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<\/a><\/p>\nFig. #57.\u00a0 From the busy harbor, Roseledge Books looks inviting, even without the flashing neon rose I’m told I need to place in the window.<\/strong><\/p>\n And good news abounds.<\/p>\n ++<\/strong>Roseledge Books\u2019 very classy new sign on the tree at the foot of the hill on Sea Street has drawn raves from the two walkers who remember the classy, but needy old sign.<\/p>\n ++<\/strong>Bernd Henrich\u2019s The Snoring Bird<\/strong> is on its way to becoming a Roseledge Books bestseller. Okay, I only sold one copy, but it has a great cover and I want to read it, too, so I ordered two more. Jamie Wyeth\u2019s Seven Deadly Sins,<\/strong> his second art show with birds in recent years, is at the Farnsworth\u2019s Wyeth Center this summer, and Jonathan Rosen\u2019s Life of the Skies<\/strong> about \u201clong looking\u201d at birds is in transit and maybe already at the post office as I write this, so birdiness is definitely in the air.<\/p>\n ++<\/strong>My series summary is “mostly okay.”\u00a0 Lee Childs\u2019 Nowhere to Go<\/strong> is not his best, but any Lee Childs is better than none and he does start in Calais, ME.\u00a0 Dana Stabenow\u2019s Prepared For Rage<\/strong> didn\u2019t include Kate Shugak, a huge disappointment.\u00a0 Nora Roberts\u2019 Tribute<\/strong> illustrated many of the points made in a recent New Yorker<\/strong> article about her (See: Collins, Lauren. \u201cProfiles: Real Romance,\u201d June 22, 2009).\u00a0 Randy Wayne White\u2019s Black Widow<\/strong> described Sanibel Island and Eastern Caribbean locations in the detail I need because I\u2019ve never been there, but I was sorry he didn\u2019t use the venomous shrimp as a bioterrorism tactic. Stuart Woods<\/strong> might have a house on a Maine Island, but there is not a hint of Maine in his Hot Mahogany<\/strong>, and some of Christine Dodd\u2019s<\/strong> bodice ripper, Danger in a Red Dress, <\/strong>might take place in Maine, but it is not \u201cof Maine.\u201d\u00a0 Fun, though.\u00a0 I have higher hopes for a Maine voice informing Elizabeth Strout\u2019s Olive Kittredge<\/strong>, but I am reading Karen Joy Fowler\u2019s Wit\u2019s End<\/strong>, first. The back cover \u201ccome-on\u201d suggests that in it, life with a mystery writer is a constant tug between knowing what is real or imagined. This in turn suggests that the documentation\/speculation spectrum which I love as a means of differentiating fiction from non-fiction may need to add the quality of the search for documentation before deciding a book\u2019s place on the spectrum. If you can\u2019t find something, does that mean it isn\u2019t real?\u00a0 Yes, I was an undergraduate philosophy major.<\/p>\n ++<\/strong>Remember in my last post I fretted about the problem of stories dropping like stones in water once used in a writing or a telling? As I recalled there, Annie Dillard<\/strong> (in The Writing Life<\/strong>, I think) thought this was so.\u00a0 Now in a NYTimes Book Review<\/strong> of her The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories 1978-2008<\/strong> (See: Schillinger, Liesl, \u201cAll American,\u201c January 4, 2009), Louise Erdrich<\/strong> is quoted as saying, \u201cStories are rarely finished for me. They gather force and weight and complexity\u201d —\u00a0 in their retelling, I add. And so in the embellishment of further thought or for a different audience, the dropping stone turns into a skipping stone and the water ripples broadeningly. Whew.<\/p>\n ++Very slowly but very surely, old friends are stopping by. As a measure of how slow June was, I sent my June sales tax to the Maine State Treasurer today. It was a check for $1.15. Yes, you read correctly. So hurry up and come. (The webcam is on.\u00a0 The lawn chairs have moved.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a glorious day. The harbor is alive with Sailing School kids wiggling about in daysailers, kayakers gliding inches above the water, dinghies bobbing in place for lobsterboats, a yacht and a powerboat looking for their rental moorings, and … Continue reading