The Roseledge Books Blog

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.

Did you hear or read about the Russian cargo ship that recently went missing for two weeks? The BBC noted the event a number of times, speculated that the ship may have managed some down time to deliver arms to Iran, and even mentioned the Mossad. It could all have been a next chapter in Daniel Silva’s Moscow Rules!  And some among you don’t read fiction because it is “all lies.” (You know who you are.)

Fig. #64. Some might argue that this photo lies because the blue sky was so rarely seen last summer.

Daniel Silva’s events may not have actually happened, but they could have. The conditions were right. That is the truth of good fiction. I read to learn and I expect the author I chose to read to be prepared to teach, but I don’t expect or want just a retelling of what has already happened. Where is the fun of possibility in that? Now I want to read Martin Cruz Smith’s Stalin’s Ghost to see if the Russia of these two novelists overlaps.

Richard Clarke wrote two novels about his cyber-worries: The Scorpion’s Gate and Breakpoint. “In an exclusive video message for Amazon.com customers, Richard Clarke introduces his new novel [Breakpoint], and explains why, as he says, ‘sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction.‘” He also noted (probably in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, but I’m not sure) that no one on the National Security Council was paying much attention to his counter-terrrorism reports, but after watching one hour of the television show “24”, 8 million people knew you could carry a dirty bomb in a suitcase. So more truth to more people through fiction. (An aside: Breakpoint didn‘t hold me — blame it on too many years thinking about “information flow” — but it is worth a read.)

You who do not read fiction may not be ready for whatever comes. But if you are nice, we who do will be ready for you.

Fig. #65. Just so you don't forget what Roseledge Books looks like.

I am back in Minnesota weathering the first mention of snow flurries for the weekend after an unusually warm and dry September. Go Vikings! Go Twins! I miss the blueberries, harbor activity, village life, and, of course, you all. The pace and scale of Maine suit me apparently. Surely I move better there, but I am figuring out how to move better here, too. My reading is somewhat constrained by my elbow malaise, but Alex Berenson’s Ghost War continues my effort to learn more about the Middle East as do Barry Unsworth’s Land of Marvels and Boris Akunin’s Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel.

So life is mostly good, even as I list to the left.

So many good things are happening. Walkers and boaters, some of whom are Roseledge Books Regulars (RBR), are back. So we have the first RB best seller of the season (3 copies sold): Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through A Century of Biology. He makes thinking about the evolution of knowledge an enjoyable effort. Last year’s first best seller was Walter Isaacson’s Einstein, and I still have a copy if you need a jolt of learning. If the meaning of quantum mechanics seem stalled in the ether, I also have Michael Crichton’s Timeline, the first twenty-five pages of which are a good introduction to the concept and the rest of the book an application.

Fig. #60. Roseledge Books from the harbor. East Wind Inn is further left and the public landing is even further left, but all are close by if the Roseledge Books reader-bug bites.

One returnee from twelve years ago (an automatic RBR because his was at least a second visit) remembered the book I had recommended. It was Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs. He liked it and thought she captured the pace and place of Midcoast Maine.  Some would say she captured Tenants Harbor, others Martinsville, and at least on guy argued for Port Clyde.  But no quibble here with just liking it.   What did I recommend this time? Oh, the pressure! But oh, the fun! He decided on Martin Cruz Smith’s Havana Bay. I hope he comes back next summer, especially if he liked Arkady Renko in Havana, as series suggestions are part of my current ploy to draw readers back to RB next summer for another in a series that are hard to find. If Arkady doesn’t do it for him, I may have to switch to books about cities or places.

A commenter left a great note and, with my elbow’s lingering malaise, I’m going to respond herein instead of separately because many of you non-commenters probably also want to know that yes, RB is just up the Sea Street hill (or across Dave Lowell’s lawn) from the East Wind Inn which is almost in the webcam’s picture which stops at the Chandlery which is there but not open this summer, probably because no people were about during June and July. But RB is here always and really open through Labor Day.

I’m reading and liking a lot as always, a Joe Pickett novel. this one C.J. Box’s Blood Trail.  RB has others in the series.  Please come by.

Summer in Tenants Harbor: Four boaters walk by Roseledge Books. Three come in to browse; the fourth sits in the yard, settles the dog, and thinks about things. With the summer’s fog, they’ve taken to becalmed-boat activities, e.g. acting out parts in a play (Roseledge Books always has at least Shakespeare’s The Tempest), making a pot of something (Roseledge Books has Marjorie Standish’s Soups, Stews, and Chowders; the Tenants Harbor General Store has groceries, and the Produce Lady offers a 3 mile walk to stretch your legs and a farmer’s market to satisfy even the fussy). But now the mind needs more. Has Roseledge Books got an idea for you!

Fig. #63. Roseledge Books to the left. Tenants Harbor General Store to the right. Sea Street decision alert.

Evolution is ever within, or maybe without, but ever it is. Clearly, it’s time for a late afternoon discussion-with (that is, discussion with a glass of something). What to do? How about browsing the ever-changing shelves of Roseledge Books to find the perfect reads. For evolutionary starters, Charles Darwin’s Voyages of the Beagle is right there with the sailing tie-in. Then Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (a favorite thinker) advances the cause in Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull, and the book provides a snotty Vatican report as well, which is always helpful, I think. Maybe for the alternate viewpoint in the crowd, Roseledge Books has John Darnton’s The Darwin Conspiracy, a murder mystery which, whatever else the critics had to say about it, is evolutionarily accurate. RB is currently out of Tim Severin’s The Spice Islands Voyage, a revisiting of Alfred Russell Wallace’s trip which, some argue, provoked Darwin to finally publish, but when it is more available, RB will have it. I love Tim Severin’s books.

So the readers browse, then read, the thinker thinks with the dog, the day recedes, ideas sprout, exchanges blossom, the boat idles, friendships endure, and the world is a better place. I just don’t think it ever gets better than that.

Otherwise, the slow summer meanders into August. Blue asters are in the ditches. Farley Mowat’s Bay of Spirits has arrived, and I can hardly wait to read this complement to (wife) Clare Mowat’s The Outport People which Roseledge Books is out of right now, but is one of my favorite books.

A day later: Oops; skip the on boat discussion-with about evolution. A RB Regular just bought the Teilhard de Chardin biography. The day is glorious. Time for a webcam look.

With changing appetizers available from the Produce Lady, summer eases into August. Little carrots, sugar snap peas, and native strawberries have passed, but green beans and broccoli florets dipped in cabbage slaw are a new favorite, grape tomatoes are still good but only ’til the sweet little orange jewels ripen on the porch, and wild blueberries are with us again. Of course, it’s a little tricky figuring out how to make blueberries be finger food, but maybe if they are in the cabbage slaw dip, they’ll stick to the dipped.

I’ve been looking for the next best summer read, and so far results are only so-so. Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End is okay, but slow. I think I was looking for the philosophical haunts of Rebecca Goldstein and ended up with the excess daily-Craig Johnson’s Kindness Goes Unpunished ness of an Ann Beattie short fiction I read some time ago in the NY’er. Craig Johnson’s Kindness Goes Unpunished with Sheriff Walt Longmire was a worthy diversion. A reviewer called either Sheriff Longmire or the series “good-natured,” which is true but not sufficient. It is also about long-term friendship, rare, important, and apparently difficult to capture; about Wyoming, as with C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett also, always a plus; and about father/adult daughter adventures. Okay, I’m of an age.

I went back to Wit’s End for about thirty more pages, then skipped to Sean Chercover’s Big City Bad Blood, but found its story focus on the Outfit (Chicago’s name for the Mafia and maybe the Mob, too, though I don’t remember it from the seven years I lived nearby, one year in a house owned by Mob nephews) too limited and his characters not interesting enough, though the P. I. was a reader. So I put it down and went immediately to another new series. This one is by Cara Black and features Aimee LeDuc Investigation and contemporary Paris. I’m reading Murder in the Sentier which, so far, centers on Aimee LeDuc’s search for her mother who left Aimee at age eight and her father and who may or may not have been part of a 70’s radical, revolutionary gang. So far, so very good. I especially like learning, in daily detail, about parts of Paris. I’ll get back to Wit’s End, just not today.

With my summer emphasis on new series, I may be trying to replicate the ongoing, annual pleasure of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s series featuring Chief Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson in upstate New York.  Her latest and maybe most worthy paperback in the seriesa is All Mortal Flesh.  Or maybe I’m just trying to be sure Roseledge Books Regulars keep coming back.

Fig. #59. This summer ('09), Roseledge Books readeristas should probably bring warm socks, a muffler or turtleneck, a second pair of shoes, and a rain poncho or lawn and leaf baggy to make sure a perfect book and a perfect chair result in a perfect afternoon.

LIST ALERT: Here comes another list of Items Ordered.  I inserted it in this post because I’m not sure where else to put it with the blue “order me” covering. Skip it if you are not a list person and note on the webcam that it is foggy, sometimes wet, and two-shirt weather yet again.

Hubka, Thomas.  Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England

Nesbo, Jo.  The Redbreast: A Novel

Heinrich, Bernd.  The Snoring Bird

Hanff, Helene.  Q’s Legacy

Johnson, Craig.  The Cold Dish

Johnson, Craig.  Death Without Company

Fowler, Christopher.  White Corridor: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery (Peculiar Crimes Unit Mysteries)

Reich, Christopher.  Numbered Account

Reich, Christopher.  The First Billion

Reich, Christopher.  The Devil’s Banker
Reich, Christopher.  The Runner
Mowat, Farley.  Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

Johnston, Wayne.  The Colony of Unrequited Dreams: A Novel

Coulter, Catherine.  TailSpin
Coulter, Catherine.  Double Jeopardy (FBI Series)

Toll, Ian.  Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy

Menzies, Gavin.  1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.)

Smith, Martin Cruz.  Havana Bay: A Novel

Silva, Dankiel.  Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon)

Berenson, Alex.  The Ghost War

Berenson, Alex.   The Faithful Spy: A Novel

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Tenants Harbor doesn’t change much summer to summer, and neither does Roseledge Books. This pleases me and the browsers who were last here at least ten years ago and still recalled the Samuel Eliot Morison book they bought then. They re-found RB because the sign on the tree at the corner of Sea Street is still there with RB name, hours and arrow, though now it is a handsome new sign. (Thanks to N-M’s still nifty, but now grown-up kids and friends.) Also Roseledge Books still has books, like but also different from the one they chose earlier, books based on the sailing adventures of authors, e.g. Tony Horwitz, Tim Severin.* I love returning readers. We’re all getting older, better of course, and pokier. Maybe fussier, too. But never crabby.

*As I write this, RB has the following books by the two authors:

Horwitz, Tony.  A Voyage Long and Strange
Severin, Tim. The Brendan Voyage (It almost supports my theory that Irish were here before Vikings.)
Severin, Tim. In Search of Moby Dick
Severin, Tim. In Search of Robinson Crusoe

Fig. #58. Your chair is there, the harbor,too. You have to leave tomorrow, but you want two more weeks of coastal mind-meld. Showers are probable, so you get your rain gear, put your book in a baggy, and head out. What book do you take? Roseledge Books recommends The Road to Ubar, a vicarious adventure with Nicolas Clapp as he searches for a lost city in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia.

July 24:  More rain, hard driving rain. I think that tropical storm or hurricane wannabees veered up the Atlantic Coast, lost their chance to be named or to drench Minneapolis, and settled for hemming us in between rain and fronts from the west.

July 25:  SUN, GLORIOUS SUN.  Check the webcam, but quickly.  Fog approaches across the trees to the south.