Dear Friends,
This coming Sunday is Father's Day and we wish all of your dads a most happy and enjoyable day. We have books here for any kind of father, tall or short, hairy or not, grumpy or not. We truly enjoy advising you on the perfect book for your father or grandfather or father-in-law. So come on by the shop and we will be delighted to assist you in making your poppa smile.
Don't Forget!
Thursday, June 18th at 7 pm: Finding Father: A Father's Day poetry reading featuring local poets Michael Macklin, Betsy Sholl, Martin Steingesser and Judy Tierney. Click here for more information!
Friday, June 19th at 7 pm: A launch party for Nicole Chaisson and her new book, The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated. Click here for more information!
Thursday, June 25th at 7 pm: A reading and signing with James Hayman for his new thriller set here in Portland, The Cutting. Click here for more information!
In Private
The morning sun
adorned your grave in gold.
The nearby roadway
carries cars full of people
who do not know.
They cannot see
your Model T carrying you
courting through the countryside.
Railway tracks now gone
called out to you
to wander the Great Depression.
They did not see you
brawling at political rallies
fighting for the poor,
they wouldn't know of
your self nursed ribs
caved by a stallion's hoof.
A hunter's sharp eyes are closed,
your long stride gone from the hills.
Gray clouds frame our gloom
as you enter the ground.
A bright autodidactic star,
a house built at seventeen,
a rheumatic arrow
to your young heart,
yet with dark eyes flashing
you lived as a super man.
Your heart burst far too soon
but ah, how it did beat
to see a man walk on the moon.
For my father
Foster Riker Pierson
October 28, 1969
Excerpted from When My Feet Quit Dancing: Poetry on the Personal Side
By Duane Pierson (Gravitas, $10.95)
Books!
Satchel
by Larry Tye (Random House, $26.00)
In 1965, at age 59 or 60 (his birthday seems to be a moving target), Satchel Paige took the mound against the Kansas City Athletics and threw three shutout innings. It was a fitting end for a pitching career that spanned fives decades. Denied entrance into the major leagues until 1948 at the tender age of 42, Paige is still considered to be the best pitcher to ever take the hill. He was among the peerless Negro Leaguers who beat the white big leaguers more than 60% of the time.
Few reliable records or news reports survive about players in the Negro Leagues. Through dogged detective work, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories before, and retracing Paige's steps across the continent. Here is the stirring account of the child born to an Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths to feed, the boy who earned the nickname "Satchel" from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, the young man who took up baseball in the streets and in reform school, inventing his trademark hesitation pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang members.
Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he made, and left tickets for "Mrs. Paige" that were picked up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
by Alain de Botton (Pantheon, $26.00)
Alain de Botton is the author of the bestselling books, The Architecture of Happiness and The Art of Travel.
Unfortunately we spend most of our waking hours at work in occupations chosen by our (sometimes) unthinking younger selves. And we complain, worry, celebrate and even rejoice in our work. We bring it home, we leave it at the desk and we sometimes even hunger for more. Without it, we are at peril: our sanity, our security and perhaps our identity. And yet, we rarely ask ourselves how did we get here, what are we truly doing and why, on a daily basis, do we exhaust ourselves and our planet?
Alain de Botton trains his philosophical mind on an eclectic range of occupations from Rocket Science to Biscuit Manufacturing as he leads the reader on a journey in search of what makes work either fulfilling or soul-crushing.
In the author's own words:
"In the pre-modern age, it was assumed that no one could try to be in love and married: marriage was something one did for purely commercial reasons. Things were going well if you maintained a tepid friendship with your spouse. Meanwhile, love was something you did with your mistress, with pleasure untied to the responsibilities of child-rearing. Yet the new philosophers of love argued that one might actually aim to marry the person one was in love with rather than just have an affair. To this unusual idea was added the even more peculiar notion that one might work both for money and to realize one's dreams, an idea that replaced the previous assumption that the day job took care of the rent and anything more ambitious had to happen in one's spare time.We are the heirs of these two very ambitious beliefs: that you can be in love and married, and in a job and having a good time. It has become as impossible for us to think that you could be out of work and happy as it had once seemed impossible for Aristotle to think that you could be employed and human. Thus is born The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work."
- Alain de Botton
Sharp Objects
by Gillian Flynn (Three Rivers, $14.00)
Some men live for the thrill of the hunt or the discovery of a new species; some strange folks get joy from discovering new writers. Stuart and I have stumbled across Gillian Flynn. Her books Sharp Objects and Dark Places are riveting, life devouring, and guilty escapist pleasures. Each novel is addicting and you want only to be left alone, with your book and your new found love.
Dad deserves a break. Give him this ridiculously addictive mystery, a cold beverage or two and let him go. I guarantee he'll devour this book and ask for another, cold drink or book by Gillian, probably both.
Fresh from her stay at a psych hospital, Camille Preaker's first assignment at her daily paper takes her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two pre-teen girls. As she works to uncover the truth, Camille finds herself identifying with the victims. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive.
"To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild... I found myself dreading the last thirty pages or so but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights were out, the story just stayed there in my head, coiled and hissing, like a snake in a cave. An admirably nasty piece of work, elevated by sharp writing and sharper insights."
- Stephen King
Summer World: A Season of Bounty
by Bernd Heinrich (Ecco, $26.99)
In Summer World: A Season of Bounty, Bernd Heinrich brings us the same bottomless reserve of wonder and reverence for the teeming animal life of backwoods New England that he brought us in Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival. Now he is focusing on the animal kingdom in the extremes of the warmer months, with all its feeding, nesting, fighting, and mating.
Whether presenting disquisitions on ant wars, the predatory characteristics of wasps, the mating rituals of woodpeckers, or describing an encounter with a road full of wood frogs, Summer World never stops observing the beautifully complex interactions of animals and plants with nature, giving extraordinary depth to the relationships between habitat and the warming of the earth. How can cicadas survive--and thrive--at temperatures pushing 115°F? Do hummingbirds know what they're up against before they migrate over the Gulf of Mexico? Why do some trees stop growing taller even when three months of warm weather remain? With awe and unmatched expertise, Heinrich explores hundreds of questions like these.
Exquisitely illustrated with dozens of the author's own drawings, Summer World is Bernd Heinrich's most engaging book to date, a fascinating work from one of our very best science writers.
"This lovely book, meticulously etched and based on impassioned but exacting scientific research, illustrates why Bernd Heinrich is generally regarded as the most truly Thoreauvian of modern natural history writers."
- Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human Nature
"It is possible there is a better guide to the world around us than Bernd Heinrich, but I've not come across him. This is the book that will get you out the door into the season!"
- Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy
The Forever War
by Dexter Filkins (Vintage, $15.00) (Now in paperback)
Winner of the National Book Critics Award for Nonfiction!
An instant classic of war reporting, The Forever War is the definitive account of America's conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs. Through the eyes of Filkins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th, and the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins is the only American journalist to have reported on all these events, and his experiences are conveyed in a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters and astonishing scenes.
Brilliant and fearless, The Forever War is not just about America's wars after 9/11, but about the nature of war itself.
"Filkins makes us see, with almost hallucinogenic immediacy, the true human meaning and consequences of the 'War on Terror.' "
- The New York Times
"Dexter Filkins's The Forever War is the best piece of war journalism I've ever read. He paints a portrait of war that is so nuanced, so filled with absurdities and heartbreak and unexpected heroes and villains, that it makes most of what we see and hear about Iraq and Afghanistan seem shrill and two-dimensional by comparison. And yet, as tragic as the events he describes are, the book manages to be a thing of towering beauty."
- Dave Eggers, Guardian Best Books of the Year
Maine Birding Trail
by Bob Duchesne (Down East Books, $15.95)
The Maine Birding Trail Official Guide details over 260 sites, many of them off the beaten track and away from crowds. The guide features over 100 new maps, secrets for finding sought-after species, and advice on trip-planning. It includes bonus chapters on two nearby Canadian islands: Campobello and Grand Manan. As new public lands and private trusts have become available to birders over the last decade, this guide brings site descriptions of Maine birding into the 21st century.
Written by Maine State Representative, Bob Duchesne, this book will be a valuable tool for anyone interested in experiencing the breadth and diversity of Maine's feathered residents.
For more information on the Maine Birding Trail or to download a field checklist for your daddy, the amateur ornithologist, go to: www.mainebirdingtrail.com
Island Journal: Waypoints 1984-2009
(Island Institute, $24.95)
As a publication and an institution, the Island Journal and The Island Institute are top notch. We Mainers have reason to be proud and to celebrate the work and publication that our friends up in Rockland having been doing for the past quarter century.
The 25th-anniversary edition of Island Journal, the Island Institute's celebrated yearly magazine of island life, contains a tribute to Andrew Wyeth, "a man who loved islands" and an extraordinary folio of his island work. This year's expanded edition, entitled Island Journal: Waypoints 1984-2009, also includes a folio of Frenchboro paintings by Russian-born artist Daud Akhriev, new essays, and a retrospective of articles, poems and photographs that map the progress of the Institute's programs over the past 25 years.
Yours in Books,
Chris & Co.
Longfellow Books
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