The Roseledge Books Blog

Wow!  How good can good be?  Take a look below and know that with people reading, then knowing about all of this, the world stands a chance.  These are some of the books readers chose the past several days:

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan
City of Dreams by William Martin
Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
Day of the Barbarians by Alessandro Barbaro
Farm Work: Jamie Wyeth Exhibition Catalog
Genesis Code by John Case

Why does someone choose this book, but not that one?  Ah, the mystery and the fun.  And if Roseledge Books rarely has a specific book someone is looking for, few who stop leave without finding at least one treasure.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund deWaal
Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

Hard to tell from the titles how many books are about coastal lore.

Lincoln Letter by William Martin
Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Maine’s Favorite Birds by Jeffrey Wells, Alison Childs
Mission to Paris by Alan Furst
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Six titles have a direct tie to Maine, maybe a seventh (M. is reading it now to find out), and I think an eighth ties to Tenants Harbor through a summer person.  Please recall that any book is right for RB shelves if it has a tie to TH (or Maine).  The old rule of thumb argued for up to six degrees of separation to find the tie, but, as I recall,  a more recent figure argues for 4.17 steps to shelfdom because everyone and everything is more connected now.

Old Books Rare Friends by Madeline Stern and Leona Rostenberg
Otherwise by Farley Mowat
Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff
Rag and Bone by Peter Manseau
Thread Across the Ocean by John Steele Gordon `
Trinity Six by Charles Cumming
Trunk Music by Michael Connelly
Water: A Natural History by Alice Outwater

Obscure patterns lurk within rock and among Roseledge Books and readers.

If people typically look at ten books for each one they choose (a very old University of Chicago study), just think of all the fun you are missing by not being here to browse through Roseledge Books’ unusual gatherings of books and people.

There is still time.

It is August 3 or 4 or 5 and the heater kicked on. AARGH!  But, as always in Maine, wait fifteen minutes or, in this case two hours, and folks walking by have shed their hoodies.

If you are a webcammer, you may have noticed the Tonka Toy-like equipment with the big claw hovering by the side of the road and trucks unloading handsome granite from (local) Long Cove quarry. Roseledge Books is getting a terrific new stone wall.  The wall builders are putting together a jigsaw puzzle of stone amid Sea Street passers-by, all of whom have an opinion.  “It perks your place right up,”  a Barter’s Point neighbor stopped by to say.  This sounds like my late neighbor Harry’s comment, “It’s about time” when I finally painted Roseledge.

The undone stone wall turns the corner and continues this long time gem.

The high bush blueberries right outside the front window are bluing, but the Produce Lady has had the native blueberries (low bush, small and perfect) for several weeks.  Yum.  The rose hips are turning red-orange faster than seems normal.  T he little orange tomatoes are still just flowers on the tall, but skinny, tomato plants.  And the herbs are losing the too-wet fight.

I wish the harbor were busier with moorings, but my judgement is clouded by the lobster boats that routinely tie up at Cod End moorings (in front of the webcam) where sailboats used to dwell.  The sailboats may be tied up at the Tenants Harbor Boat Yard moorings (behind the trees to the left of the webcam view); if so I expect these sailors to walk by soon.

Two new books of note:

Maine’s Beautiful Birds with knowing notes by Jeffrey Welles and Alison Childs and art-worthy painting by Evan Barbour. This is a slim volume, long awaited by local or visiting birders who are tired of hauling heavy, all-inclusive bird guides, e.g. Sibley, Peterson, and at $15.00, it is also a great thank-you gift for a great Maine experience.

Coaster Days by Roy Meservey. As you row, paddle, sail, motor or otherwise enter the harbor, look around at the lobster wharves, the East Wind Inn, and a whole lot of cottages/homes and see instead  the boat-building era of Tenants Harbor, e.g. sail lofts, railway, launch site, and graveyard, as recalled by Roy Meservey (who also built and lived in Roseledge) and which still exists in the Tenants Harbor Boat Yard.   Great photos, too.  Full disclosure: (Mostly) Charlie, Pam, Scott and (somewhat) I had a good time digitally transcribing the 1976 original.  We left the typos and added one of our own.  Can you find it?

Roy doesn't mention tides, but the resulting mudflats are noteworthy.

It is raining,… again.  This would make it a great day to curl up with a RB book, if readers knew two days ago that two inside days were coming.  (I am reading my third Ruth Galloway mystery.) Wimpy sales suggest that experienced summer people knew to be outdoors from dawn to dusk enjoying the two, rare, sunny, dry days.  I am counting on severe cabin-fever to set in about 4 p.m. this afternoon and am ready for the dripping wet-weather gear that will be part of any visit.

The weather gods assure me, I am sure, that Saturday travelers — especially from points south — can expect the real glory days of summer from Sunday on.  See you all soon.

This was the week when special people bought Roseledge Books’ special finds, so RB has the first bestsellers (3 copies sold) of the summer:

Farm Work, a catalog of Jamie Wyeth’s art includes an interview rewritten as if Jamie Wyeth were talking directly to the reader.  It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an anecdotal biography, much like Richard Meryman’s Andrew Wyeth.

Ray Bradbury’s Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury’s Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland has it all for with-it sailors who love movies, Ireland, books and beer and who could never manage to get through the original Moby Dick between fogs.

What makes Maine a best seller? Boats and the sea and a memory. Sigh.

One shrewd browser found Lost Bar Harbor by G.W. Helfrich and Gladys O’Neill and knew its pictures would be useful for a biography he was writing about someone not usually linked to Bar Harbor

Two shrewd browsers bought James McCracken’s Innocents at Sea and Charles and Carol McLane’s Muscongus Bay and Monhegan Island as gifts for people who knew the authors or who live in a place included in the book.

Do you like rock walls? Roseledge Books may have another when you get here.

I’m still looking for new mystery series to ensnare the unwary into coming back year after year to get the latest paperback.  Three earlier finds — Julia Spencer-Fleming, Harry Dolan, and Bruce DaSilva — do not have new paperback editions out this summer, so I’m looking still or again.  Elly Griffiths is a possible, and I’m reading Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, which I like but know is not for everyone.  A clue: Claire DeWitt is likened to Lisbeth Salander. Suggestions and readers needed.

Business is mostly slow.  More boats in the harbor these days, but still not many compared to summers past.  And the weather!  Take your pick: foggy and soggy or way too hot.  The knees like neither.

Can you see the ripening blueberries on the webcam?  And did you see the eight male goldfinches frolicking in the easily-moved leaves of the rogue poplar?  We checked this morning and Charlie’s forercast beneath the webcam is substantially more cheerful than weather.com, and so far he’s right, although the clouds are thickening.

It’s nearly August.  Hurry up.

A blue heron stood between the wharf and the wrecks at mid-tide in front of Roseledge.  It was visible through the webcam if you looked at the right time.

The little kids sailed this way and that in the St. George Sailing School daysailers.

Two light blue sailboats were moored in the harbor at the same time, though one of them might have been gray and, like the water, changed color when the clouds hovered.

Things beautiful and wonderful grace Tenants Harbor in summertime.

Elly Griffiths, a new-to-me writer, sets her mysteries in a to-die-for place on the salt-marshed coast of Norfolk  and peoples them with appealing characters and plots. I’ve read and liked a lot two so far: Crossing Places and The Janus Stone. A RB Regular pointed out that Dorothy Sayers’ set her wonderful The Nine Tailors in the same memorable fen country.

Two neckless hawks with serrated wing edges flew over the porch this morning as we enjoyed a cup of coffee before nine a.m., after which the sun was too high and hot to be outdoors

Native blueberries are in. Yes, the perfect little wild blueberries that are so good and so good for you.  But don’t hurry to the Harborside Market;  we got the last two quarts on this first day the Produce Lady had them.  Summer joy alert.

Join the sailors' excitement at sighting Roseledge Books. Good reads await.

I’m still trying to learn more about the Middle East from those who have spent time there and traveled.  I loved Rory Stewart’s Places in Between which tells of his walk across Afghanistan in winter.  I’ve listened to the news differently ever since.  And I loved William Dalrymple’s mid-’90’s book, From the Holy Mountain, in which he walked the eastern Mediterranean coast to update a 598 A.D. survey of  monasteries  from Mt. Athos in Greece to Coptic Egypt.  It was timely and hugely informative, especially his conclusion that he was unexpectedly witnessing the twilight of Eastern Christianity.   So I thought I would love William Dalrymple’s mid-’80’s book, In Xanadu in which he shadows  Marco Polo on his 13th C. travels from Jerusalem to Xanadu in China. I am reading it and learning a lot which I like,  but it’s hard to read about his Syria of then and not think about the past two years of bloodshed and destruction in the Syria of now.

Maybe it’s time to shift to Farley Mowat’s Otherwise, a memoir of his early years that “shaped his life as a writer and activist” and, I hope, as a sailor and person with a sense of humor.  RB copies should be at the post office tomorrow.

Cooling off tomorrow night and, apparently, forever thereafter.  See you soon.

People who read know more than people who don’t, they are more interesting because they think outside themselves, and they are more useful because they are more likely to be ready for whatever is next.

Sometimes enjoying the (perfect) moment tops preparing for the next.

Consider the following:  I no more than finished Edmund deWaal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes and lived with the author’s family through the Holocaust years of looting, forced sales, and stingy restitution of their extensive family artworks than I read about the continuing reluctance of museums to face questions of  Nazi life and subsequent provenance.

And B.  A. Shapiro’s mystery The Art Forger feeds into recent news of the unsolved 1990 heist of art works from the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum without diminishing the possibility of the fictional activity in this book.  The discussions about copying and forgery deserve a read, too.  Also regarding this famous art theft,  Whitey Bulger’s trial has not diminished the possible accuracy of David Hosp’s explanation in his mystery, Among Thieves.

Nora Roberts’ Chasing Fire was a useful introduction to “Hot Shots”, the specially trained firefighters, nineteen of whom were killed in an Arizona wildfire last weekend.

These are just the most recent and, maybe, the most particular examples I could think of.  An acquaintance asked why I read about things that had not happened to me or that I didn’t know much about.  I read to be ready for whatever is next, I said thinking about it.  Now, if I only knew what was next, this would really work.  The books of Roseledge Books are my ongoing, best faith effort to help you and me be ready.   The world needs us.

The fog rolls in, the fog rolls out, the fog rolls in again and again

Notes to commenters:

Carol, what book did your daughter so long ago choose?  I wonder if RB still has it.  The underlying question is: are there books RB should try always to have?  And find out if Bev, who has also been to RB and understands its spirit, has titles to suggest.

M from NC: Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life by Christina Marsden Gillis sounds wonderful, especially with its ties to Ruth Moore, but it is not available in paperback; and if ever there was a summer when hardcover mildew would set in on the way home from the post office, this is it.  RB does try to have Ruth Moore’s Spoonhandle always available, but maybe more titles would be even better.

And just in case the Scrabblers return to Roseledge, which I hope you do, I have been reading to get ready for word challenges.  And I now have evidence to support my continuing assertion that a word does not have to be in a dictionary to be a word.

Out, out damn fog.

Hot! Hot! Too hot to walk the shadeless portion of Sea Street in front of Roseledge Books and be tempted to stop in.  But the other day was glorious and the first busy day in the bookstore.

Two groups were repeaters, one of which was a group of one who was a great browser.  One was a group of three who bicycled by and, even if their intent was mostly to catch their breath, they bought great books and vowed to be back.  But the fourth group were newbies who stopped in on the clearly compelling advice of a sailing colleague.  Thank you, thank you, whoever you are (they weren’t sure).  Word-of-mouth or word-of-t-shirt is my favorite lure.  And they chose some of RB’s most special books.

Edward Hopper-like chairs await you with books for an afternoon read.

For instance, they considered Maine Scenes and Seasons  by Richard Procopio has great photos and text to introduce people from away to the glory that is Maine;

One of each Farley Mowat book on the shelf which on that day were Bay of Spirit and The Serpent’s Coil;

Farm Work, my favorite Jamie Wyeth book/exhibition catalog which has within it his answers to interview questions arranged more like an informal monologue about his work;

Lambs of God by Marele Day, a snotty Vatican novel (always a plus), set on an island in the Hebrides (the watery terrain is almost a cousin), with unusual knitters (an emerging plus); and

The Life and Traditions of the Red Man is Joseph Nicolar’s 19th Century telling of Penobscot tribal ways, unusual and pertinent to those of us living on Penobscot Bay.  Some years ago, RB carried and sold anthropologist Frank Speck’s Penobscot Man, also unusual, pertinent,  published by U of Maine Press and, therefore, expensive.

A hodge-podge of chairs for readers who visit and watch the harbor's ways.

Today a little cooler, but still no breeze, some bugs and intermittent rain.

I am hopeful, but not foolish.



The BOOKS and OPEN 2-6 signs are hung and banging against the porch.  The bushes are dancing as the afternoon sea breezes blow. (See at least two clicks of the webcam.)  New books are unboxed and ordered by size and color to catch your eye as you walk in the door. ROSELEDGE BOOKS IS OPEN! Where are you?

That was written six cloudy-rainy-foggy always humid days ago. (See webcam  again.)  The question remains: where are you?  A little wet never stopped —  more likely provoked — a reader to read and thereby to discover a need for just the right book.  And ROSELEDGE BOOKS IS OPEN with just the right books.

A foggy day is okay; a foggy mind is not. Bring on the books.

I’m reading and unexpectedly loving Edmund deWaal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes.  The author inherited a collection of 264 netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings, and herein tells their story through their connection to his hugely wealthy family, starting in late 19th C. Paris, then, after 100 pages, in 20th C. Vienna.  This is not only a thoughtful family history filled with much about the times I didn’t know — always a good thing — but it is also a first-rate search book.  Throughout, he mentions the sources he uses and the sources of those sources, e.g. family letters, photographs, dinner-table stories, boxes of unexplained memorabilia.  He uses libraries advantageously, always a good search strategy, this librarian avers.   He goes “vagabonding” or traveling to pertinent sites to see them now, imagine them then, and extract the building insights, even when they are harsh.  And, wow! does he know how to “read” the thousands of words a picture is worth.  Clearly, he attends to and extends his curiosity.  What a treat to have picked this up.  (Commenter and friend Kathy (see last post) pegged this book and my interest exactly.  I am blessed.)

Two favorite books come to mind and soon to Roseledge Books:

Kem Luther’s Cottonwood Roots, a thoughtful family history he wrote after collecting data and visiting the 200 or so years of home sites from Nebraska back in time to New York, which I  think of as vagabonding.

Phillip Davis’ The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn, an engaging story of many questions answered by many means and somehow summing to a whole  in a life of always learning.  (It’s been a long time since I read the book, hence the “abstract” or “impressionistic” review.)

If you don't know what these are, you've been too long away. The harbor calls.

Related Tenants Harbor news: The Happy Clam, to which Roseledge is  a (noise) abuttor, agreed to a compromise-later closing time of 10 p.m.  for service on its deck.  This seems okay to me, as surely the deck people will not be noisier than the yacht club parties of old in tents on the East Wind Inn lawn.  When I asked one yachter if his was a “loud  is fun” party group, he  said they were, but they had limited staying power beyond 9:30, especially as they had to row back to their boats, ready to sail again at dawn.  The Real Finds Consignment Shop is full of good “stuff”  in the True Hall Realty building just down the hill on Mechanic Street.  With Roseledge Books, we two are a right angle of retail glory.  And I think the Happy Clam has an ice cream window.

So many reasons for you to be here.

“It don’t get no better than this,” one ten-year-old said to another in Minneapolis some years ago.   Surely they meant to include summer in Tenants Harbor, had they but known. Even with rain and more rain, the flowers, herbs, and sun-glo tomatoes are planted, the kitchen is back together  with a Cheerios-yellow wall plus two metal roses, and early morning Sea Street walkers are up and at ’em. The books are shelved, if in the company of unusual neighbors, and when I can find the BOOKS and OPEN signs to hang on the porch, Roseledge Books will be open for business.  But I’m here now, if you should happen by.

I love your comments and suggestions.  To those of you who  think the chipmunk did us a favor or who want to be sure the 2012  Cheerios are finished before they come for wine-plus   (you know who you are, S. and S.),  may I say that snotty ill becomes you.

Add wee adirondacks, tear off the 2, follow the arrow. You're here!

I’m here and healing. The newly- sanded floors allow the  easiest-possible paces and I need to walk a lot.  I’m reading while healing, but  Roseledge Books Regular ME suggests a reading about healing  in Victoria Sweet’s God’s Hotel, which I have ordered immediately, and to which I would add as a neighbor about-healing read, T. R. Reid’s The Healing of America.    Jerome Groopma’s How Doctor’s Think might be good here, too, because healing is a two-way  responsibility.  The more you understand how a doctor thinks and your body works, the more you know how to describe your body’s cues and thus help avoid a dreadful misdiagnosis.

Then there are books to read while healing.  The titles may vary by reader, but page-turners (e.g. David Baldacci’s The Forgotten) probably use the least amount of mind which is what you have to give when you are sickest and need everything you’ve got to heal.  Memoirs or journals(e.g. Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, Anthony Shadid’s House of Stone) are focused with some fact and some fiction which makes them a good intermediate read when you’re better, but not quite on top of things.  Then when energy, impatience, taste for coffee and gummi bears return, you head for the careful, involved read.  Right now, for me, that is re-reading Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs to find any clues in the text that support her being for a time in or near Tenants Harbor.  A friend wants to do a booklet about her time here and he has actual evidence.  I am to offer “speculative insights.”   Oh the fun of entering the local fray among those who favor TH, Martinsville, or Port Clyde!  When the booklet exists, Roseledge Books will have it.

Who would sail into any other harbor? Surely not SOJ.

The native strawberries are in, the (newly invasive) rosa rugosa are blooming, and an orange crane was stepping masts at the public landing.  Nights are still cool, but the heat in my spa-recliner takes up any slack.  I am being one with nature and planting an already-big tree to shade the porch from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.  Umbrellas are heavy or electric and always iffy in the wind.  Does this mean I am green or sustainable?  Come and see.

We’re here, the webcam is on and, after two mornings of coffee on the front porch, I can report that life in Tenants Harbor just gets better and better.

The lobster boats are in today maybe because it is windy or it is Sunday or lobster prices are low or it might storm or who knows?  A few walkers-by were out – one I knew anjd one I met; one sailboat was already on an overnight mooring; and a visitor nearby enjoyed his dog – a dachshund/doberman mix (yes!) – leaping in our jungle lawn trying to catch a mouse or vole or something else moving.  I wanted to hire the dog.  Then Charlie mowed the lawn, and a dreaded chipmunk (think gnawed pvc-pipe) rushed out and  frolicked across Sea Street into the recently unearthed rock pile.  (See left on the webcam.)

Like all Main Streets, a busy Tenants Harbor is always fun to watch.

Thanks to Charlie, Roseledge has drained pipes, cold water, hot water, working computers, mowed lawn, and, beginning summer trash of used napkins from the nearby Bakery’s best-ever breakfast bagels.  The refrigerator and stove are still in the living room, though the former is plugged in, and the nonfiction bookshelves still need to be restocked and replaced against the wall once the drowned wallboard is replaced.  Charlie is thinking deeply (and snoring) about the next most important thing to do.  We are invited out to supper again tonight, so summer shopping and the stove can wait a day.  We found an unopened box of Tasteoos and the last of last summer’s coffee in the freezer, so unpicky folks that we are, we’re good for at least another day.

No book news, but the current Down East Magazine features Rockland’s Home Kitchen Cafe, the new venture of the nifty team who made the nifty Roseledge Books t-shirts these last fifteen years.  Cinnamon rolls were featured in the article, yum, and I am hoping for equally celebrate-able oatmeal.   More about books and an oatmeal report later.

One more walkway up the hill and the granite steps of Roseledge beckon.

Mostly we are getting ready for you all (and surely your numbers are legion) to come or come again and again to Roseledge Books.  Two half-screens just blew out of the upstairs windows, so it’s time for me to awaken the troops and direct once again.  Did I say it was windy?  Did I say it was perfect?

Welcome back to Roseledge Books.  Let the summer fun and perfect reads begin.

Already there in spirit and soon in body, Charlie and I will be smelling the sea’s salt and, with luck, saying hello to the harbor before dusk  next Friday.  Maybe a week late, but better late than early when its cold and rainy, as it was in Tenants Harbor over Memorial Day.  Roseledge may only be as ready as chipmunk damage allows, but Roseledge Books is always all ready to entice ready readers.  Okay, the shelves might be awry, but think of the fun of browsing through the disarray and find unaligned treasures.

I love Roseledge. I can hardly wait. First sightings in daylight are best.

I will put on hold Anthony Shadid’s House of Stone — which I am enjoying a lot — because it is a many-paged trade paperback (therefore awkwardly big and heavy for travel and one-hand reading) and I want to savor learning about his Lebanon as he rebuilds his family’s home.

I love reading about people who live two places, especially Nicholas Kilmer’s A Place in Normandy in which he tells about the week he spent deciding whether or not he, as the only sibling interested, should continue caring for the 14th Century farmhouse his grandparents had bought in the 1920’s.  (When this is finally in paperback again, Roseledge Books will have it.)  My other favorite is Lillian Beckwith, who wrote a number of semi-autobiographical books about her post WWII years living among the crofters in the Hebrides, none of which is available in paperback .  Aarrgh-h-h.

So I will travel with the right-sized G. M. Ford’s Cast in Stone, a Leo Waterman mystery set in Seattle, which he knows well, and featuring as helpers, his “boys,” who are retired reprobates as are many of my friends. I’ll keep you posted, but I like learning about Seattle.  Besides, Charlie who lives in Seattle which is on big water, recommended — or at least mentioned — it.   Traveling books are always tricky, especially if fog or other delays may be likely.

Lobster buoys are part of what I know and love. Thanks, Tenants Harbor.

Summer will be different this year, especially without Tim to smooth the way and always be a backup.  I will miss him.  And his East Wind Inn has been sold.  A friend called to say that without leaves, the Happy Clam seems almost an extension of my backyard; Dave Lowell’s wharf  is a beauty to behold from the front porch; and my unmowed front lawn which is mostly on ledge has gone amok.  More next Saturday when I can speak from experience.

I may be ever slower, but I am still moving, sometimes more smoothly, and isn’t that a good thing!  After next Saturday, the chairs will be on the porch waiting for you all and sunshine.