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Books to read if you're planning a vacation in "New England", sorted by average review score:
Man and Wife
Published in Hardcover by Forge (October, 2001)
Author: Andrew Klavan
Average review score:

TILL DEATH DO US PART
With the opening of this psychological "thriller" by Andrew Klavan, you can pretty much figure out what's going to happen. Klavan is very reminiscent of Thomas H. Cook in this tale, but Cook has mastered the art much better. Cook doesn't give away his ending so early. There's a lot of merit in this book; Klavan's narrative skills are sharp, and there is much empathy for the character of Peter Blue. However, I found little empathy for Cal Bradley or his wife. Bradley seems immune to his surroundings and although he can help other people, he can't seem to help himself. To be married to Marie for so long and not realize what an emotional void she had, doesn't add much in the lines of credibility. By the time the book comes to its all too inevitable conclusion, I couldn't like Bradley or his wife very much. Peter Blue's fate is inevitable, but their lack of moral terpitude is unforgivable. RECOMMENDED ONLY FOR KLAVAN'S FANS.

seamlessly written
Andrew Klavan has presented us with a seamlessly written thriller which will draw you in immediately and keep your attention throughout.

Psychiatrist Cal Bradley seems to have found the perfect wife in Marie, his spouse of fifteen years. Then a series of upsetting events causes him to doubt that he truly knows the woman who seems so devoted to him. He's confronted with ethical problems in his profession as his domestic world begins to come apart. Peter Blue, a l9 year old patient, is a compelling presence---troubled and suicidal, yet also possessed of a healing power which revitalizes other troubled young people around him. Peter's secrets are inexplicably interwoven with Marie's mysterious past.

Klavan's book, in the best thriller tradition, will enchant you.

Reality is God's way of singing
Great book. There are some false moves here but its just Klavan's way to keep his readers guessing. The ending was an unexpected surprise and nice to boot. Klavan is a master at the craft of creating a believeable plot with nagging mystery throughout.

Ox Cart Man
Published in School & Library Binding by Viking Press (October, 1979)
Authors: Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney
Average review score:

My daughter's favorite read aloud
Between my husband and I , we must have read this book hundreds of times. My daughter always found it a source of comfort before bedtime. Why? Who knows for sure, but it is a lyrical, yet matter of fact, tale of a family that produces all it needs to live that is reassuring and lovely.

A fantastic book for teaching history
I used this book with my third grade class in talking about the skills that our ancestors needed in order to survive. The book is about a man who takes a cart load of goods to town and sells everything including the ox! My students loved the ending, but I won't give that away. This is a must have for the classroom.

Life in Historical America
The journey of a settler who packs up his cart with surplus that was grown, handmade, and raised on a farm in historical New England. The story takes the reader through what a family has to do to survive during this time period and what each part the family had in that survival. From a historical perspective an awesome book. With the love of history that I have on a personal note this story gives me clues to my own ancestors survival needs. I have two copies of this book one at home and one in my classroom. Very detailed illustrations, very accurate information on the settler's way of life and need for trading or selling off goods that the family helped make. The portrayal of the family with no electricity and providing their own means of survival. The story tells us that the farmer travelled ten days to reach the village of Portsmouth. I would've like to know which direction he came from, whether he had to travel from the south, the north or thewest of the village. I would've also like to have know what he saw and who he might have met along the way.
Classroom Activities I do with this book:
Math - Seasons, Sequencing, Money, Trading/Selling, TimeArt - Draw the seasons, quilts, weaving, looms, broom making,Science - Make candles, grow a pototo from a seed, make maple sugar,
Social Studies - 13 Colonies, Mapping Skills, Clothing, Occupations, Cooking
Reading - Write a sequel or pre-story to this book, illustrate one aspect of story or write about who he might have met along the way and which direction he came from.

Snow Island
Published in Hardcover by MacAdam/Cage Publishing (01 January, 2002)
Author: Katherine Towler
Average review score:

Great Summer Read!!
I really enjoyed this book. Well written with great characters living in the WWII era.

THE BEAUTY OF THIS BOOK
is that it can be read and appreciated by young adults and grown adults alike. It takes a skillful author to pull off the feat of capturing such a wide audience. For me, (adult male), it was the story of memories and how they contiually haunt us and beckon us to track them down. For my 14-year-old daughter, it was more the coming of age story about a young woman. What we both appreciated was the fine, spare writing, minimal details which deliver maximum effect, and the colorful characters. I recommend this book to anyone, but especially to mothers/daughters or fathers/daughters or aunts/nieces (you get the drift) who want to share a book together. The last novel I read was Delillo's Underworld, an interesting book, but, could my daughter and I pass it back and forth on the beach? Not likely. But Snow Island, Yes. Order now.

The Power of Place
Snow Island, by Katherine Towler, is a lovingly rendered novel about place, about childhood, and about the power of memory. It asks the reader the following question:

"What is more powerful -- the need to remember? or the need to forget?

Snow Island is a small island located off the coast of Rhode Island. The men of Snow Island engage in the dangerous business of quahogging, while their families eke out a living running small businesses that depend on the wealthier summer residents for survival.

In 1941, Alice Daggett is a sixteen-year old, living on the island. She attends school in a one-room schoolhouse with twins Lydia and Pete Giberson -- the only other children her age on the island. Since the death of her father five years earlier, Alice also shoulders the responsibility of keeping the family store running. George Tibbit is a recluse in his forties and the owner of the island's twin houses. He returns to Snow Island each year in an excessive act of homage to the two women -- his aunts -- who raised him. When George left to serve in World War I he spent a day saying good-by to all the places he loved best. Now he returns each summer hoping perhaps that he might "meet himself there once again -- a teenaged boy running over the rocks and down to the water, plunging in."

As the isolated island community is drawn into war again, the lives of George and Alice and the island people are altered dramatically as they face the consequences of loss and the choices made for love.

"Alice supposed George Tibbits was crazy, and his aunts before him, but she thought she knew what made them crazy -- people like Lydia and the rest of the islanders. Sarah and Bertie Tibbits were just trying to live the way they wanted, as George was now, but that wasn't good enough for the islanders. No. you had to attend the chicken suppers and stop by the store for the latest gossip and behave just like everyone else."

Even though both George and Alice are forced to leave the island, they both find they cannot escape from the hold Snow Island has on them. The island resides within them and pulls them back time and again. It is only by leaving, however, that they see how inextricably bound they are to Snow Island -- this first place -- the home of their child hoods.

Thomas Wolfe tells us we can't go home again. He was as much right as he was wrong. You can return; you can go home, not as the "you" of your childhood but as the person you have become. You can return to that first place where all will be same even as it is all so very different. That first place knew you when and it can know you again. It is up to you to choose whether you want to remember or whether you want to forget.

Snow Island by Katherine Towler is the story of how George Tibbit and Alice Daggett come to know the truth about the place of childhood and how they both choose to remember.

Spiked Boots: Sketches of the North Country
Published in Paperback by Countryman Pr (January, 2003)
Authors: Robert E. Pike and Helen-Chantal Pike
Average review score:

North Country Tales at their finest
Robert Pike's Spiked Boots is a rare sort of history book, one that a reader loves to come across in the arid sea of historical work out that chokes the shelves of book stores. Presented as a series of vignettes on subjects ranging from haunted hunting camps to Ginseng Willard and his homemade coffin, Pike provides an important insight into the history and society of the northern reaches of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It is a presentation of a world that is now gone, pushed through the chutes in the style of the great logging rushes that Old Vern, the cagey ex walking boss and Pike's guide through this world, once worked. The presentation of this world is not of a Hesiodic Golden Age, when men were men and trees were more plentiful. It is a presentation of a world where some men worked hard, some women harder, and some not at all. It is a memoir of hard working lumbermen and guides -- how they worked, how they played, and for some of them, the mistakes that they made that took their lives. Pike was a fortunate man to have encountered Vern, for the history that was handed to him is beyond value as a vision into a bygone age and an area that is sometimes forgotten. And the characters are unforgetable also.

Want to be taken to another time and place?
Spiked Boots is among a rare breed of books, either fiction or fact, that can take the reader directly into the minds of the characters and places the author is talking about. Robert Pike approaches the tales of Vern Davison, Jack Haley, and a host of others with such clarity you are transported directly back 100 years to the logging industry of the "north country." You sit in your chair reading the book and the words slowly turn into the wind rushing by your face as you are transported into the horse drawn carriage with Vern Davison and Robert Pike, and you find yourself slowly engulfed in another era.

Not to be overlooked in the new Countryman Press edition is the foreword added by Helen-Chantal Pike, Robert Pike's daughter. The foreword adds a look into Robert Pike's life that only a daughter could bring into the book, from the tales of the original "peddling" trips, to the meaning of his writings to himself, to the intimate detail of Robert Pike reading a well worn copy of Spiked Boots over and over again during his last years of life.

Also added to the new edition are several photographs culled from the Pike Archives featuring a rare photographic glimpse of the scenery and people that the tales of Spiked Boots originates from. One can fully appreciate the men spoken of as they gaze at the picture of Ginseng Willard next to the coffin he slept in for two years to, "get used to it."

For fans of America, for fans of history, for fans of self-reliance, the new edition of Robert E. Pike's Spiked Boots is not one to be missing from the shelves of the library. It offers a rare glimpse at a by-gone era, of men and women that no longer exist in this form of ruggedness that made America what it is today.

Spiked Boots-Building Character in Northern New England
This book is aptly titled as it concerns those hard-working, hard-living souls who were all but born wearing spiked boots and is a continuing saga of this section of New England known as the "north country". These true accounts of activity in the wood and lumber industry are well detailed from early in the 1800's until the last drive in 1915. Interspersed in these narrations are related stories of heroic deeds, impossible feats of skill, strength and daring; folk lore, superstition and camp fire tales all of which are skillfully described by Pike. These are so well presented that at times it is not easy to separate fact from fiction. Only after years of traveling in the north country, re-living the camp life and winning the confidence and respect of the woodsman was Robert Pike able to put together this story of a by-gone era. He tells it in true vernacular-a peavey is a peavey that was the the everyday tool of the woodsman. The bridal chain was the brake that held back the sled load of logs going down the mountain. His description of the lumber baron-good or not so good- is true to life. No artist could paint a better picture of those spiked boots living in that ice water for days, and weeks, on end. Hardy souls that respected their fellow workers is the tribute describing the strong men of the north country. Spiked Boots is one segment of our culture worth knowing and re-reading.

Sweaters from New England Sheep Farms: 26 Original Patterns in Hand-Dyed and Natural Colored Yarns
Published in Paperback by Down East Books (January, 2000)
Author: Candace Eisner Strick
Average review score:

Saw this one, had to have it.
I used to visit New England sheep farms every year on a Wool Day tour that took you from farm to farm in New Hampshire. It was so wonderful. So I had to take a look at Candace Strick's tribute to New England Sheep Farns.

Handdyed country wools are used beautifully in this book to make 26 designs. But WHY I bought this book is due to one sweater alone, an indigo and natural design that has a pattern that combines both an Escher like mosaic with a Japanese or Islamic looking pattern. The patterns uses two variants of one motif, one with an added dark band. The use of two similar small patterns makes an overall larger design that is incredibly pleasing.

There are the usual picture sweaters here. The notes about the farms are fun to read if you love New England (ok, so I am homesick a bit.) All in all, a beautiful book with sweaters that would make elegant gifts.

For those who love to knit:
This turned out to be a good purchase on many levels for me. The patterns are presented from easy to experienced, the text gives insight to the lives of the fiberists, and the pictures are very satisfying to puruse. Having just gotten into natural dyes over the past year, I also found some inspiration from some of the fiberists that were showcased in the book.

A fabulous knitting book!!
This book is extremely well done; the sweater designs are superb, and there are several interesting techniques included with some of the designs. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. I don't usually "read" knitting books, but the author's descriptions of her visits to the various farms are really interesting and fun to read. The accompanying photographs are excellent. I also really appreciated the inclusion of substitute yarn suggestions for those of us who might not have access to the specialty yarns used in the book. This book is a terrific addition to my knitting library, and I hope to purchase more of her books in the future.

The Cheap Bastard's Guide to New York City: A Native New Yorker's Secrets of Living the Good Life--for Free!
Published in Paperback by Globe Pequot Pr (August, 2002)
Author: Rob Grader
Average review score:

Not Very Helpful....Oversold
I purchased this book among others prior to my recent trip to the "Big Apple". I found this book full of rather impractical and unuseable ideas and really a "come on". Wouldn't recommend it. Other guides were much more helpful. This was a waste of money.

New to NYC...and poor!
As a relatively new resident of New York City, I found this book to be a great source of ideas. I have already done a number of the activities suggested by the Cheap Bastard including Sunday jazz in Washington Heights, swing dancing on the Hudson River pier and at a dancing school, and free outdoor movies downtown. It seems especially good for the summer months, with lots of outdoor events. My boyfriend is not a big spender so it suits us well! Thanks!

Cheap Bastard's Rich Rewards
Finally! This book is simply fabulous -- a treasure trove of information organized with wit and panache. It's fun, it's informative and best of all, it's incredibly well researched. Whether you're a tight-wad New Yorker or a financially challenged tourist, this book is a must have. I only hope it becomes a series.

P.S. It makes a great gift!

The Reunion
Published in Paperback by (19 February, 2002)
Author: Leonard Grossman
Average review score:

reunion review
I enjoyed the book very much. I did however find it a bit slow in the beginning, because I am not a sports fan and did not understand the sports part. I did however learn about the Jewish faith and found it very interesting.

Oh How I Remember!
Len, has put this right where we were at that time and place. You become a part of the book and feel you are reliving some of your past. Easy book to read, one to make you feel warm and fuzzy. What else can we ask of a book, but to put us right in with the author. Felt as though I was back on the team, rooting for the home team, snuggling in the back seat, dancing at the sock hops. Wonderful, Wonderful, are real visionary.

The Reunion
I enjoyed The Reunion a story and time i can relate to as i grew up in the 50s . It brought backlots of memories of a much slower and fun time . Made me laugh and made me cry and brought back memories of loves and feelings of long ago. I sincerly hope Leon writes more books for us to enjoy.

Sawyer's Crossing
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Lighthouse Publishing of Connecticut (02 January, 2001)
Author: Sharon Snow Sirois
Average review score:

Romance and Mystery
This has been the best book that I have ever read. In fact I have bought copies for all my relatives for Christmas this year. It is the type of book that you can't put down until the end. The author is truly talented and brings the story to life. I can't wait for her next book to be ready. Keep up the great work!

A really good read!
I found myself glued to the novel right away. What a fantastic plot! The characters really come alive and grip you throughout the advanture. Prepare yourself to forget everything else but immersing yourself in the small New England town of Sawyer's Crossing. It was truely a really good read!

A story that lives in your heart!
What a wonderful novel! I couldn't put it down till I had read it from cover to cover. I suggest you start reading it on the weekend. That way you won't coming to work looking like something the cat drag in! It was great that Kelly was someone that I could relate to. Finally a woman that has a brain and wasn't afraid to use it! Can't wait to read her next novel, Sugar Creek Inn!!

The Life of Timon of Athens (New Penguin Shakespeare)
Published in Paperback by Viking Press (December, 1981)
Authors: William Shakespeare, R. L. Smallwood, and T. J. B. Spencer
Average review score:

One of Shakespeare's statelier plays.
the Oxford Shakespeare has been touted as 'a new conception' of Shakespeare, but is in fact merely an update of the cumbersome old Arden editions. Like these, 'King John' begins with a 100-page introduction, divided into 'Dates and Sources' (full of what even the editor admits is 'tedious' nit-picking of documentary evidence); 'The Text' (the usual patronising conjecture about misprints in the Folio edition and illiterate copyists); 'A Critical Introduction', giving a conventional, but illuminating guide to the drama, its status as a political play dealing with the thorny problem of royal succession, the contemporary legal ambiguities surrounding inheritance, the patterning of characters, the use of language (by characters as political manoeuvring, by Shakespeare to subvert them); and an account of 'King John' 'In the Theatre', its former popularity in the 18th and 19th century as a spectacular pageant, the play distorted for patriotic purposes, and its subsequent decline, presumably for the same reasons. The text itself is full of stumbling, often unhelpful endnotes - what students surely want are explanations of difficult words and figures, not a history of scholarly pedantry. The edition concludes with textual appendices.
The play itself, as with most of Shakespeare's histories, is verbose, static and often dull. Too many scenes feature characters standing in a rigid tableau debating, with infinite hair-cavilling, issues such as the legitimacy to rule, the conjunction between the monarch's person and the country he rules; the finer points of loyalty. Most of the action takes place off stage, and the two reasons we remember King John (Robin Hood and the Magna Carta) don't feature at all. This doesn't usually matter in Shakespeare, the movement and interest arising from the development of the figurative language; but too often in 'King John', this is more bound up with sterile ideas of politics and history, than actual human truths. Characterisation and motivation are minimal; the conflations of history results in a choppy narrative. There are some startling moments, such as the description of a potential blood wedding, or the account of England's populace 'strangely fantasied/Possessed with rumours, full of idle dreams/Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear'. The decline of the king himself, from self-confident warrior to hallucinating madman, anticipates 'King Lear', while the scene where John's henchman sets out to brand the eyes of the pubescent Pretender, is is full of awful tension.
P.S. Maybe I'm missing something, but could someone tell me why this page on 'King John' has three reviews of 'Timon of Athens'? Is somebody having a laugh?

Disorder
Timon of Athens has often been thought the work of a madman. Disjointed, polemical, irrational, and downright inelegant, many have thought that Shakespeare (or whosoever it may be) suffered a mental breakdown. This and more surrounds what I believe to be a tragic under-appreciation of this play. This play is NOT the story of a naively generous soul who eventually "faces reality". This is instead the story of a glorious Dionysian self-expender, who, upon realizing the cowardly conservatism of his so-called "peers", runs off to the wilds, to continue expending himself in body and soul. He dies on a curse, the climax of all the "evil wind" he has been sending out, the ultimate self-expension, his ultimate glory. The "tragedy" is the stone cold tablet that lies atop his corpse at the end, and the message of frugality it seems to send out, which is all too easily accepted by fatally declining cultures.

Arkangel Timon of Athens a fine production
Among the least performed of all the Shakespeare plays, is probably the most disturbing. In the beginning, Timon is (not to put too fine a point on it) stupidly philanthropic; in the end he is equally misanthropic. When Timon is on top of the world, we have the cynical Apemantus to be our voice and let him know what a fool he is. In the last two acts, we simply wish (I do, at least) that our hero would stop complaining and let us "pass and stay not here," as he would have all men do in his epitaph.

But a recording is to be judged on its performances, not so much on its text. The Arkangel series, now in its last laps toward completion before (I am told) it is all redone on CDs, has every reason to be proud of its "Timon of Athens," thanks to its strong and intelligent readings. The opening scenes of artisans and poets building up the play's themes of wheel-of-fortune and gratitude/ingratitude are almost intelligible without a text open before you. Alan Howard, whom I saw in New York long ago as Henry V and as the main character in "Good," has that kind of friendly voice that is so well suited to the extravagant Timon in the open acts that we feel all the more for him when his false friends deny him in his need.

The snarling voice of Norman Rodway's Apemantus is a perfect counterpoint, and he casts out his invective in those early scenes with a hint of humor. However, when Timon becomes the misanthrope, his voice darkens and coarsens; and it is very hard to tell it from Apemantus' in their overly-long exchange of curses in 4:3. If the actor playing Alcibiades (Damian Lewis) sounds far too young for the role, that is a minor quibble--and perhaps the director wanted him to sound like a young Timon.

The incidental music sounds sufficiently Greek but too modern; still, Ingratitude knows no particular time period. A superior production of a much flawed play and a very welcome addition to any collection of recorded drama, especially since the old Decca set is long out of print and Harper audio does not yet have a "Timon" in their series.

The Hills at Home
Published in Hardcover by Pantheon Books (18 February, 2003)
Author: Nancy Clark
Average review score:

Delightful comedy of manners
Old maid Lily Hill, last of the gentry, presides over a crumbling Victorian house furnished mostly with dust and impeccable manners. The plumbing is dreadful, the meals are awful, the roof leaks, but the code of WASP gentility and morality rules Lily's actions as family members begin to accumulate like extra spoons in a place setting. Then non-relatives start to appear, and pretty soon the place is populated with enough eccentrics to make you suspect that it'll all turn into an American version of a British house party murder mystery. Indeed, the place IS raided by the FBI, but it's not about murder. Amusing, The Hills at Home is an old-fashioned comedy of manners, a great little read.

A really wonderful read
This is an amazing first book. It is intricate, insightful and interesting. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and was pleased to see that the author is working on a second book.

The book involves a disparate group of individuals, most of whom are related. Only Lily Hill, matriarch and spinster aunt of the clan is living in the dilapidated home until one by one or family by family, relatives begin to descent on the New England family home. All are just visiting but the "visit" never seems to end. They are a fascinating cast of characters. There is Lily's thrice married brother Harvey, a hopelessly weird "new-age" type niece Ginger and her very practical teenage daughter, Betsy. Then comes an out of work nephew and his wife and four children. Finally, a grandson-an aspiring stand up comic and his girl friend show up. The book is wonderfully and dryly comic as these characters settle in and attempt to co-exist.

Then enters a new element, a graduate student who wants to study the Hill family for his dissertation on a dying breed, the WASP. The book covers about a year in time and like the graduate student, studies the characters in differing situations. Coming home, a history, a holiday, love and leaving are each touched upon. Each character is well draw and interesting as they settle in, fall in love, or reflect on their choices in life. I found this book to be charming, witty and wonderful. In so many new highly lauded books I have found that while the books may be interesting or well written, I ultimately did not like anyone in the book. I may have enjoyed the book, but I did not care about what happened to the central characters. The Hills, however are fascinating and I hope to hear more of them.

Delightful
I loved this novel. The story of the extended Hill family who all, for various reasons return to their vast family home, where Aunt Lily lives alone, was simply a delight to read. Nothing heavy hear, just a wonderful set of stories about the flaws and follies of these various family members. The story is well-told and often very amusing. I found myself laughing out loud in public places--it takes a great book to make me do that. I know others have problems with the sentences in the novel, but I have to disagree. Reading, the actual act of reading this novel was a bit like talking with a rather educated chatterbox with a sharp eye and a terrific sense of humor. The sentences and paragraphs may meander, but they get you where you need to be by a scenic and thoroughly amusing route. The novel does not have (and frankly does not need) a plot that keeps moving forward. You are not really going to wonder what will happen next, but I assure you, you won't want to miss what happens. Enjoy.

Related Vacation Book Subjects: united_states
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