, 1/3 from the Internet, and 1/3 from the retail outlets because people like to inspect items closely before they buy. The same is true of library users who search the (maybe online) catalog, the Internet (think Amazon.com), and the in-library bookshelves. As the library square footage is reduced, I argue for browse-ability to be retained because I think it is a or the reason we most need library buildings.

A friend wants for the library to continue to have wireless access which made it possible for her to be here for as long as she was earlier this summer and which makes it easier for her to return. A friend of a friend mentioned comfort, like Barnes and Noble, but I would want to know what about B&N was comforting, e.g. noise, furniture, windows, coffee, particular books nearby. A classic article in The Atlantic (I think) about 20 years ago noted that libraries had turned into noisy recreation centers for kids and that the author preferred B&N because the salespeople could ask the kids — and their parents, if necessary — to leave, and librarians either could or did not.

I can relate to that both because I am a big advocate for “adults first” in libraries and because I built a library in the ’60’s before I knew that. (Yes, I am a librarian.) We based the floor plan on noise, half-staff, and expandability. The kids were in front, near the checkout desk and the adults were in back, behind the shelves, so noisiness — and nosiness, too — were somewhat adjustable. Glass walls separated the staff in the workroom or at the front desk from the reference area, so we could always see and be seen. And the basement was mostly left unfinished. As I think about it, we were shrewd, and a little far-sighted, she said modestly. Adults came, sometimes just to drop off the kids, and I considered it my job to find a way to make them want to come in or come back and find something for themselves, Adults vote, donate, and set an example for kids. It’s the trifecta of reasons to draw adults, and I think browsing is a great big way of doing that.

Browsing is a big Roseledge Books draw, too, that and arguing about why I do or do not have a book. “I hated that book about the house in Maine with squirrels running through it and the people who went swimming in the ocean with no clothes on.” Pause while I puzzled it out. “Do you mean Frankie’s Place? (Nod.) It’s one of my favorites! I loved…”

Ah, the joy. And the webcam is probably on the still or again wet Sea Street.

I can hardly believe it is raining again, or better, raining still. We are well on the way to 40 days of wet, and the only animals I see to bring on board the ark are two cats, both nifty, both toms. The chipmunks are being decimated as they frolic on the rock walls and natter at the cats. So are the field mice, apparently, though I still cloister my bread. Luckily, the toothy rodents don’t know how sweet the grape tomatoes are, so I can air them uncovered by the stove.

And sure, the rainy days are reader days, but better a book read in the sun with pauses for coffee or a harbor scan, than a book read in the dim light with rhythmic drumming on the roof. Grouse, grouse.

Fig. #56.  Fog is beautiful, mostly, but too much can dampen uninsulated cottages, lobster catches, and even spirits.

Former colleague and old friend Bob just retired, and I sent to his party a memory which resulted in my favorite wine.  I also (finally) sent a perfect “old friends” paperback, chosen in the spirit of his wide-ranging reading and apt nugget recommendations to me during our colleague years. For instance, when Clive Cussler’s Treasure came up, he was the only person who got its appeal to librarians. And 24 hours after I lost my malpractice lawsuit (April, 1987), he recommended Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, a just published mystery about the detail of trials, especially evidence, which would have been a whole lot better preparation than the Paul Newman movie, The Verdict, which was all I knew to check at the time. Roseledge Books sent him Christopher Fowler’s The Seventy Seven Clocks, one of the author’s mysteries featuring the Peculiar Crimes Unit of Scotland Yard, perfect for an ever-young problem-solver who wonders how things work and why and who uses his  many and unusual interests to find out.

Are you a nugget reader? Do you read the whole but recall apt bits as the occasion calls for it? I think nugget recall fuels the ability of some people in organizations to be the sought after “stars” of Thomas Allen’s research* into information seeking and sharing. He used sociograms to identify those who were most frequently asked to share information and suggested that these people should be the ones sent to conferences. I think these “stars” possessed nugget recall, just as do good librarians or booksellers who always have or can recall a good source or the right book to answer whatever is the question.

Annie Dillard was skirting the same territory when she wrote (in The Writing Life, I think) of her hesitation to use an anecdote in a story because once written, the anecdote was set in the stone of print and, therefore, lost its flexibility to be apt for telling in many different situations.*  This I understood, as I used to do a fair amount of public speaking and though I could turn one story into many by rearranging facets — or nuggets, I tried hard not to tell the same story in the same way. In  fact, I figured I would be old when I did.  So what was I when I thought the second telling was even better?  Dotage alert.

Fig. #57. Almost the same beautiful site — with the sun shining gloriously.

Four exciting points of note: 1) Louise Erdrich may rescue me from dotage-dom in the next post. 2) Nugget readers may also be storytellers or vice versa. 3) Nugget storage and retrieval suggest interesting memory tactics. More on this after I read Jonathan Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, which Roseledge Books now has.  And 4) The sun is OUT.  On to the porch.

*If I’m wrong about this, please don’t tell me. I prefer to think that someone correctly identified something I was excited to find out.