No comments about An Outdoor Family Guide to Acadia National Park (Outdoor Family Guides).

No comments about Lighthouses of Maine: A Guidebook and Keepsake (Lighthouse Series).

2 comments about Hiking Maine, 2nd Edition (State Hiking Series).

1. This is a great book for the moderate, hobby fisherman. I have been fishing in Maine all my life, however when I recently moved to central Maine I was at a loss as to where to throw my line. I bought this book last year late in the season and had very good luck with the advice given. It gives you peak times and lures to try for best results. I look forward to checking off some of the spots I missed last year and hopefully catch the big one! The only complaint I have is that it is sometimes more geared to fly fisherman than I would like. Overall a very good investment in my book!



2. Overall, this book does a good job of providing succinct summaries of some great hikes throughout Maine. I only gave it three stars, however, because it strangely omits western Maine (the area near the New Hampshire border). Western Maine has some great hiking, including the Maine section of the White Mountains National Forest, Mt. Blue State Park, and Grafton Notch State Park. Oddly, this entire region goes unmentioned.

1 comments about Monhegan: A Guide to Maine's Fabled Islands.

1. This is a fabulous book. For decades, everyone who loves Monhegan has expressed the wish that there was a good book which they could show friends and neighbors "back in the States" when they rave about this wondrous isle 10 miles off the coast of Maine. But no book, no website ever came close to capturing the magic of Monhegan -- until now. This is the book every Monhegan-oholic has been been waiting for. Even people who think they know everything about Monhegan and who think they have seen everything there is to see on Monhegan will discover new secrets within the pages of this marvelous book. This is THE book.

5 comments about New England's Favorite Seafood Shacks: Eating Up the Coast from Connecticut to Maine.

1. Was really suspicious, because this book covers some of the big touristy places (Woodman's, in Essex, for instance) but was pleasantly surprised. We spend 2 weeks on the Cape every year, and this book has some suggestions that we didn't know about, along with coverage of some of our favorite places. Lots of seafood trivia, too -- was expecting a straightforward guidebook but it's really more of a coffee table book. All in all, a really good purchase.



2. We're originally from the Boston area, and this book took me back to my childhood summers at the beach. I ordered this b/c the family's having a reunion in Maine this summer -- we will definitely be trying some of these places! I really like that the author flags up tourist traps vs. hidden gems, and the book is written in a fun style. Lots of great photos too.



3. If you like seafood and are heading for the East Coast, don't leave home without a copy of New England's Favorite Seafood Shacks in hand: it reviews the best-loved eateries along the coast, offering over seventy profiles on seafood shacks and specialties of the house. Some are as brief as a few sentences, while others command a page or two of historical reference and description. Add in black and white photos and notes on hours, address, web sites and specialties and you have a winning reference indeed.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



4. An outstanding seafood reference manual which I highy recommend! I am a Boston transplant to Ohio who re-visits the Boston/New England areas 4 to 5 times each year ... my favorite food is seafood and this book is my seafood "bible!" I have yet to visit a "shack" previewed in this book where the food has been anything but excellent! The book is all encompassing, addressing everything from restaurant descriptions, menus, locations, operating hours, etc. GOOD JOB ELIZABETH!!!



5. I was not impressed with this book at all. I have many travel guides and was hoping to learn something new from this one. We travel extensively through New England in the summer and am particularly found of the Maine Coast. This was just a poor example of one writers view. There are much better, informative and better written guides available.
   
   Why in the world would you eat fried turkey gonads and then admit to it as the author Elizabeth does on the back cover ??
   
   This book was so bad I actually returned it.

5 comments about In Beauty May She Walk; Hiking the Appalachian Trail at 60.

1. Leslie Mass hiked the Appalachian Trail at 60. Her book is one of my favorite accounts of hiking the Appalachian Trail. She is a college administrator, wife and mother who managed to fit a flip-flop hike into her work schedule. Since childhood, Mass had been told to speak softly and accomodate herself to others. On her hike she learned to value her own opinion and one of life's biggest lessons: sometimes it is not so bad to be alone and hike your own hike. She made elaborate plans to hike parts of the trail with friends and family. You can tell that she was very accustomed to being close to other people, part of a very social world. In spite of this, she writes that she always knew she was an introvert. Her biggest lesson from the trail was to trust in herself, rather than going along with someone else who forced her into the role of "follower". On the trail, she made friends with several other hikers, one of whom took way too much interest in Mass' daughter, Amy, before even meeting her. He basically took over Mass' hike, and made her miserable. When Amy joined her mother on the trail, he attached himself to her. He didn't seem to be the most stable character, even making remarks about which man hiking the trail Mass had selected for her daughter. Creepy. I hope nothing bad came of this. Dog lovers might get some negative vibes: Mass obviously HATES dogs!



2. I've read 4 books on hiking the AT. This one I liked the least. Author complained a lot about how difficult it was. Left me almost depressed about the prospect of hiking the trail.



3. 
   I enjoyed the book - its always been a dream of mine to go on such a journey. I'm not much of a reader but since I got the 1st book
   written about the APT I have not missed many of the books. I also have
   one of the tapes (Trek) & enjoyed that too. I'm 68 & wished I'd known
   about the APT long before I got so elderly. It still excites me & I can't hardly stop reading when I get a new book, this one is very satifying & so full of hope. Thanks



4. A wonderful and inspiring book for anyone, but especially for women over 50. While I don't plan anything so adventurous as Ms Mass, she does inspire me to keep walking.
   I especially enjoyed her writing style and her shared insights into people and culture which make this book so much more than a walker's diary.



5. A wonderful book for those of us over sixty. It is an insperation, very detailed. A fun book.

5 comments about A Year In The Maine Woods.

1. Heinrich writes about his observations of Maine's animals and plants from winter silences to spring's new growth. It ranges from lyrical descriptions of wild flowers to more than you want to know about decaying carcasses attracting carrion eaters.
   I enjoyed reading it while parked in an RV in a Maine campground. My little window on the woods was so limited, making me appreciate his insights and trained eye. Sometimes he is philosophical, and at other times mundane (justifying why he doesn't wash his dishes more often).



2. Bernd Heinrich a Zoology Professor at the University of Vermont has written many books on natural history or what is now called nature writing. This is the first I've read and have enjoyed it immensely. His style is a mixture of deep zoological knowledge of the animals and plants of the Maine woods and the pure love of being a human being who can appreciate and really live the surrounding natural world. This is what is needed by all people if they want to appreciate their world. Its a delightful book but does not possess the intensity of Jack Turner's "Abstract Wild" or Doug Peacock's Grisly writing. But it doesn't really need it, it is just a man living in the woods for a year through the beautiful summer pestered by black flies and the stunning autumn into a cold winter and the new life of spring. The book is also full of very well drawn animals and plants. The story starts with him driving to his cabin with his pet raven Jack who, being a raven, is independent minded and eventually leaves. Its too bad Jack was truly fascinating. There is much to do including the chopping of wood for the winter, taking care of his apple trees, raven watching to do. Its amazing how beautiful nature is when someone is watching with all his heart and mind. A delightful book.



3. I really enjoyed this book -- it is a quiet, at times poetic, reflection on how one man lived within his environment for four distinct seasons. Heinrich reminds us of how richly varied and fascinating our world is and how much we miss every moment that we are too distracted to really see, smell, hear, and touch the natural world. The book inspired me to try to slow down a bit and take a closer look at the plants, animals, birds, and insects in my own back yard.



4. A Year in the Maine Woods
   
   Transport yourself into the natural world and be guided by an expert who writes with acute observation. It made me envy his journey. Almost is a virtual reality experience. The reader can smell the damp leaves, hear the raven, see the moose, etc. A book the reader will return to again and again to share the rich experiences of the author.



5. I've read several of Heinrich's books and have never been disappointed. Some reviewers compare him to Thoreau, favorably or not. While in certain places he does evoke thoughts of Thoreau, that is not what he is trying to do, contrary to what some reviewers seem to think.
   
   As a word-class biologist and naturalist, Heinrich approaches his story of life in the Maine woods from two vantage points. First, as a scientist/naturalist, and then as a long-time resident of the area of Maine he calls home. The two themes are interwoven with a seasonal view of life in his cabin.
   
   Unlike Thoreau, who was an amateur nineteenth century naturalist and literary philosopher, Heinrich has the advantage of being both a keen observer and a trained scientist, albeit one who grew up surrounded by nature before receiving his academic research training as a physiological ecologist. While some might find the detail he presents in places to be too much, those who really wish to learn about combining the powers of observation with scientific insights will be richly rewarded.
   
   I must take exception to the reviewer who termed this book an "ego trip".
   Heinrich is hardly parading his vast scientific knowledge for the sake of seeming erudite. The man has garnered numerous scientific and literary kudos, for both his research and nature writing, so I suspect he hardly needs to engage in an "ego trip" by trying to ape Thoreau. In fact, given his vast knowledge of biology, I would say that he strikes a good balance between telling a personal story and presenting scientific facts and insights in the context of his experience.
   
   Having spent a few years in the area of Maine that Heinrich loves and writes about so well, I think that he does a wonderful job capturing both the nature and the lifestyle of rural Maine. If you are the type of person who enjoys taking walks in company of expertise, you will enjoy this book.

3 comments about The Maine Woods: (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau).

1. Most people are familiar with Thoreau through his Walden. Few know perhaps that he didn't stay put in Concord but journeyed to the Maine Woods and elsewhere, and that these travels were formative of his philosophy and ideas. Thoreau believed the Maine wilderness north of Bangor was every bit as wild as the west and other far flung corners of the continent in the 1850s, and here he shows us an incredible panorama of beauty and wonder. You will gain insight into how Native Americans hunted Moose in the mid-19th Century and why Thoreau, a vegetarian, disdained the killing of animals for meat. One of the most sriking passages is his description of the sound of a huge tree falling in the forest in the distance at night.
   
   In Ktaadn, Thoreau defines the essence of wilderness:
   
   "Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor wast-land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth as it was made forever and ever."
   
   You do not need to read The Maine Woods on a wooded island in Maine (as I did) to be captivated and transported by it to a higher and greater sense of wilderness than you may ever have imagined.



2. This book chronicles the adventures of Thoreau as he encounters wilderness in the guise of backwoods Maine. The book covers 3 separate expeditions that Thoreau made in 1846, 1853 and 1857. On each trip, Thoreau was accompanied by one or more companions, as well as an Indian guide.
   
   Of all of Thoreau's books, this one sticks most closely to nature and travel writing, with little explicit philosophizing. Although Thoreau was accustomed to taking long walks off the beaten track in Massachusetts, it was in Maine where he first encountered genuine wilderness. He found the wild surroundings quite inspiring, and far from being overwhelmed by them, he seemed to want even more. In this book, he presents detailed accounts of the flora and fauna that observed on his Maine journeys. In addition to his observations of the natural world, Thoreau also describes many of the people and tiny communities that he found on his trips through Maine. While he follows his custom of never naming his traveling companions or providing personal information about them, he seems to feel no similar compunction about the privacy of his Indian guides, and describes them and their behavior in detail as if they were suitable subjects of his travel studies rather than co-travelers. One aspect that makes this book timeless is the fact that so much of the natural world that Thoreau describes has remained unchanged in the 150 years since his journeys.



3. In 1848, 1853,and 1857, Henry David Thoreau travelled to the wilderness -- forests, lakes, rivers, and mountains in the northwest part of Maine. He wrote three lengthy essays describing each of his journeys, and they were gathered together, as Thoreau had wished, and published after his death, together with an appendix, as "The Maine Woods." It is a moving book, a classic work of American literature, and the founder of a genre of descriptive travel writing.
   
   Readers coming to "The Maine Woods" after "Walden" or "A Walk on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" may be in for a surprise. These earlier books do include extensive descriptions of nature and of plants and animals, but their focus is much more internalized and philosophical. Both books are full of discussions of themes that have little direct connection with nature. They show Thoreau as a Transcendentalist, an American philosopher akin to Emerson and others.
   
   "The Maine Woods", in contrast, shows Thoreau as much more of a naturalist interested in describing the wilderness in great detail for its own sake. I think the book articulates a philosophical temperament akin to Thoreau's earlier books, but it is for the most part implicit rather than stated at length.
   
   The three essays describe Thoreau's journeys at widely separated times to Mount Ktaadn, the Chesuncook River, and the Allegash and East Branch Rivers, journeys that overlapped to some degree. Thoreau travelled with a companion and with Indian guides. He gives the reader pictures of what was still largely a pristine wilderness even though it was, at that early time, already being subject to logging, the growth of towns, and despoilation. We see Thoreau and his companions travelling in canoes or batteaus on the interconnected rivers and lakes of northwest Maine, carrying and portaging their vessels around falls, camping in the woods, observing the vegetation and animals, getting lost, finding shelter from the rain, visiting lumber camps and the hardy residents of the woods, gathering berries, hunting, and much else. The narrative is filled with detail of Thoreau's experiences and thoughts.
   
   I found the most moving part of the book was Thoreau's description of his climb up Mount Ktaadn in the first essay. We see this journey in detail, described with ancient Greek and American Indian symbolism. It concludes with a long peroration of the value of wilderness -- of land not controlled or under the disposition of people. Thoreau observes that "the country is virtually unmapped and unexplored, and there still waves the virgin forest of the New World." The "Chesuncook" essay includes a vivid description of the stalking and killing of a moose and Thoreau's resultant sense of discomfort. It closes with a call for the creation of national preserves for wilderness. The final essay describes a broad spectrum of adventures and places on a day-to-day basis. There are many passages that describe Thoreau's Indian guide, Joe Polis. Although Thoreau was deeply fascinated with the Indian heritage of Maine, some of his treatment of Polis will sound stereotyped to modern readers.
   
   Thoreau's book was the first in a long line of American works devoted to nature. But I was reminded most of the Beat writers in some of their moments, of Jack Kerouac, (a native of Lowell, Massachusetts) in "The Dharma Bums" describing rucksacking and the climbing of a mountain and of the poetry of Gary Snyder.
   
   This book is about the need to leave the beaten path and follow one's star. There are some fine websites in which the interested reader can get more information about the places Thoreau visited. [...]
   
   Robin Friedman

No comments about Baxter State Park/Katahdin Map (Rand McNally City Maps).

1 comments about Hidden New England: Including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Hidden Travel).

1. Like the book My wife and I like going to new places for a weekend .