The Roseledge Books Blog

And it is so-o-o good to be back. So far everything has been perfect, well except for the heater conking out in the middle of a low 50’s night on the water. But even that turned out to be part of the TH welcome when possibly the only person in the world who knows the innards of our 25 year old Monitor was ten minutes away on another call. He came over, took it apart, fixed it and gave us heat within the hour. I love the miracle that is Maine.

Memorial Day weekend with its parade and after-parade parties is just the best time to re-meet and greet other die-hard summer people when every summer thing is still possible. Old friends new to TH stopped by with wine and goodies — even as Charlie was in town stocking up — and with an amazing ability to fit in. This means they served their own wine in RB’s finest plastic wine glasses with nary a flinch. Charlie and Julie returned laden, other friends stopped by with goodies, and soon the perfect spontaneous summer party was upon us. Hello summer.

Fig. #84. The ribs of the wrecks are still there, at least at low tide.

Charlie is sort of busy fixing things for my somewhat less mobile summer. I read and direct; he sometimes pays attention. I finished the latest Jack Reacher in paperback (Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow, set in NYC with ties elsewhere) and now I am bereft. His next paperback, is next summer and though Janet Maslin loves the hardcover as usual, I have to admit that the setting, cold South Dakota, is not my idea of a good time. I grew up in cold North Dakota and loved it, of course, but I don’t need more. I’m about to start C.J. Box’s Below Zero. I hope the title is not weather-related. Between reads I am about to start my big summer book order. All I know for sure so far is that T. J.. Stiles’ The First Tycoon and Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird will be part of it.

I still have to do my lookover of last summer’s series to see which authors’ latest adventures I need to add. Cara Black, Nicholas Kilmer, Peter Spiegelman, and Phoebe Atwood Taylor for sure. Then there are the new ones I’ll add to try and lure you all back to RB.

Charlie has chosen this minute to move furniture right around me. The potatoes have been boiling too long. It is raining on the wonderful uninsulated roof which is fun if you have a roof but not so good if you are still taking pee pills, which I am. For those who know me: good news.  Everything wrong is treatable, and with some help, I’m here and waiting for you to be here, too.

Hello from Tenants Harbor.

Two trees fell over in the backyard of Roseledge during a strong spring storm. Roseledge itself is fine, but the outhouse may be a thing of the past. Thank heavens I now have indoor plumbing. The downed trees can wait until summer and unsuspecting guests ask what they can do. Mostly I am doing all that needs doing before Memorial Day weekend and Maine arrive.

I read to learn, a colleague succinctly put it, and so do I, especially to learn how the world works. I hope this rescues me from relationship novels. The botched car bomb of Times Square last week, for instance, brought to mind Alex Berenson’s The Faithful Spy. Steig Larsson’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo came to Frank Rich’s mind (NYT 3/21/10) as he thought about financial industry doings and reporters. BBC mentioned a lost ship, maybe filled with arms, and Mossad in the same breath, and I thought of Daniel Silva’s Moscow Rules. The other day, an acquaintance told me she moved here from near Kiev in Russia shortly after Chernobyl. Last summer I read Martin Cruz Smith’s Wolves Eat Dogs, so I was not completely at a loss. If I could figure out how to know if a book would be somehow helpful in an unknown future, I’d make a list and have them all at Roseledge Books.

So it is lists once again, an ongoing RB topic and the focus of Atul Gawande’s new book, The Checklist Manifesto, in which he argues that lists are one way to manage complexity. (Reviewed favorably in NYTBR, 1/24/10 with a thoughtful and important response the following week from Dr. Gawande in “Letters” NYTBR 1/31/10.) Unfortunately, the paperback is not due until next January, but is RB a trendsetter or what!

The happy news of Russ and Clare’s latest adventures coming soon was a fluke, according to Julia Spencer-Fleming in an email sent to “Readers”, one of whom is a Very Regular Roseledge Book Regular. If anticipation is two-thirds of pleasure, we have about a year’s worth of pleasure ahead of us.

Did you all follow the almost annual flooding of the Red River in North Dakota and wished you knew someone who grew up in Wahpeton at the head of the Red? Well, you do and I did. Three reasons why living on the Maine coast thus comes naturally: the magic and necessity of water, wind, and seeing forever.

Fig. #83. Pockmarked or blended?

The friend who sent me pictures of the downed trees in the backyard unsubtly mentioned Charlie might want to paint red Roseledge this Spring. My trendsetting pockmarked shingles, especially on the garage exterior and caused by an unprimered original paint job, may not be weathering to gray fast enough to sort of blend in. Charlie’s response, “We’ll see.” And two weeks from Thursday, we will.

I am so ready to be in Maine. The PGA Tour has been to Pebble Beach (the best wild water site) and Hilton Head (pretty good big water with piers), and today I found myself reading as much as I could find about Norway and Russia dividing the Barents Sea and Cape Codders quibbling over Cape Wind. Clearly I need to be in and of Tenants Harbor.

Until then, I will enjoy thinking about coming good books and good times with Roseledge Books Regulars.

Fig. #80. Sometimes wild big water with pier.

(1) T. J. Stiles says that he tries to write books that “tell good stories and ask big questions.” Is there a better description of a perfect book for Roseledge Books?  Or of conversation with an Irish person, maybe?

T.J. Stiles’ The First Tycoon: The Epic Story of Cornelius Vanderbilt just won a Pulitzer Prize which suggests he succeeded. Oh boy, Roseledge Books alert! The paperback is out and looks fat, just in time for the big summer order. AND the book could have special ties to TH.

In the early ‘70‘s I walked in front of the pre-income tax “cottages” of Bar Harbor. Someone said that one of them, a 22 bedroom lovely, belonged to, I think, Joseph Pulitzer. If this was the Pulitzer who started the Pulitzer Prize which TJ Stiles just won, then clearly the book has a tie to Maine. If any Pulitzer cottage dweller was also a sailor, he or she might have sailed into excellent Tenants Harbor. Of course Cornelius Vanderbilt (Commodore Vanderbilt?) may have sailed into excellent TH, too, even if his home base was Newport. So maybe the book is a TH Special! This would make a perfect book even better.So many puzzles, so much fun.

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(2) In Voodoo Histories, David Aaronovitch writes that the Internet has enabled the “release of a mass of undifferentiated information, some of it authoritative, some speculative, some absurd,…”

Is authoritative — speculative — absurd a better range of options than the  ratio of documentation to speculation I use when deciding if a book is fiction or non-fiction or something in-between?  I’m mostly a reasonable speculator.  Deciding what information is worthwhile and why is no small task these days.  Robb Graham’s new book Parisians (hardily researched with “14,000 miles in the [bicycle] saddle and four years in the library“), could be a wonderful example of in-between.  Both books will be on the shelves of RB when they are out in paperback.

(1) Interview with T. J. Stiles. [Minneapolis] Star Tribune, April, 2010.

(2) Michiko Katani reviews David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories: The Role of Consprac Theory in Shaping Modern History, NYT, 2/15/10;    Dwight Garner reviews Robb Graham’s Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris, NYT, 4/28/10.

Fig. #81. Big water life in Tenants Harbor. My favorite. No PGA Tour here.

I know my messages have been few and far between. Please blame it on six months of giant legs, pee pills and potassium, and (latest theory) a recurring infection, through all of which I have thought of you often and been mostly wiped out. But things are looking up. Antibiotics are within and Charlie assures me the airline tickets and rented car will have us walking into Roseledge before dark on Thursday before Memorial Day.  This means that after Friday morning breakfast at Farmer’s, Roseledge Books will be open. I will be waiting for you and ready to consider the harbor for as long as it takes. I can hardly wait.

Some mornings are especially fine: good coffee, curious new tracks in the snow, and the NYTimes with a “search” story. Today was one such.

First the story: A lost letter from Rene Descartes was found (NYTimes 2/25/10).   A Descartes scholar in Utrecht (Holland) found it “during a late-night session browsing the Internet [in which] he noticed a reference to Descartes in the description of the manuscript collection at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.”

Just think about the improbability of such a thing happening. The President of Haverford didn’t know they had it; only one Haverford paper writer, in 1979, had used it; the College received it from the widow of an autograph collector who bought it for the signature, not the content, in 1902; it was just one item in the library’s “special collections,” but the librarians had included it in the online catalog and described it in enough detail for the Utrechtian (?) to have a pretty good idea of the treasure he had found. What on earth was he searching that he landed at Haverford? This is due diligence of an unusual order. If the search limits the sources found and the sources found at least shape the argument and maybe the conclusions, then is it fair to say that I search, therefore I know? (Okay, I was an undergraduate philosophy major.) Do you have to be a librarian, as I am, to be proud of the catalog?

Figure #78. Can you find this when next you are on foot, in Tenants Harbor, and I hope on your way to or from Roseledge Books?

Another choice detail involves the theft of the letter. Guglielmo Libri stole it and fled to England in 1848 with 30,000 books and manuscripts by Rousseau and other scientific and mathematical giants. The logistics of this theft and transport are staggering. He lived off the proceeds from their sales. This consequential scattering of the treasure makes the searching and finding even more remarkable. I wish it weren’t so, but Count Libri (Can that really be his name?) “served as secretary of the Committee for the General Catalog of Manuscripts in French Public Libraries.” Oh the shame! And the irony. He may have known what manuscripts to steal from their catalog entries, but a later catalog entry saw the return of at least one manuscript to its rightful owner.

An aside: Three great search books are Nicholas Clapp’s The Road to Ubar; Roy Hoxham’s The Great Hedge of India, and William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain.

Then the curious new tracks in the backyard snow: could it be a coyote?
Suburbs north and south of the city are reporting ever more sightings, the Star Tribune (2/28/10) notes. This could be part of the reason I’ve seen no more rabbit tracks. Millie thought Max, the maximum cat, was responsible, but Katie, mother of Max, says that based on vet bills, he’s more likely to take on the coyote.

Finally, the good coffee: I drink an Equal Exchange blend developed by Millie after listening to my complaints: 3 parts Midnight Sun mixed with 1 part Body, Mind and Soul (which sounded way too new-age for me). It is wonderful. Dark, but not bitter, with a bit of a kick. I am trying to get the Equal Exchangers to develop it as a Roseledge Books blend. This should be possible as key EE-er’s are longtime Roseledge people, readers, Charlie’s sort-of cousins, and Millie’s son and daughter-in-law. Some days, life is especially fine.

Instead of author interviews, I wish there were reader interviews. My favorite such exchange — and the only one I know of — is Scott Simon’s occasional Saturday morning conversation with the London cabbie on NPR’s Weekend Edition. All it takes is Scott’s “what are you reading?” and the cabbie takes over with what book he’s reading, where he found it, why he chose it, and what he thinks so far. I love it. A reader’s choices may not be the only measure of a person that counts, but it’s WAY up there.

Maybe my favorite reader-commentater is Joe Queenan. He occasionally writes a “reader essay” on the next to back page of the NYTBR . I remember especially one that a) argues for the importance of a book’s cover in choosing which book to read, b) recalls suffering through Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native to satisfy school’s summer book list and wonders if times have changed (Somewhat.), c) grouses about poorly chosen gift books, and d) argues for never passing up a book that looks good, even if you have twenty-six others started.

Fig.#77. Settled in for a while yet.

Nina Sankovitch read a book a day for a year (Peter Appleborne, NYT 12/20/09), but she doesn’t say why she chose the books she did.  Charlie noted they must have been short, I figured they were not engaging, Pam thought she had time on her hands, and we are all waiting for the book to come out.  In that spirit, may I recommend  my favorite book about a reader reading: Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading.  She chooses a book a week for a year for many, varied, and changeable reasons.  Her choices are timely, serendipitous, and sometimes really wrong; but she tells you why she chose each book and if it works out.  Roseledge Books will have this book next summer (she said, noting that it is out in paperback).  Reader friend Kathy just gave me Murray Browne’s The Book Shopper: A Life in Review, which she loved because she was part of his book choosing. I will let you know.

We are 70 days into at least 6” of snow on the ground in Minnesota. I know it’s time for Maine when I sit for three hours straight to inhale the occasional glimpse of the ocean during the PGA’s Pebble Beach event. Sigh.

Joe Queenan cites:
a) “When Bad Covers Happen to Good Books,“ (NYTBR 12/6/09)
b) “Summer Bummer” (NYTBR 6/3/07)
c) “Wish List: No More Books,” (NYTBR 12/25/05) An aside: once the rant runs thin, think tax break and donate ineptly chosen  gift books to the public library where the right reader will find it at the right time.
d) My personal search time limit of 10 minutes to find something I already know well enough ran out.

What does it mean when oatmeal replaces cinnamon rolls as the measure of a local breakfast spot? The eater is healthier? Wiser? Older? Or, shudder, more boring? Checking out Caribou Coffee’s latest morning lure, Kathy brought over a sampler of their oatmeals with toppings. I liked “classic” best which I hope does not suggest even more boring.

She also brought Laura Miller’s Wall Street Journal essay (January 16-17, 2010) about the “growing appeal [of] Nordic Detectives” in police procedurals. Pride is often unattractive, but Roseledge Books did note this appeal a while ago and linked it to geographic proximity, sailing adventures, RBR comments, winter (Minneapolis) neighbors, and sales. Maybe there is a more subtle reason: author Miller noted that these mysteries “always involve A LOT OF LISTS [emphasis added] and sore feet and late nights with bad office coffee.” Yes, lists. And RB loves lists. (See previous post.)

Figure #75. Surely these "granite bricks" are a list waiting to happen or maybe I am just looking for an excuse to use one of my favorite pictures.

RB loves Nordic authors, too. The WSJ essay mentions Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsson and RB has at least one of each but needs to get the reissued Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and, okay, Arnaulder Indridason, even if his bleakness goes beyond “existential malaise.” Kathy, of oatmeal fame, is also a major RB suggester, and after reading these and other Nordic detectives she found in the local (Minneapolis) library and bookstore, she suggests, so RB will order and try, K. O. Dahl, Ake Edwardson, and Hakan Nesser. RB is also going to try Jarkko Sipila’s Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall and Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Last Rituals because, if I read the Amazon.com reviews of the latter correctly, this Icelandic author might have a sense of humor! Can it be? And don’t forget Jo Nesbo’s Redbreast, set in Oslo and a RB bestseller last summer.

From a careful reading of the WSJ essay come the following: “…the Scandinavian brand of moroseness can be soothing in hard times.” “…the stern bare-bones simplicity of its problem-solving methods is one of the form’s austere pleasures.” “Their problem-solving methods — determination, humility and endurance — are available to everyone.” Could the italicized characteristics be more revealing? Are Nordic detective books the oatmeal of a bookstore? If so, what are the cinnamon rolls and who of the RB crowd reads which? And does it mean that Roseledge Books, ahead of its time with the Nordic excitement, was early oatmeal?

Otherwise, it’s still snowy days here. I am mostly housebound, trying to get my left knee to behave, walking ever more tenuously maybe, but walking, and not convinced that the kindle or ipad is better than my current one-handed efforts to hold books. Squirrels dash from ash to cottonwood; no rabbit tracks dent the recent snow and I don‘t think it‘s Max‘s fault, though he is out and about; birds chatter away, and large orange cat manages to peer in the window and frolic in the yew without breaking his or its limbs. Life is good, but summer in Maine with you all is better.

Time for the Super Bowl and knitting the last rows of the body of my very bulky and probably overlarge sweator/blanket which will see the dusk of cool days next summer as we try to stretch perfect porch sitting just a little longer at Roseledge.

Figure #76. Imagine the sweator.

Yes, list excitement is upon us. Okay, “us” may be a stretch, but I know Kathy reads lists, Carolyn sometimes reads lists, Millie reads lists, and Bill is said to like lists a lot, so close at hand I have a groundswell of support for thinking the Roseledge Books List is going to be a big hit. What is the List, you ask? And isn’t list excitement an oxymoron?

The Roseledge Books List (RBL) is an accumulating roster of Roseledge Books’  books ordered, books sold, books blogged, books noted as possible, and any other categories that come to mind. It is browse-able, scannable, searchable, rearrange-able, and from it, orderable.

To check out this latest excitement, click on Roseledge Books List under Pages (to the right of your Roseledge Books Blog screen), browse the list and enjoy the Roseledge Books worldview. If a defining book is missing, send me a comment. Maybe the list should be the Roseledge Books Regulars’ worldview. I’m flex — well, in spirit anyhow.

Fig. #74. Think browsing shelves as you look through the Roseledge Books' List, and be glad you don't have to twist awkwardly to see the book "extras" shelved beneath the stairs of Roseledge.

Then, if you simply must have a title that minute, click on the blue title and the Amazon.com listing for the most recent paperback edition comes up. With another click in the right Amazon spot, you can order it from Amazon.com and Roseledge Books gets a small percentage. This is for those of you who have tried to convince me that a “drop and ship” book business is the off-season way to go, but as I only get to the Tenants Harbor Post Office about once a week in the summer when Roseledge blossoms and my scooter is behaving, using Amazon.com seemed a much more reasonable option, summer or mostly housebound winter. Besides, although getting rich quick or ever will not happen this way, who of Maine chooses excess?

The RBL is proving immediately useful. Yesterday my latest New York Times Book Review (1/1/10) came, and there among the “New and Noteworthy” paperbacks was Jeffrey Lent’s After You’ve Gone, which will please one RBR who likes Jeffrey Lent and another RBR who likes family stories set in Canada and all of those Roseledge Book browsers who like Maine books and agree with the oldtimer who said of Nova Scotia, “It’s Maine only moreso.” Also, among the advertisements on pp. 2-3 (with the double-page ads, usually in the middle, my favorite ad pages) were two newly published books to note: David Hosp’s Among Thieves and Rebecca Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. I’ve read two earlier works by Hosp and liked Dark Harbor, set in Boston, a lot but The Betrayed, set in Washington D.C., not so much. Publisher’s Weekly called it “lackluster.” This new hardcover, however, takes place in Boston AND has the Gardner Museum art theft as its reason for being. Roseledge Books loves art novels and, sometimes, Boston and, next year, when Art Thieves is available in paperback RB will have it.  Meanwhile, it will be on the RBL to remind me.

I love Rebecca Goldstein’s books, especially The Mind-Body Problem, Secret Attractors, and The Late Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind. Now maybe they will be reprinted in paperback and RB can get them this summer which will make waiting a year for the paperback edition of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God a whole lot more tolerable. Again, with the Roseledge Books List, I have handy a way to remember this good news promise.
Not as cold today. Squirrel tracks dot the new snow, but no rabbit tracks. Rumor is that Max(imus) the Dreadful (cat) has been attacking rabbits, but as he is currently serving a two-week timeout that no piteous yowls will curtail because his owners who go nuts with the yowls are away and a tough neighbor is feeding him, maybe the rabbits will be back. I’ll keep you posted.

Today is very cold (7 above, -11 windchill) and very beautiful with Alberta Clipper snow swirls, especially against the barn red garage. Mine is a lively, urban backyard, seen through a big H window, though the squirrels, rabbits, and birds must be resting. The alley people who go to Joe’s Market on the corner are out in force; the garbage and recycling trucks have been by with an extra truck in tow for holiday leavings; and soon the shovelers will rid the walks of the powdery snow before the temperature plummets, as is the forecast. A neighbor clears the block’s public walks and alley with his frontloader Tonka toy because he is a good guy and because he owns a duplex at the other end of the long block. It’s January in Minneapolis, uncertain footing keeps me mostly housebound, and the next good book lurks.

Fig. #71. Remembering, remembering...

I just finished P. D. James’ latest paperback, The Private Patient. It was smooth but long, and I didn’t learn anything new about the series characters or the place, so it was just okay. The fun is choosing what to read next. It’s a non-fiction day, and Tom Gjelten’s Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause beckons, but Marilyn Stasio twice recommended (New York Times Book Review 10/15/09, 12/3/09) Emily Arsenault’s The Broken Teaglass as a debut mystery with lexicographers as detectives, all pluses. I love to think about building dictionaries and the word authority they convey, and I need a belated Christmas gift for the fussiest librarian/friend in the world who really knows reference books, also likes dictionaries and has surely read all mysteries, especially cozies, ever written. This could be a winner. Of course, I have to test it first, a one-handed challenge as it is only available in hardcover.

I hope I’ve not been spoiled by K. M. Elisabeth Murray’s Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, my all-time favorite dictionary-making book. Great-granddaughter Murray writes a compelling biography of this most unusual man and uses family artifacts and lore to add the telling detail I love. Think rooms of cubbyholes full of 3×5 p-slip or learning languages from Bibles in vernacular. I know Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman is a good read, but his emphasis is on one OED word-reader’s connection with James Murray, and okay I haven’t read it, but I don’t think it would add much to the dictionary-making processes that are the highpoint of Murray’s book. Sometimes having savored the best, the best is enough. My worry is that Arsenault’s mystery may fall short for the same reason.

***
That was yesterday. Today, ever colder and 100 pages into Arsenault, I think The Broken Teaglass may be just offbeat enough to be giveable. But the issue of giving a book about something to someone who knows A LOT about that something remains a hazard. If there is a choosing rule somewhere in all of this, maybe it should be: don’t give someone who knows a lot about something a book about that something, especially a novel. But how, then, does unconventional thinking ever have a chance to jar the mainstream mind? I hate rules. They so rarely fit.