The Roseledge Books Blog

Mainer friend Scott says Marshall Point is definitely the first lighthouse in the first Red Lobster commercial, which he knows because of the yellow house at the tip of Hupper’s Island which he was able to see because he cheated and looked up the commercial on (stop-and-start) You Tube because Red Lobster doesn’t advertise in Maine. Imagine that! As this is not fair, his conclusion doesn’t count and we still need on-site inspections, especially if he is going to climb the wind-shaped tree to get an “aerial” view which I think he should do to make amends. He is also sure that part of the commercial was filmed in Port Clyde Harbor, which probably requires either a kayaking expedition or dinner at the Dip Net to verify, and that the second lighthouse is Portland Head light which I think Edward Hopper also painted, so I was sort of right. But Edward Hopper’s Pemaquid Light is still worth a look.

All of Maine is worth a look, the closer and carefuller the better.

Another possible kayak outing for those Roseledge Books Regulars who
I know are kayakers and have promised they are coming in July
would be to construct an on-site water-trek of the Andrew Wyeth paintings in his current exhibit at the Farnsworth. Though it is titled Andrew Wyeth: Summers in Port Clyde: Watercolors from the 1930’s and Early 1940’s, a note notes that they were painted in Martinsville. This could make getting on the water a bit tricky, as public landings there are few. I hope the Farnsworth or someone publishes a paperback catalog to accompany the exhibit and maybe include a map of the painting sites.

Wouldn’t it be fun to find the sites from water (or land?) and see how 75 years has changed or not changed them? Changes in Maine are often subtle and usually pragmatic. Think of Maine farmhouses as they are amended, expanded and renewed over time.  Tenants Harbor has two lovely examples within an easy walk from RB.  Thomas C. Hubka’s Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England is the best book I know on the subject and I hope RB will have it by the time you come by.

From the water, emphases change; but Roseledge Books remains outstanding.

Charlie has purchased the tickets for Maine.  We will arrive Sunday, May 27, just in time for the Memorial Day parade on Monday.  I hope you all can be there, too.  Andrew Greeley, the Jesuit sociologist at the U of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center and romance novel writer, said about the Irish in his early ’70’s book, Why Can’t They Be Like Us? America’s White Ethnic Groups, that they were a people of contradictions.  The one I remember is that they expect the best and are not surprised when it doesn’t happen.  So mine is probably an Irish hope, but it’s my hope and I’m sticking to it.  See you soon.

Always exciting, Charlie found a Tenants Harbor connection to the mosquitoes-must-die works of artist Dennis Asbraugh who, after suffering through dawn’s mosquito welts while watching local lobsterman head out, went back to his TH cottage and built wonderful mosquito killing machines from the beach detritus nearby.  Though I can no longer find on his website the tie to dawn’s departing local lobstermen (which I don’t think I made up), I hereby offer Roseledge Books’ front porch as an ongoing local test site for any of his mosquito death traps, especially if he is testing impact of late afternoon, off-shore breezes or relative numbers and nastiness of dawn vs. dusk devils. RB has both breezes and dusk devils. Here’s to more porch time with lots of dead mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes lurking everywhere, sometimes more with food. Yikes. Begone bugs.

The somewhat remote tie to RB comes with the artist’s mention of “idea books,” or books that spurred new thoughts. In Dennis Ashbraugh’s case, these were the books of William Gibson which RB always — well, usually — has at least one of (e.g. Neuromancer). Idea books are hard to identify in advance, especially for someone else, but it is fun to try.

The idea of idea books came to mind when a friend compiling a “rule book” emailed RB looking for models. If RB were the answering email type, the response might have been as follows:

Great “rule book” model is Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, especially the edition with illustrations by Maira Kalman. I love Maira Kalman. She is the reason I ordered the book in hard copy, but I hope it will be out in paperback soon. (Her book, Principles of Uncertainty, was the idea book that spurred this blog.)

The tone or voice of the Pollan book is perfect, as is the length. Both are tricky when dealing with rules for everyone.  The Introduction to the illustrated edition of 2011 describes a great way to keep new rules and new editions (and new royalties) coming.

Food Rules organizes sub-rules around the three biggies from the first edition and for which the author is moderately well known:�
Eat food.�
Mostly plants.�
Not too much.

The breezes blow and the water ruffs. The bugs give up. Hooray I say.

In liking the book so much, I am probably projecting, as this would have been a great model for my “50 rules for choosing a source” book which has been a lifetime frame for thinking about things and was going to be my continuously updated device for solving many problems among world’s thinkers or arguers or people who talk to other people. Think about it. Is Wikipedia ever okay to use as a source? When? With Whom? Regarding what?

This verifying an idea is a constant problem for those of us who speculate. As my brother-in-law warily asked when I was proposing that the Irish were here before the Vikings, “?Is that in a book somewhere or did you make it up?” The answer, of course is sort of and sort of. My family keeps me grounded. Well, sort of.

Only some of you have emailed to say you are coming to RB this summer. Too many of you did not come last summer. So keep those possibilities churning. To another emailer, may I say that I have already received my paperback copy of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One Was A Soldier, and I will enjoy it as soon as I finish another adventure with Reacher (in Lee Child’s The Affair). Both books have more white space and are, therefore, bigger which is not a plus for a one-handed reader with good eyes,

But I digress. And to address your grammatical quibble, both Charlie and the TH connection are exciting. More sooner. I may be on a roll.

Have you seen the Red Lobster commercial with a lobsterwoman from Spruce Head and two lighthouses? Roseledge Books Regular Steve is sure the first is Marshall Point lighthouse, five miles down the peninsula from RB. I was also sure until I saw it one too many times while knitting during reruns of “The Closer.“ Now I think they may have fiddled with the picture because there should be no cottages or land to the left. Charlie says I’m not picturing it from the air. Humpf, I say. Clearly this deserves several trips to the lighthouse next summer for on-site inspections, arguments and glasses of wine. I can hardly wait. Meanwhile I am posting two of Charlie’s pictures of Marshall Point, mostly because I just like them.

TV's Marshall Point is more from right where there is no land to the left.

And is the second lighthouse Pemaquid? Think Edward Hopper, but I‘m not at all sure. And a RB person who moved to Hawaii (hiss) asks, “What’s with the woman hauling red lobsters from the ocean?” Shrewd eyes do not fade, even when they are entirely too far away.

Lots in the news these days about what is factual, true, real, fiddled, created, imagined, retold, remembered, falsified, or subject to every other convolution that happens in the game of telephone, the stories of the Irish, or the findings of data hounds. The review of John D’Agata’s ’s book, The Lifespan of a Fact may be all you need to read of a long discourse on this matter, which is good because it won’t be out in paper yet this summer. And Mike Daisey’s comments about Steve Jobs and Apple in China are mostly useful for the conversation about what journalism is or is not.

Charlie's Marshall Point. I love it, but what is it -- art, truth, terrific?

Personally, I take things with a grain of salt and figure the point being made falls somewhere between documented and speculative. Thus it is I’ve never fretted about fiction/non-fiction distinctions or paid much attention to authority, except maybe to question it or figure out how to change it. And I never consider an argument settled.

So it was that my mostly Scandinavian neighbors and I got together last week on St. Patrick’s Day to argue one more time about whether the Irish or the Vikings got here first. As always, I argued for the Irish and thought I won. The Irish coffee was maybe not as good as usual with Redi-Whip instead of real whipped cream, but then as the Dane among us pointed out, none of us is as good as we once were. More seasoned, though.

And always happy to hear about new evidence to support the Irish-first hypothesis. Mention in Icelandic mysteries, Greenland travels or arctic explorations, maybe?

Well we may have had our snow of the winter. Forecast for today is high 30’s, the traces and slush ruts will melt, and it is March 1st.  It will not only feel like Spring, it will BE Spring, meterologically speaking.  Could one ask for more?   This makes going to Maine seem all the closer, which means I am now busy sorting through clippings and reviews from this winter’s reading to amend my list of books to buy for the bookstore.

A Maine picture for most seasons transfers Summer's joy to early Spring.

A Maine friend liked Henry Kissinger’s book, On China, and White House people are busy reading it, among others, so I’ll order it when it comes out in paperback. I know for sure that two Roseledge Books regulars do business in China and several others travel to unusual places and like to know more about where they’ve been. Besides, it’s a big fat book which is often a plus for readers on vacation, especially near a glorious ocean. I wish I liked Kissinger more, but he’s smart and I think he got more right about China than about Vietnam.

I just read an article about Bell Labs, innovation hub for much of my life thinking about library and information issues, and Jon Gertner’s book, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, is due out soon.  Articles about China and Bell Labs beg the question, when do you need to read the whole book to gain the learning? It probably depends on what you want to know or how much you already know or care or on how contentious is a related argument or how much time you are willing to give and in what spurts or how able is the author as investigator, thinker, and writer.

Choosing a book is a tricky proposition, especially choosing a book for another, as there are as many reasons to read a book as there are readers, but choosing is the real pleasure of having a bookstore. Roseledge Books is every year an ongoing accumulation of my best guesses and the books you choose to buy are my yes! moments.  So the joy of choosing begins again.

In their spare time, the Chinese read novels about work.  (See New Yorker article, “Working Titles” by Leslie T. Chang, 2/6/12.)  Oh my.  I don’t think this is a go for Roseledge Books, although one could argue that good police procedurals, e.g. Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, or Henning Mankell, have a fair amount of workplace activity involved.

How do I miss Maine? Let me count the ways, the days, the rocks and buoys.

I have a new pacemaker which, like so many of my encounters with the health care system, needed a second try to get it just right.  My too mellow heartbeat just got a boost, so expect more energetic bursts and fewer nod offs from now on.  Felicia Carparelli’s Murder in the Library is testing my newfound impatience.  I am only on p.26, but I already want her to know more about libraries than I suspect she does.

Easy days at the winter digs. Spectacular sunrises with reds and blues that incorrectly promised later moisture.  Sailors did not have to take warning. Today’s blurry sky may change the tenor of our very warm — well, mild — snowless winter. Millie and I had what will probably be our last wine on the patio last week, at least the last wine wearing a sweater. I wore my latest knitting effort, an “evolving-stripe” pattern which might have been better balanced had I attended to the reds and blues of morning skies. Trying things is fun in knitting as elsewhere, but my goodness it takes a long time to recover stitches when I change my mind.

On to noteworthy newspaper items:

If you many “Downton Abbey” fans who read books also sail, you will find Roseledge Books ready with Charles Todd’s mysteries which are also set during and immediately after World War I, though I don’t recall which titles are on the RB shelf. It’s hard to read or think about those killing trenches of WWI and harder to look at them. I close my eyes.

Water, water everywhere in summer; big sky fills winter's window.

Soon-to-be IBM ex-President Sam Palmisano tells an interviewer that he kept IBM ahead of the curve by changing direction and helping people get through the mountains of data available to them.  To do this, he bought software companies that offered “data mining and analytic services.” He steps down a hero which is fine, but where is the notice that reference librarians have been doing this for a hundred-plus years? Please recall with fondness the librarian who shepherded you, other researchers and the generally curious through the mountains of information available to any and all in libraries.

An aside: James Webb’s Unobtrusive Measures is a fun read and good way to recall these earlier mountains of data in libraries, some of which  he called “running records.”  Remember the study, using water and electricity records, that concluded the Brits used the bathroom during the commercials on television?  Maybe that’s why their commercials are so often so good.  But I digress.

Oh librarians appreciate the occasional understated mention in an obscure appendix or acknowledgement, sure, but in the bigger picture, they have long made available organized, accessible information to anyone who wanted it.  And they know well the often unspoken rules underlying which sources to use when.  Face it; in today’s world the problem isn’t finding ten sources; it’s knowing which of 250 options to choose.  Clearly librarians needed to understand algorithms or befriend someone who did because for all of today’s access, way too few users know what makes a source good rather than just easy to find.

One sees jumble, another sees first sort. Both have usefulness in mind.

So it is good news when librarians and users make a move to improve the quality of cited sources. In this spirit, cheers to Wikipedia attenders and library providers when NYPL’s Performing Arts Library hosted an “editathon” for amateur digital archivists and musical theater devotees. Everybody wins. Wikipedia’s musical-theater-related entries use better evidence to make their points and the treasures in these Special Collections get visibility and a more explicit purpose. What fun! I wish I could have been there or that more libraries offered similar search events.

I loved Umberto Eco’s An Infinity of Lists for many reasons, but one big reason was that it included the contents of and rationales for many really strange collections.  Suddenly NYPL’s Special Collections had forebears.

Time to return to the Friday NYT crossword puzzle and decide if the constructor is a seasoned liberal arts graduate with a modest interest in sports whose references, especially slang references, I stand a chance of knowing.

My sister died last month, two weeks to the day after she went to the ER with a stomach ache. Call the cause complications of surgery or infection, both of which it was, her death was also surprising and, now, disconcerting. I have lost the last person who shared with me my early life and its obscure references and who could keep me honest when I wafted off into the embellishment of Irish truth, a gift I learned from my father. I will miss her.

Charyl's chair with favorite view; coffee, book, and drowsing, too. Good times.

Otherwise my almost perfect (Maine-less) autumn and warm, early winter days have been filled with the big skies of my 12th floor aerie and the arcane tidbits the (mostly) NYT offers one ever searching for news of moving information: how it moves and who can move or change it and why someone would do so. Others follow the money. (Remember Robert Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s All the President‘s Men?) I follow the (recorded) information which is never dead — though maybe dormant — and never neutral, says the searcher which most librarians are. And the trails may be amazingly circuitous. But to the tidbits:

First I have ready next to read Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve, which I expect to illustrate that recorded information is never dead, though nearly eternally dormant if not for a Renaissance book hunter who found it lying on a shelf and brought it back to life. Should be fun.

Then the nifty NYT story about Matthew White, the guy who searched for and collated information about skulls, buried because of conflict, anywhere or anytime. He found and accessed information from secondary sources, then gathered, evaluated, organized and distributed the results in his new book, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities. Wow! Results don’t interest me much, so I hope he also publishes an “appending volume” of search strategies because his is a nifty mind with a whole lot of searching know-how. If quality of sources determines or hugely affects or (name your level of influence here) the outcome of an argument, then transparent searching/collating sophistication is key. The critical comments in the story reflect the differences among accomplished content people — but no librarian/searchers on this point. I love searching and remembering that there are few (if any?) single right answers.

A favorite searching book is William Mitchell’s Clear Pond, though one friend thought him obsessive and a long-ago NYTBR reviewer thought the author’s meager findings made the book not worth the effort. I ordered it right away. Thomas Hoving’s King of the Confessors is another favorite search book, but skip over his dreams.

Searching tidbits, if anywhere noted, are often only in footnotes, e.g. what you tried to find and how, but couldn’t; where you looked and found a surprise So it is always fun to read a knowing argument for footnotes.   They often tell a second story which may be too project-specific, under-valued, or under-validated for prime-time inclusion but which make the major argument richer, e.g. the footnotes of research reports in Science. And Anthony Grafton’s book, Footnotes, is not to be forgotten.

But I natter. So more tidbits another day. For now, enjoy a  treasure from an anonymous giver in Edinburgh, Scotland made available to all of us with a click on these words. Then join me in figuring out the perfect read for family and friends this holiday season. I have been asked not to give any more library books without mentioning the due date, and I can’t mention the perfect read I found for Charlie because he might read this.  But stay tuned.

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.

Last post I mentioned the struggle of finding just-right-reads for a noteworthy reader soon to have a knee replaced. Then today’s browse through NYTBR’s brought before my very eyes FOUR possibilities:

Great House by Nicole Kraus
“The characters…are intricately connected, across continents and decades, by a 19- drawer wooden desk….” Paperback Row, NYTBR, 9/25/2011

The Fall of the House of Walworth by Geoffrey O’Brien
“…the gaudy, multigenerational story of an upper-crust family in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. brought down by corruption, insanity and parricide.” Paperback Row, NYTBR, 9/25/2011

Life, like a good book, has assorted pieces that somehow make a whole.

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (First of a 20th Century Trilogy)
“Five interrelated families from five countries are caught in the upheavals of WWI and the Russian Revolution.” Trade Paperback Best Sellers, NYTBR, 9/25/2011

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal
“A family memoir written with a grace and modesty that almost belie the sweep of its contents:…during the Second World War.” (NYer) “An extraordinary history…. A wonderful book, as lustrous and exquisitely crafted as the netsuke at its heart.” (Christian Science Monitor) Both from an ad for the paperback edition, NYTBR, 9/25/2011, p.33

Multigenerational sagas, art at the heart of the story, worldly adventures, fiction, non-fiction, and more to come. Time will pass, the knee will heal, and the mind grows.

Then, next summer, Roseledge Books will be open and part of whatever is next.

Minnesotans who know ask, “Was 2011 a good summer?”
It was, I say; let me count the ways.

The annual summer leftovers dinner went well.  My smoked salmon, miraculously packed, is good until 2014 (Thank you, North Carolina Regulars) and I used up all the stale crackers and generic Cheerios.  So not only was 2011’s last supper good, but 2012’s first supper sounds promising, too.

Roseledge Books’ final tally was a small plus for books sold over books ordered, WHEW.

Charlie pulled the dead Queen Anne’s Lace and the worst of the rogue bushes in the rosa rugosa hedge with only one sotto voce reference to Julie, who is in India and therefore not here for landscaping duty. (Please hurry back, Julie; I’m sure this is a one-time effort.)

Queen Anne's Lace blooms someplace else next year; goldenrod stays put and spreads. Sniff.

Moored yachts never filled the harbor after hurricane Irene which meant fewer RB visitors which is not good, but it was, therefore, an easier leave-taking.

I failed to think of the perfect book(s) for an RB Regular’s`six-week knee-replacement recovery reading in January, which is not good, but I’ll have to keep thinking and posting suggestions which is good.  Think other times and places, multi-generational, detail, art, maybe European. So far, Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra is a “no ancient Egypt;”; Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, which Millie read, is an “already read it;” James Clavell’s Shogun is a “maybe re-read;” Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird is an “too recently read, but really liked;“ Elizabeth Kostkova’s The Historian is a “no vampires or Vlad the Impaler” though her Swan Thieves was “really good;” and I don’t think Kate Morton’s Distant Hours is going to be sufficiently engrossing though it is fat and it was a “yes.” More suggestions anyone? I’ll send them on.

A long last look at moored lobster boats and ribs of "the wrecks" at low tide.

First frosts in the Maine valleys signaled Fall, which matters in an uninsulated cottage, so leaving was necessary and therefore easier.  Minnesota’s homecoming weekend of 90 degree days was TOO HOT even with insulation, but record-setting frosts followed which just demonstrates how unappealing it is to live an average life, which, with RB and you all, mine is not.

I tried another thriller and, yes again, Maine figured in. (First Paul Garrison’s The Sea Hunter which I liked and John Case’s The Syndrome which I liked, but not nearly as much as his The Genesis Code, which also has Maine in it.) Clearly Maine is thrilling and will continue to be so in books and movies until next summer.

Here‘s to then, through a winter of Minnesota postings.