Essential Maine Books
North Atlantic Seafood
Alan Davidson
Browsing through the Dreaded Broccoli Newsletter, I found a reference to
this fundamental work. Sadly, it is now is out of print. Fortunately, the
library in Brunswick has a copy (of course!). At last I can check the difference
between Alewives and Menhaden! This is a wonderful book, entertaining and
educational, and if you eat near the North Atlantic you must make every
effort to obtain a copy and read it straight through.
visit
Amazon.com and ; buy
North Atlantic Seafood
The Dreaded Broccoli Newsletter is available from:
Dreaded Broccoli
121 W. 92nd Street
New York, NY 10025
Away All Boats
John Cole
This 'guide for the small boat owner' has the best description of the great
and infinite depth of the ocean I have ever read. And in just one paragraph!
Far more than a guidebook, it details a true enthusiast's life on the sea,
remembered in rich and variegated detail and vitality. By mere coincidence
it just happens to include his personal experience with just about any small
boat you might be thinking about. For years John Cole and his family lived
in and around Brunswick Maine, so his descriptions of the sea and the sea
life there were doubly interesting to me as a new resident.
For a fascinating read, and a comprehensive compendium of all small
boat types, as they might be encountered in life, visit Amazon.com and ; buy
Away All Boats
Maine Gazetteer and Atlas
DeLorme Mapping
How did we find Bradbury Mountain State Park, the wildflower sanctuary,
the wildlife sanctuary, the Shakespeare Festival at Monmonth, the way to
our friends' house, the back road to L.L. Bean, the shortcut to the lobster
pound? We ended up getting a copy of the Maine G&A; for each car, and one
for the house.
Kitchen Boy
Sanford Phippen
This extremely funny autobiographical novel spans the years from 1959 to
1964, as a boy works in a hotel & restaurant near Bar Harbor. Only by being
a teenager in Maine do you have any real hope of someday having a hot babe
name her lobster boat after you, using your high school nickname, in this
instance "Fish Bait."
I read this book the same week I was reading another essential Maine reference
work, the State of Maine Motorist Handbook and Study Guide, so in a funny
way, Fish Bait and I got our drivers' licenses at about the same time.
visit
Amazon.com and ; buy
Kitchen Boy, which is hard to find.
The Maine Massacre
Janwillem van de Wetering
For the sake of simplicity, Janwillem van de Wetering lives in a house with
neither attic nor basement, heated by a wood stove, located near the ocean
in Surrey, Maine. In The Maine Massacre, the commissaris travels from The
Netherlands to Maine to help his sister, whose husband has just met with
an untimely end. An accident? This entertaining and amusing mystery, written
by a thinker whose characters think too, contains some quite surprising
descriptions of Maine.
Some excerpts from "The Maine Massacre:"
"Naked white trunks of birches clustered around high maples that
seemed frozen in gigantic movements of joy, and everywhere there were
the strange pines that he had also seen around the airstrip, reaching
up with delicate long needles, like the sleeves of an Oriental dancer
in the middle of an exuberant movement."
"He sighed with wonder as he admired the bay below, its ice mirroring
the starlight. An icy, immense wasteland of pure beauty, stretching away
to a shore covered by a growth of what appeared to be evergreens surrounding
an island. The island sloped up to a hill. There were no lights, but a
high jetty stuck out into the bay. He looked up just as a moving cloud
revealed the half moon, and when his eyes dropped down again the ice of
the bay had become a light shade of, of what? Mauve? A very soft blue?
The color seemed hard to define. He forgot the question. Why name the
color? He stayed in front of the window until his sister called him, and
he had time to see the narrow channel in the ice between the island and
his side of the shore. The channel would run out to the ocean. He also
saw the ridges and domes where ledge and rocks had been frozen over and
become raised when the tide went down. He shook his head when he remembered
the simple beaches of Holland, a hundred miles of yellow sand protected
on one side by monotonous dunes and attacked on th other by steady breakers.
He had always liked the Dutch beaches, but this was a different beauty,
a distorted beauty almost, dating back to the beginning of the planet,
when the first shapes were created out of turmoil."
The Maine Massacre by Janwillem Van De Wetering, Paperback. By
all means visit Amazon.com and buy
this book
A Birder's Guide to Maine
Elizabeth C. Pierson, Jan Erik Pierson and Peter D. Vickery
Although I am not particularly interested in birds, my interest was piqued
when I observed a Great Blue Heron fishing in my front yard. Then, a few
weeks later, John Cole (above) gave this book a rave review in the local
newspaper. I was convinced that it would soon be sold out and unavailable.
I ordered immediately from the U. of Washington bookstore, and 12 days later,
on the day the book arrived, I saw a Bald Eagle circling over the shore.
Need I say more? This book is good luck and you must immediately buy one
or more copies. Fly over to Amazon.com and ;
buy
one or more copies (you'll be the first).
Down East Books 1996
400 Pages