Archive for December, 2009

BOOKISH ROMP

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Christmas cheer prevailed as Charlie and I and our almost-family neighbors had our biennial holiday romp at our almost-neighborhood bookstore yesterday. Everybody got a book (Thanks, moms), then retired to the Finnish Bistro across the street for really-good goodies and show-and-tell. As always, I got some heads-ups for Roseledge Books next summer or the summer after if the paperback editions are not out yet.  What do you think?

Fair Trade Coffee person #1 chose VQR (Virginia Quarterly Review) with a articles mostly about North Africa because she will soon be in Uganda on a coffee encounter. (Roseledge Books also suggested Kate Jackson’s Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science and Survival in the Congo, as suggested to RB by reader/acupuncturist during my inpatient physical therapy sojourn.)
Fair Trade Coffee person #2 chose Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen because he runs (and bikes) and loves Mexico and wants to know more about Copper Canyon;

This is a day when we read our books, read our books, read our books. This is a day when we read our books that Roseledge had waiting for us.

Fig. #69. This is a day when we read our books, read our books, read our books. This is a day when we read our books that Roseledge had waiting for us.

Alpine sorrel Plant person chose The Book Thief by Markus Suzak and The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman because she is currently reading about Jews in World War II Germany and maybe because she is Swiss. (Roseledge Books loved and so suggested Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird for biology and Germany, then Maine life.)
Math/Science researcher son chose Logicomix: an Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou because he has always loved comics, especially Spiderman, and now he is also cutting edge. (VQR person noted that one of her articles was also “graphic,“ so she, too, is cutting edge.)
Tree ecology person chose Everett, Daniel. Don’t Sleep; There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle because he will be on a teaching spree there come spring and the short story book (his usual favorite) was too heavy. (Roseledge Books also suggested Redmond O’Hanlon’s In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon, but he may have already read it as his family may have recommended it to RB.)
Dancer/choreographer person chose Karin Fossum’s The Indian Bride for quality diversion, but exchanged it for another title by same author because this one was in tested book pile in Maine and she can get it next year; also considered Steig Larsson.
Roseledge Books decider and mom chose Steig Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because North Atlantic murder mysteries are as close to big sellers as Roseledge Books gets, and I haven’t read this author yet. Alpine sorrel plant person liked Steig Larsson’s first two and intends to read newly published, hardcover-only third.
I’d never heard of Jarkko Sipila’s Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, but it won the 2009 Finish Crime Fiction of the Year Award and my almost-neighborhood bookstore usually has unusual and good choices. I also bought it to review for Roseledge Books, see above. And Roseledge Books will have Umberto Eco’s An Infinity of Lists as soon as this beauty is out in paperback. I don’t think you have to be weird to love lists and catalogues and other rosters filled with possibilities, but it probably doesn’t hurt.
Roseledge Boks advisor and mom was busy reading for two book clubs: Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Joyce Carol Oates’ Little Bird of Heaven. I haven’t read either, but rest assured; she will advise.

Fig. #70. This is the place we read our books, read our books, read our books. This is the place we read our books, after we've been to Roseledge. (To be sung to a tune of your choice.)

Fig. #70. This is the place we read our books, read our books, read our books. This isthe place we read our books, after we've been to Roseledge. (To be sung to a tune of your choice.)

So many books; so many reasons to choose; so much fun finding the right book for the right person at the right time.  And then come the conversations.  Hard to ask for more than that.

Happy New Year, you all. Think upright and right books with me to shorten the time until Roseledge Books opens and blossoms again.

Posted in General Discussion, Maine Books, North Atlantic Books, Roseledge Books, Series' Favorites | No Comments »

GOOD COMPANIONS

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Okay, I’ve been remiss, but I have reasons. My computer died and I’ve been away getting intensive (read: in hospital) physical therapy. Then Charlie recovered whatever software needed recovering and I recovered some confidence that, with ever more adaptations, I still have some years of slowly upward and onward at Roseledge. So, whew. I still and will always lean left, but both the computer and I have useful futures. And I still and will always have things to say.

I took with me Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through a Century of Biology. I love this book. The author is sensible and spare, which matter in a memoir. He expects little but reacts forthrightly, makes the best of things that might thwart the less thoughtful, and gets on with a satisfying — if unusual — life of study. I learned a lot about the evolution of the field of biology and about Germany during the first half of the 20th Century. And I enjoyed Maine as lived in by a naturalist. He was a good companion in the hospital. Be prepared; I’ll be recommending it big time next summer. Right now, I’m trying to figure out who gets my “tested” copy as a Christmas gift.

fIG. #68. Really blue harbor water for all seasons, except the rare freezing over. Lovely to have in mind and sometimes in daily life.

Fig. #68. Really blue harbor water for all seasons, except the rare freezing over. Lovely to have always in mind and sometimes in daily life.

Of course I also brought thrillers with me. David Baldacci’s Divine Justice and Alex Berenson’s The Ghost War were both character-continuations which I knew I would like and I did, though not as much as I liked their predecessors, and I didn’t need the torture parts of either. So I mostly skipped those parts and never knew what I had missed. It was fun to see which visitors to my room spotted which books. Book interests do color character. My family gets these two in the Christmas box of mailed goodies, most of which are “tested” paperbacks.

Yes, it’s time to use again those already used books, to rummage through the year’s noteworthy reads, choose with care, and send them as re-gifts to the unsuspecting or to those who don’t care. An old friend who died too young pointed out that he could tell I had liked a book if he got to p.50 before the first coffee cup ring appeared. More gift ideas coming.

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