The Roseledge Books Blog

Amanda Knox was freed from an Italian jail last week. “Whew,” said a friend and RB reader who knew to be worried after reading Donna Leon’s mysteries set in Venice.

“Who’s surprised about the prescription drug shortage?” asked a medical professional and RB reader who recently read Catherine Coulter’s latest paperback thriller, Whiplash.

Clearly, these RB readers are ready for whatever comes next. “What do they read to be thus ready?” you ask, and isn’t that the question. What they read and why and what they “get” from doing so, I don’t know. But I do know what they choose from RB and sometimes the following summer I find out if the choice was good — or not.

In that spirit, here is a list of the books some August (august?) Roseledge Books readers chose last summer. What any one reader got from any one read is next summer‘s report. Why I chose them for RB comes in (maybe) the next post

Are lists and piles made of building blocks? Do big ones matter more? Why?

Abigail Adams by Woody Horton

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King
The Brothers Gardener by Andrea Wulf
The Cruelist Month by Louise Penny
The Canon by Natalie Ainger
Dogtown by Elyssa East
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Firewall by Henning Mankell
Frankie’s Place by Jim Sterba
Greenland by Gretel Erlich
The Hard Way by Lee Child
House of Rain by Craig Childs
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
Islands in Time by Philip Conkling
John James Audubon by Richard Rhodes
Lasso the Wind by Timothy Egan
Last Places by Lawrence Millman
The Lobster Coast of Maine by Colin Woodard
The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Old Books and Rare Friends by Madeline Stern and Leona Rostenberg
On [Monhegan] Island
Oppenheimer by Kai Bird
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh by Linda Colley
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling
The Snoring Bird by Bernd Heinrich
South Sea Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostkova
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapucinski
Voices by Arnaulder Indridason
Working at the Olsons by Andrew Wyeth

I’m not sure why, but this variety of titles coupled with the variety of minds choosing them surely indicates that  Roseledge Books’ readers are ready for whatever is next, which is a good thing because too many people without a clue seem to be too much with us.

An aside:  Listing books by title makes little sense, but acknowledges that the NYT Best Seller Lists and the mid-size jobber I frequent, both of whom  do so, may know something I don’t.   I prefer listing books by the author’s name; then I can link past and future events of note to idea junkies and thereby add to long-term building blocks  of memory well into my dotage which is a good thing because remembering is easier than checking reference sources with only one hand.

Booksellers are like book hunters; they search for the right book for the right reader at the right time. This is also the task of the librarian as posed by Ranganathan and of the information services provider in these digital days. But which 750 books are just right to have on the shelves of Roseledge Books? This is my ongoing puzzle and joy.

I no more than landed in Minnesota than I spotted two probable must-haves “of Maine” for RB next summer. The first is Ed Ureneck’s Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine which is not yet out in paperback, is set in interior — rather than coastal — Maine, and uses the mid-western word, cabin, rather than the coastal terms, cottage or camp, to describe one’s dwelling, but which apparently describes the back-to-the-land dream of many as did Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or John Casey’s Spartina, is set in Maine and is written by a former Portland newspaper editor who knows Maine. Tricky, these book-choosing decisions.

This view has changed. Walk to Roseledge Books next summer and figure out how.

The second must-have is The Plants of Acadia National Park compiled by four field botanists, “serious scientists” in reviewer Susan Hand Shetterly’s words (in Down East, October 2011), who offer a treasure of photographs, identification keys, historical and current collecting methods and suggestions for further reading to enjoy during a long winter’s night anywhere or a long summer’s day on the lighthouse lawn. Armed with some background, local readers (you) can explore local areas and begin an ever-growing list of local wildflower (or other plant) finds with annotations which will make the book a Tenants Harbor (or other area) treasure. Think of the hikes, kayak pauses, bike rides, and walks of fun and wonder. This makes it an activity book, like using Arnold Skolnick’s Paintings of Maine to identify which painters or paintings are near, then dear. After it all, RB ends us in the midst of many wildflowers and much art, and with you all, great
readers.

And then there is my latest thriller read, David Baldacci’s The Sixth Man, which, on page 8, has the main characters landing at the jetport in Portland, Maine. Will the good times never end?

More about book hunters next post. Charlie says I should keep these short, never easy for a born talker.