The Roseledge Books Blog

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.

Hurricane Irene blew down (or sogged up, if rain was the beast) trees, and some of the trees fell on wires that cut electricity to homes. A Maine friend had one such tree. Her neighbor said, “Your tree fell and now I cannot make my dress for my sister’s wedding next weekend.” Friend answered, “I’ve been telling you for two months to get going on the dress.” Pure Maine.

Minnesota friends were visiting Roseledge last week. They found and ate my stash of Willow Street Bakery molasses doughnuts which I had buried in a brown bag inside a plastic bag in my freezer. When I went to replace them, Willow Street Bakery was closed — I don’t know why — until six days after I return to Minnesota. I called my friend and said, “You ate all of the molasses doughnuts and now Willow Street Bakery is closed.” Without pause, she said, “We knew you’d be pleased at how much we enjoyed them.” Pure Minnesota.

So what makes something or someone “of Maine?”

Bunched lobster buoys, so much "of Maine," are not at all "of the Midwest."

The question arose when RB decided to have and continue to replace Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kittredge. I say “not of Maine” because Olive Kittredge is more a type than a Mainer. Certainly she, or her like, lives in Maine, but she lives in the North Dakota of my youth, too. And the lack of very specific place names, e.g. Harbor Woods, Barter Flats, Donut Point, Drift-in Beach, suggests the author has not been long enough in Maine. But I was the minority of one, so the question remains fun and will arise again next summer when J. Courtney Sullivan’s Maine is out in paperback. So far the reviewed emphasis is on the four women and the hard cover has too much sand and too little clothing, brr-r-r.

So, if not these two books, then which ones ARE about people who, one way or another, become “of Maine?” Consider the following:

Siddon, Anne Rivers. Colony, a novel by a woman who married into a family who has long summered in Maine and who also writes of coastal mores in North Carolina, which might make her Maine observations especially perceptive.
McCullough, David. 1776, a Revolutionary War history which includes early days of Thomaston’s Henry Knox.
Sterba, Jim. Frankie’s Place, a contemporary love story/memoir of Mt. Desert rusticator and Michigan transplant.
Coatsworth, Elizabeth. Personal Geography, “almost an autobiography” of author who, with Henry Beston, lived life fully on Maine farm.
Heinrich, Bernd. Snoring Bird, “my family’s journey through 100 years of biology” told through the lives of mostly German father and mostly Mainer son and author.
Zimmerman, Elizabeth. Knit One, Knit All, a knitting book, yes, but does the last page make it “of Maine?”

Okay, Roseledge Book Regulars, what do you think? What would you add? See you next year when the porch view of the harbor, a glass of chicken wine, and regetting together happen. Until then, Minnesota looms, you bet. Next post from the Group Home, as my new digs have now become.

Two readers came by on their way to Monhegan and bought books to read while there. This suggests a worthy potential-client pool to tap because a lot of people catch the Monhegan ferry in Port Clyde (4 miles further than TH on Rte.131) and reading is a major post-hike activity on the Island. I forgot to ask how they found RB because, though we are only a three-lot-wide block off Rte. 131, potentially interested people have to make that turn to either see the RB sign on the corner of Sea St. and Mechanic St. or to drive by and look away from the water long enough to register BOOKS, yes!

On Monhegan or almost any place almost any book from RB is just right. But a few do come more readily to mind:
General books sometimes include Monhegan, for example Colin Woodard’s Lobster Coast of Maine and Arnold Skolnick’s Paintings of Maine.
Island living is special. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Stern Man and Elizabeth Ogilvie’s Tide Trilogy are novels set on islands. Eva Murray’s Well Out to Sea chronicles her life on an island, in this case Matinicus.
T.J. Stiles’ The First Tycoon is a fat biography about Commodore Vanderbilt, who, among things, sailed — maybe near Monhegan.  Fat is a lovely luxury when the time is right.
Elizabeth Kostkova’s The Swan Thieves is a fat novel about art (among other things) which (among other things) is a favorite pastime on Monhegan.
There are more possibilities waiting for you when you stop by.

Wildflowers, wild seas, perchable rocks and a fat book to read.

Twice this summer people returned to RB after big-time sailing adventures. One couple sailed around the world in five of the last ten years and the other circled the Atlantic coasts these past three years. I loved that they came back, but now I don‘t recall what kinds of books they chose, except to say that no one chose a sailing chronicle, though one did take a book about islands. I’m currently reading Paul Garrison’s The Sea Hunter because I know way too little about boats, boating, and big water. It’s a thriller, includes a killphin (you’ll have to read it to find out), and the heroes are sailing to Camden, ME from the Caribbean, which is exciting because that is virtually next door to Tenants Harbor, home of RB. (You may recall the ongoing game of trying to figure out how many steps between any book and TH.)

One more week in Paradise. Weather’s perfect: sunny days, breezy late afternoons, cool nights. There’s still time. A hornet nearly committed suicide in my glass of wine, but a goodheart tipped it out and the hornet rose and looked confused.

Roseledge Books made it through the weather event almost unscathed. For two hours, the electricity flickered which is worrisome as I sleep in a powered recliner that is un-get-out-able except when upright. A very small backup battery maybe promises one lift out, but just in case, I slept sitting-up which I considered a surely doable half lift. A friend with a Verizon cell phone (AT&T doesn’t work in TH) was ready to come running at my call, but the flicks never stretched into an outage. So with a little nap today, all is well. A neighbor said that Hart’s Neck (across the harbor; see webcam) lost power, but it’s still sunny so I haven’t seen any absence of light.

And once again the Sea Street roadside gully handled the inch or two of rain.

The wind and the rain came through. I still have my book. All's right with the world.

The lobster boats stayed put, and I don’t know where the yachts on rental moorings went, but summer runabouts were hauled, as truck after truck lined up at the public landing to do their end-of-summer duty. Yikes!

The wind swirled in from the southwest which is the closed end of the harbor.  So the wind pushed the water out of the harbor which was a relief at high tide time to those right on the water. As a winter-Midwesterner, may I say that the wind was a modest blow at best, but I did put the porch chairs away for the day. So overall, a big whew!

Today Roseledge Books and the world nearby dried out with a sunny, cool breezy, end-of-summer day, but weather for the coming week is to be sunny, 70’s, and a bit of summer backlash, I hope. More book and reader news next time.

( Comment reply: RB has no insulation which means that however damp Roseledge insides get during foggy or humid days, the breezes sweep right through the single-board walls and dry it out in minutes — or so it seems. Having no insulation is one big reason I have only paperbacks and the reason they only curl, but never mildew. And paperbacks weigh less than a six-pack, the sailors assure me.)

Roseledge Books announces its first bestsellers of 2011!

Three copies sold of
Farley Mowat’s Bay of Spirits
Vance Lee’s Restitution
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander

And, if RB had had a third copy to sell, of
Kai Bird’s Oppenheimer
Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knit One, Knit All

And three different titles sold of books by bestselling authors
Timothy Egan    (The Good Rain, Lasso the Wind, Bad Burn)
Lee Child       (The Enemy, The Persuader, Gone Tomorrow)

Eating, reading, talking with friends -- the fun of summer by the seaside.

Of course this list does not include those single books sold which were read by more than one person. For instance, a visitor who usually reads fiction bought Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus and Madeline Stern and Leona Rostenberg’s Old Books and Rare Friends. Walking by later, her spouse, who usually reads non-fiction, shouted at those of us enjoying the RB porch wine, view, and proximity to walkers-by that he had two new non-fiction books to read. We shouted “Yea” and would have exchanged air-fist-pumps with his wife if we had thought of it. And, he went on, he had just learned that his life would have been better if he had read Herodotus. “There’s still time,” we shouted back. Next summer, RB will be sure to have Robert Strassler’s The Landmark Herodotus for the return visit.

Finally, some “big sticks” (read: tall masts) coming into the harbor and walkers-by enjoying the drying, if early autumn, breeze. I finished Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand; yes, to you who asked, it might be a good common read for oldtimers and newcomers who can’t get along. Readers who like to read about individual books other readers are choosing might prefer Helerne Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road and Q’s Legacy or Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time to Larry McMurtry‘s Books: A Memoir. I’ve just started Michael Harvey’s The Fifth Floor for my every-so-often Chicago jolt.

Not quite three weeks left. Long sigh. Time enough, if you hurry.

She looked ordinary enough, as she walked in and started a circular browse of the book room. I visited with her mother and aunt, who were twins, about common interests e.g. Monhegan, growing up Midwestern, sons who went west. A bit later, the daughter/niece/ superior browser brought me her choices, and oh my!. She had in her hand, landscape historian John Stilgoe’s Alongshore, a gem of a book about the shoreline of Cape Cod that I bought in 1996. I had been waiting FIFTEEN YEARS for the perfect reader who would find and love this book, and here she was.  MIND-MELD! She knew Stilgoe’s work in design, had tried to have him be part of her courses, but had never found his work in a bookstore before. Roseledge Books, a coastal bookstore, forever.
She also bought two books about place: Sarah Messer’s Red House : Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England’s Oldest Continuously Lived-in House and Elizabeth Coatsworth’s Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography which includes her life at Chimney Farm, Nobleboro, Maine, with her husband Henry Beston. Roseledge Books, like this very shrewd browser, thinks that both design and place matter. DOUBLE MIND-MELD.

The surprise of "just right" sometimes lurks in the understated bookstore.

Sometimes browsers need to see a favorite on the book shelves before they trust the mind of a bookstore, especially a bookstore with only one sign on the tree at the corner of Sea Street.There was the dutiful dad who walked in with the teenagers and sat down in the rocker to wait for them to be done. He looked up to the left and spotted Roy Hoxham’s Great Hedge of India. “I’ve never seen that book in a bookstore before. It’s a great book,” he said, as he left the rocker and began seriously looking at the six shelves of nonfiction. Naguib Mahfouz’s The Search was the magic book for another browser. Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex attracted the godmother of the second author, but I’ve since sold the book and today’s Amazon.com listing has only one author, Thomas Heffernan. It’s a puzzlement.

It’s been wet and cool. I’ve even had the heat on in my fancy recliner. Hot and humid today, but with a life-saving breeze off the water. Blight is about again. I may only harvest seven sun-gold grape tomatoes this year. Few things beat a great mind-meld.

Good grief! I have triple AARGGHHHEed and I know better. (See Comments from last post.) I should have written and have now corrected: ANTI-oxidant-filled blueberries. Again: ANTI-oxidant-filled blueberries. And just to be sure: ANTI-oxidant-filled blueberries. With a gaffe like that, I should be in Congress or maybe running for President–if I weren’t already doomed from too many oxidants. (My chemistry might be fuzzy, but never my politics.)
This give and take of blog-based comments and responses suggests writing for and with others made possible and better by technology. (See Cathy N. Davidson in her “galvanic” new book, Now You See It.)  I love this many-mindedness, as my writing efforts are — on rare occasions — flawed. More important and, building on this digital competence (!), is the quality of and easy access to the sources I use to make whatever is the point. Charlie says that if I am to be with it as a blogger, I need to drop the footnotes and start linking. It’s harsh criticism, but certainly easier to check and maybe prescient advice.  Wikipedia, another digital writing tool of sorts, was recently in the middle of a discussion about the dimming importance of conventional footnotes and the research resources they append.

Wharves of a fishing village with nine-foot tides. Is it Tenants Harbor?

But if new technologies make new kinds of source material more and more easily available, e.g. through linking, what happens if linking to some sources isn’t possible? Manning Marable’s “brilliant” Malcolm X Multimedia Study Project illustrates some of the problems, especially copyright and changing technology, as he critiques the book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. I don’t know if the biggest problem with the Project is it’s slow disintegration into “total bit-rot“ or that you have to travel to Columbia University to see it, but I do know that I loved the whole idea. Professor Marable’s new book, The Reinvention of Malcolm X, based on the sources thus gathered but cited conventionally, was published days after he died last Spring and with good sense on the part of some publisher will one day be available in paperback, at which time, Roseledge Books will have it.
A good day today — cloudy, breezy, cool and dry, with emphasis on the dry. Not many boats or Roseledge Bookies about. Garbage on way from Roseledge garage to Transfer Station. Suspect friends are keeping me from public disgrace. I may have to crack David Baldacci’s latest paperback thriller, Hell’s Corner, to provoke some page-turning excitement in between the mellower entertainments of Larry McMurtry’s Books and Helen Simonton’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. And it is fun to visit — albeit digitally — with you all who are there instead of here.

It’s August already! How did this happen? Time must fly ever faster in a place of the heart. Maybe even place of the healthy heart. Note the ANTI-oxidant-filled blueberries ripening before your eyes on the webcam and the willowy Queen Anne’s Lace, wafting into Fall. Note, too, the few, very few, more sailboats in the harbor.

Lobster boats and sail boats moored and moving in the harbor's Main Street.

Then, when the news of the rest of the  world was filled with people behaving badly, just in time, a hero emerges. Walter Leonard, former classification czar, has filed a formal complaint against the National Security Agency and Justice Department seeking punishment of officials who classified a document that he says contained no secrets. Finally someone is willing to take on over-zealous classifiers and the (mostly elected or appointed) officials who don’t want us to know what they are doing to us or ours. A familiar Freedom of Information rant, maybe, but today, one with a welcome twist.

On that happy note, I will blame the fleeting time, a bit brisker book business, and flicking fingers of webcam downtime fame to justify putting bookish email responses here for all to see and maybe help out with a comment.     #1: If one moves to Boston, what are some good getting-to-know-you books? Hard to say for someone else, but as I became worldly at the Wahpeton (ND) Public Library a year or two ago, I found Cleveland Amory’s The Proper Bostonians generally helpful, especially when later enjoying Nicholas Kilmer’s Man With A Squirrel, Charlotte MacLeod’s The Withdrawing Room, or Jane Langton’s Murder at the Gardner. And maybe because I’ve always liked political novels, I liked Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah for big-city Irish politics made more current by William Bulger’s While the Music Lasts: My Life in Politics with a side look at Howie Carr’s The Brothers Bulger which adds to the mix brother Whitey, so much in the newspaper of late. Obviously, these mostly oldies are intended to get you into Boston Public Library for some serious shelf-browsing and to appreciate that BPL has an outstanding President in Amy Ryan. Hi, Amy.  Other suggestions?

Oh dear. If you are refreshing the webcam, you see the dog and walker venturing off the road with no poo bag in sight. When you come, just remember where not to walk with eyes up.

#2:   You might want first to look through Robert Finch’s Iambics of Newfoundland (when you are here next year, I hope) because the person who bought it recently said it was not what she expected and mostly slow-going.   #3: Remember as you devour Douglas Preston’s Dinosaurs in the Attic that Albert Bickmore, Museum of Natural History’s first Director, lived in the second house down the hill from Roseledge Books. This may not convince you that a degree in Museum Studies is in your future, but it may hint at what you missed at the Sea Street Barn Sale several years ago.  Something you won’t miss when you come and the tide is out are “the wrecks” in the cove out front of the house next door, burned before Harry’s aunt bought the house because burning was cheaper than insuring or hauling them away.

A kelp-covered remnant of schooners burned in the cove below Roseledge

First bestseller of the summer (3 copies sold): Farley Mowat’s Bay of Spirits. Lee Vance’s Restitution is likely to be the second, but first I have to get the box of new books from the post office. They don’t deliver because I live too close and I don’t walk because there is not time enough. So you all get to enjoy more pleasure of anticipation.

Day downer: Tom Cruise is going to play Jack Reacher, yes 6’5″ 250 lbs. Jack Reacher, in the movies.  AARGHHH!

Spiderman turns into a circus and Jack Reacher becomes a cartoon.  DOUBLE AARGHHH!

Is it okay to use Google when working the NYT crossword puzzle?, I asked.

And they answered, ” Never.”  ” Only on Saturday.”  “Only for proper nouns.”   “Why not?”

The question arises mostly because it is fun to argue on a lazy, hot summer afternoon.  Recently, though, it came up when researchers fretted and studied whether Google, with its ubiquitous availability,  is hurting our ability to remember things. It’s not a new question.  I think I remember that St. Augustine was faced with the same worry when, in the 4th or 5th Century, he codified Church rules — or maybe he developed a bibliography or both — and the Powers fretted (“Never”) that members would not remember the rules because they could always look them up — if they could read, if they cared.  Sixteen hundred years later, librarians thrive in an information-glutted world knowing where to look for answers to their own and the questions of others.(” Only on Saturday”  “Only for proper nouns”)  And Google is just one source. (“Why not?)

You look at this boat and what do you know? What would you do to know more?

The question now is not “do you recall something” but rather “do you know which is a good — or the best — source to find the something you do not recall?”  And in this search for and browse through best available sources comes new learning, even a speculation or two.  Oh the joy!  Oh the answer to a clue in the crossword puzzle!

Mostly, Google searching is fact-checking, with context a by-product of the many listings, a little like the card catalog of old.  Most of us need some kind of context or scheme to cluster odds and ends so they make sense.  Because (I think)  it has one such scheme which might be useful,  Jonathan  Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci lurked on RB shelves waiting for me to finish this year’s series continuations* and then — whoosh — it was gone to an alert reader who spotted it hiding underneath several unlike books.  Careful browsing is the hallmark of a real reader in a good bookstore. RB has the former and surely is the latter.

I have ordered another copy.  Cross your fingers that it is not currently out-of-print in paperback, as are Blair Fuller’s Art in the Blood, Claire Mowat’s The Outport People, Marilyn Dwelley’s Spring (and Summer and Fall) Wildflowers of New England, Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden with watercolors by Childe Hassam, etc., etc., etc.  But I am getting carried away.

The ribs of old schooners as seen at low tide. What do you think happened?

It’s a very slow summer.  This makes seeing those of you who come, even after ten years, even more fun.  You in the nation’s MANY hot spots are missing out on breezes, wine on the porch with the last of the native carrots small enough to be an hors d’oeuvres, and the first wild blueberries on the low bushes by the driveway.  New books get shelved tonight, always a fun exercise in reader aesthetics and best marketing efforts.  How many readers asking for multi-generational books does it take before a little section emerges?  How faded or yellow does an older new book have to be before it goes in the $1.00 basket?  Should Finnish mysteries be grouped with Scandinavian mysteries?  Is mention of “that painter from Maine” enough to put a mystery involving art critics next to Wyeth books on the art table?  I love this stuff.

Can you see the ripening high-bush blueberries increasingly in the center of the webcam?  Yum and strong hearts.

*Latest series continuations to read:  C. J. Box (Wyoming game warden, Joe Pickett), Catherine Coulter (FBI Couple), Margaret Maron (North Carolina judge, Deborah Knott) , Daniel Silva (Israeli art restorer, Gabriel Allon), right after I  finish Lee Vance’s Garden of Betrayal, not in a series that I know.

The webcam is cursed. How else to explain the total blackness (loss) of the picture and the unusual shot of Roseledge’s ceiling corner? Okay flicking one’s one useful (left) hand across the keyboard and hitting random keys that require a click before continuing is a possible explanation, but I say the machine makers should have foreseen the problem.  And surely I heard the camera complaining about the same view all the time as it fell to the floor and viewed the (handsome) ceiling beams.  The very good news is that son Charlie was raised to figure out what to do.  A long time ago, a friend at Underwriter’s Lab (UL) figured I was the reason UL was born.  I give Charlie and UL purpose.

Lobster buoys on the dock before they mark a pot. No webcam near.

Book news:  Lee Vance’s Restitution has a classy reference to a Wyeth painting that at first read might be “Christina’s World,” but I think is the painting of Betsy asleep in the grass with blueberries.  I didn’t double check because I want to think I’m right.  I liked the book no matter what, but his reference to a Wyeth makes it a RB neighborhood treasure.  I ordered Lee Vance’s Garden of Betrayal, the second in what I hope is a series.

Few things are more fun than having a RBR look at the shelves and suddenly exclaim, “Oh, you have (Robert Finch’s) The Iambics of Newfoundland! I have that on my to-read list and even tried to buy it, but the bookstore person had  trouble with iambics.” We’ve just the book for she who looks (iambic tetrameter alert), like  a personal bookseller who interprets a literature-map,  of related authors.    Personal trainer? Personal chef? Personal bodyguard?  Small “body-treat” potatoes compared to a personal bookseller,  who caters to the mind.

Two excellent book suggestions from RB people: Eva Murray’s Well Out to Sea: Year Round on Matinicus Island, always fun for summer visitors who find it harder and harder to leave, and Kitty Pilgrim’s The Explorer Code, which will be a great addition to the North Atlantic adventure novels — when it comes out in paperback!  Until then, Dan Brown’s Deception Point, Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and Andrea Barrett’s Voyage of the Narwhal will have to do.

Painters add spirit and make a memory possible to many.

Harbor highlight:  Painter parked across Sea Street, set up easel and water-colored away. Either knew or was especially cordial to walkers and drivers-by, some of whom stopped to talk at him and watch.  He never slowed, but did respond sometimes.  Could he be the world’s first male multi-tasker?

It’s nearly that time of day when the boats are aglow with the light of the setting sun.It’s pizza-on-the-porch and try-a-new-wine night.  Maybe the General Store pizza lady will have the basil dough.  Yum.