The Roseledge Books Blog

The ending of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z was satisfactory, much like Nicholas Clapp’s The Road to Ubar, but I wanted a book with more search detail, like Ubar. I hate reviewers who review the book they wish the author had written rather than the one the author did write, but hey. Daniel Silva’s latest, The Defector, is one of the harshest of the Gabriel Allon series. Back-of-the-book disclaimer or not, author Silva crafts a contemporary Russia with a Putin-like President that reads like a newspaper report. Maybe I should read Martin Cruz Smith’s Stalin’s Ghost just to clarify.

Yrsa Sdigurdardottir’s Icelandic mystery, Last Rituals, is a little bumpy which may reflect translation troubles or first novel awkwardness, but it builds support for my contention that the Irish were there (and here) before the Vikings. I’ve just ordered Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships which, according to alert RBR, includes Vikings and Irish in the same medieval saga. Could be good.

Fig. #89. High tide in the cove with "the wrecks" to the right of the tree with the ever larger overhang across the road in front of Roseledge Books and on p.7 of Coaster Days by Roy Meservey who built and lived in Roseledge until 1961.

For those of you mourning a summer without a new Julia Spencer-Fleming adventure with Reverend Clare and Chief Russ, I have two words: DIANA GABALDON. The reasons are many: a) she writes a series (the Outlander series is, so far, seven behemoths); b) the main characters are a couple, Clare (note) and Jamie Fraser; and c) Henry Knox, who lived nearby in Thomaston after the Revolutionary War, makes an appearance in this latest volume, An Echo in the Bone. (You may remember Henry Knox from David McCullough’s 1776.) I’ve just finished this latest Claire and Jamie Fraser adventure, an 800-page fatty, which I managed to read with one hand by whirring my feet up  and my back way back in my new recliner which also has heat and massage buttons. Roseledge Books, of course, has the series, but only one copy of most of the volumes, so hurry.

You may recall the wine tasting late last summer when RB decided that Le Poule Blanc (with suitable label) would be our wine of this summer.  So far, so good.  We serve it and friends drink it, even after the wine seller referred to it as the chicken wine, albeit the POPULAR chicken wine.  Low humidity and northwest breeze today, maybe a nip in the air. Perfect. The webcam seems to interfere with the modem, so until cleverer friends come next week, no webcam. If you want to see the harbor, you’ll just have to visit in person

Wonderful wild roses — flat, pink with a cream center — are sprouting from the cleared rocks of my roadside stone wall. Clearly they have found spots which suit them. The rosa rugosa hedge blossomed and spread and allowed wrong rogues like barbary and goldenrod to grow within, but Millie has cut and pulled and ignored the nattering chipmunk, so the hedge remains a thing of beauty waiting for its big, red-orange rose hips which fool walkers-by into thinking they are cherry tomatoes, just ripe for a pick and taste.  Pucker.

North Dakota’s state flower is the (wild) prairie rose which looks much like my rogues. This happy circumstance surely suggests that my memory of wild rose fences keeping cows from roaming deserves further consideration. My 96-year-old, nifty uncle John, who was raised on his settler grandfather’s ND farm, says that, to his (substantial) knowledge, the wild rose fences never happened. I only remember hearing about them, never seeing one, so maybe the fences are another example of my dad’s “Irish truth”: if it could happen, it probably did.  For my dad, probably was as good as actually.

I may be becoming my father’s daughter.  When I used Tim Severin’s voyage to Iceland in a leather boat (recounted in The Brendan Voyage) to support my contention that the Irish were here before the Vikings, my brother-in-law pointed out it only meant that they could have been here, not that they were. Picky, picky. My brother-in-law is not Irish. Nifty, just not Irish.  Somewhere speculation meets documentation and makes maybe which is as much as most decisions are based on.

Figure #88. Can you practically see the early boats in the mist? Ignore the mowed lawn and the Esst Wind's Chandlery. Then the fun comes in deciding whose boats they are.

The Willow Street Bakery molasses doughnuts are as good as ever, especially with very hot, quite-dark-roast, coffee. The Bakery has changed owners at least three times and location once in my time here, but the recipe must go with the sales, thank heavens. When Garby and Tim were Hall’s Market, they had Willow Street molasses doughnuts twice a week which, with the beans on Friday, you had to reserve if you wanted any. The sights and smells were apparently too much for newbies to ignore. So the summer regulars met the challenge.

Heavy day today with high humidity, low clouds or dense fog, and intermittent rain. Some breeze, though. I’m about 2/3 way through David Grann’s Lost City of Z and though it is well-written, it is more about Percy Fawcett than about the author’s preparations to search for him and Z. Biographies of crazed Victorian explorers don’t interest me much. So I’ve taken a rainy day detour with Catherine Coulter’s Knock Out. If that ends too quickly, I have Daniel Silva’s The Defector waiting. If I need more Amazon adventure, I have Candice Millard’s River of Doubt or Teddy Roosevelt’s Through the Brazilian Wilderness, his own report of his Amazon adventures.

More boats were in the harbor today, some against their sailors’ wishes. Fog assures me some browsers, even if the idea of RB only occurs to them as they walk down Sea Street past the RB sign on the corner maple tree.  Yesterday, RB returnees mentioned that they could see the new, very  YELLOW chair on the porch from their boat.  Better than a flashing neon rose, I say.

Webcam problems at the moment. Trust me; it’s perfect.

It’s really raining at the moment. (See webcam.)  Cozy indoors with no leaks, a change from years past. Millie and I will spend the afternoon artfully arranging books for your appreciation, but you have to come to fully appreciate the attraction of a good cover, well placed among other “like” books. But why are they “like” and are the covers good for you? Those are the questions and that is the fun.

Joe Queenan argues for the importance of a book’s cover in choosing what to read,  but I can’t remember whether our reasons for display support his reasons for choosing.   Cover reactions may be too personal to generalize.  Only when you get here and look or don’t look at a title will we know if we hit it.  A bookseller’s life is never humdrum.

Fig. #86. Morning sun is the best for coffee on the porch and to remind walkers that exercised bodies need exercised minds. Roseledge Books: gym for the mind, open from 2-6 p.m.

A friend is organizing a conference for caregivers in danger of burning out, which probably covers all caregivers.  Surely a roster of Roseledge Books that might “take them away” from whatever is the burden of the moment is just the thing.  I’ve been thinking about categories.  How about real-life adventures?  Or multigenerational sagas?  Or fat biographies with lots of detail?  Or books about other times and/or places? Your suggestions?

Categories need examples.  Would you include and where would you put the following?

David Michaelis’ N.C. Wyeth (local tie)

Roy Hoxham’s The Great Hedge of India (not even a remote local tie, but great read)

Louise Erdrich’s Plague of Doves ( strong, very indirect local tie)

Douglas Brinkley’s Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (maybe local tie)

Cokie Roberts’ Founding Mothers (local tie)

Barbara Kingsolver and family’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life (local tie in spirit of Produce Lady)

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander (no tie, but fat and first of series)

Suggestions welcome, but hurry.

So far the book about books that mattered to Oscar Wilde has less pith than David Brooks’ column about books that mattered to Christopher Hitchens, but the comparison may be unfair as both DB and CH are still alive.  The real point of all of this may be that I have neglected Oscar for a second adventure with Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. (Thomas Wright’s Built of Books;  Stieg Larsson’s Girl Who Walked Through Fire)  I loved it and hate to make you envious, but I have a paperback copy of the third book which a friend brought from Switzerland.  It may be a British publication, but it is translated and I can’t remember the title which may be different from the U.S. hardcover.  Oscar may have to  wait a little longer.