5 comments about Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories.

1. Full Disclosure: I attended Bowdoin College with Jason Brown, and we had an acquaintance or two in common. I read a profile in the Bowdoin Magazine and then bought his first book, which I loved.
   
   This collection of short stories was dynamite. Dark and powerful, all its stories revolve around the fictional town of Vaughn on the Kennebec River. I would almost call it a novel about Vaughn told from all sorts of angles, from the aging widow to the neglected children. I was particularly impressed with a story about a logger on the last pulp run down the Kennebec.
   
   These are stories that stay with you. I read the entire collection on the train between Boston and Lawrence -- after each story, I would stare out the window looking at the double-deckers in Malden or the stark outlines of abandoned mills.
   
   I look forward to his novel.
   
   Just for kicks, compare the map of Vaugn in the collection to Jason Brown's hometown of Hallowell, Maine.



2. Jason Brown writes wonderful short stories. In this collection, he is able to capture perfectly and insightfully the nuances of adolescent experience. BUY THIS BOOK!



3. Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories
   
   Although all of the stories in Jason Brown's second collection are set in and around the fictional town of Vaughn, Maine, the emotional territory of the stories is far-reaching. Many of his characters are moving through life in quiet turmoil--enduring, defiant, proud, foolish. Brown's deep compassion for these flawed characters makes each of their struggles palpable and affecting. We feel the stories viscerally, which is how Brown seems to write them. This is writing from the gut. The best book of stories I've read in years.



4. Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories
   
   This is a fantastic collection. Read Brown's "Trees," in which the woods stand as a watchful, powerful central character. All of Brown's stories are like those woods: deep, dark, and full of secrets, a place you're drawn to again and again.



5. When I bought this book at the Brookline Booksmith here in Boston, the girl at the counter said "this is a great book". I had bought it based on a short New Yorker review, and also, let's face it, because of its great title.
   
   The 11 short stories are set in and around the fictional town of Vaughn, Maine. The characters go to Portland, take a train up north towards Quebec, talk about trips to Boston, all of which roots Vaughn into the real Maine. Indeed, the book opens with a map of Vaughn showing it on the (real) Kennebec river.
   
   The book has a historic sweep, referencing actual history (the Plains of Abraham where the British General James Wolfe fought the French in the Battle of Quebec) as well as the history of the book characters and of Vaughn itself. One story starts "I belonged to a large family that had lived in the same town in Maine for over two hundred years". Reading the stories, many about traumatic events such as a drowning, you know that the protagonists will still be living together, in the same place in Maine, for the rest of their lives. You get the feeling that the place itself has a long memory.
   
   The writing moves from matter-of-fact prose ("A hockey game started near shore, mostly fathers and sons and brothers in plaid jackets and blue caps, choosing sides according to size"), to Maine logging jargon ("Nothing in the river but sinkers and bark cake and raw waste from sixteen towns coating the bottom, methane bubbling up through the water and pulp and booms waiting for a freshet"), to beauty ("He turned around and looked up, as if at a mountain peak or a descending plane, but there was nothing above except a line of high white clouds pulling up over the valley like a cold sheet").
   
   Highly recommended. I pass on the recommendation from the Brookline Booksmith counter assistant.

3 comments about Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Library of New England).

1. You'll enjoy this book even if you're not particularly interested in Manchester, NH, or mill towns, as long as you want to hear people talk about their lives.

   This is a good window into life in a "factory-city" along the Merrimack River from its start in the early 1800s through the 1970s. Each chapter is an interview. You get the story through the words and memories of those who live it. Mill workers and their families talk about the founding of the town, their arrival as immigrants seeking good jobs, what their work lives were like, the strike, and the eventual shutdown of the mills. A good read.




2. Nineteenth century American travellers waxed enthusiastic or properly melancholic amidst the ruins of Europe. Writers such as Henry James often contrasted the youth and vigor (and innocence) of America with old, tired Europe. None of them could have imagined that less than a century later, the busy New England mills that turned out huge quantities of shoes, textiles, and useful products of all kinds would be silent, weed-strewn ruins. When I look around at cities like Salem, Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, and Brockton, Mass., at Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire, at a dozen small towns in Maine, I realize that I grew up during the fall of a whole civilization. I saw the tail end of it. Today so many of those thriving factories and mills have been razed to the ground, turned into condos or specialty shops, or even, into museums of industrial history.

   AMOSKEAG is the story of one textile mill, once the largest in the world, along the banks of the Merrimack River in New Hampshire. The story is told through 37 interviews after an introduction of thirty-odd pages. The effect is most immediate: you feel as if you had lived the whole experience, grown up around these people. The reader is taken through the lives of management to the world of work---the varieties of tasks and social interactions to be found within the giant factory. Then we get an idea of family life, how the factory permeated every aspect of existence, and finally of the strikes, shutdowns and rising costs that eventually drove the mill out of existence (or rather, the whole textile industry to other states and countries). The text is punctuated by numerous black and white photographs which add to the atmosphere of "bygone days" that emanates from the whole book. If you are looking for a book on industrial history or early 20th century New England, you must read this one, it's unforgettable.




3. The story of Amoskeag is the story of a society...a story of a different time...a way of life that used to be. This book travels through the 1800's and the 1900's telling the tale of a factory, and the people who passed through it.
   The highlights of the book occur when the factory workers are interviewed. The characters and stories they create are so funny and so real...you get such a feel for how their lives were. I laughed so many times.
   The only parts I found boring were when the terms of factory making were being discussed. It was important to know to put what the workers were saying into context, but I found it boring.
   Overall, the book was a gem. I am now very interested in a time period that before I thought was useless and boring. I would reccomend this book to anyone.

1 comments about The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening.

1. The Grand Masters Of Main Gardening: And Some Of Their Disciples by horticultural and gardening expert Jane Lamb reveals and showcases "tips, tricks and techniques" applied by Maine's premier gardeners. Additionally, Lamb includes a veritable compendium of advice drawn from more than twenty years of interviews with Maine's most outstanding gardeners, horticultural pioneers, and landscape architects. Here is a compendium based upon decades of experience in making things grow in Maine soil and with Maine climates. Also included is a fascinating tour through exquisite private gardens, specialized nurseries and popular public gardens. Enhanced with almost seventy impressive full-color photographs, The Grand Masters Of Maine Gardening is a "must" for regional gardeners in the North East, but will also prove to be of immense interest to dedicated horticulturists and gardening enthusiasts anywhere else in the country.

1 comments about Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake.

1. Horn compares local societies in England and the colonial Chesapeake to support his argument that the social development of 17th century Virginia and Maryland cannot be fully understood unless it is placed within the broader context of the social development of the 17th century Anglophone world. Until nearly the end of the 1600s, the majority of colonists in the Chesapeake were born and raised in England. They brought with them not only English traditions and customs, but also news and attitudes that reflected the current social developments in England. The colonial societies were affected by these developments. For instance, the uprisings against proprietary rule in Maryland and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia appear far less extraordinary when they are viewed together with the political upheavals occurring in England. This broader view of the colonial Chesapeake refutes claims that Virginia and Maryland were somehow abhorrent, rather they were preserving and adapting English traditions and customs to life on the Chesapeake while operating in an extended Anglophone world.

No comments about 50 Hikes in Coastal & Inland Maine: From the Burnt Meadow Mountains to Maine's Bold Coast, Fourth Edition (50 Hikes).

1 comments about Hiking Massachusetts.

1. This series stands out from other hiking books for its organization and informational approach. Best feature: for each hike there is an elevation graph which displays a line which represents a cross-section of the trail. The line rises and falls with the elevation of the hike. This feature alone is worth the price of the book, as you can tell at a glance how steep your hike will be. The book also has a generous helping of maps and photos, and generous informational sidebars (where to eat, schedule, fees, surface, who owns the land, what other trail users you can expect, and more more more).

5 comments about Victorian Painting.

1. I'M AN ARTIST, AND I IDENTIFIED MYSELF A LOT WITH VICTORIAN PAINTING, I GUESS PART OF MY SOUL STILL LIVED IN THAT PERIOD. TO ME, THIS IS MY "BOOK OF LIFE", IT'S VERY COMPLETE, EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION, MARVELOUS COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS, AND MOST OF ALL, YOU GET TO KNOW OTHER VICTORIAN ARTISTS WORK. **TRUST ME YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED**



2. Trust me - if you know anything about Victorian Painting you WILL be disappointed. Nice reproductions, though predictable choices for the most part. Platitudinous text.



3. Judging from the two customer reviews, you either love it or hate it. I have a tweener view of Lambourne's tome. Having a keen interest in the Pre-Raphaelites, I wanted to learn more about Victorian art. I admit I chose this book because of it's size. However, I was pleasantly surprise by its content. I enjoyed his organization, for instead of going from artist to artist, he covered their subject matter and their important artists. It was a good review of the British art world of the Victorian era and some European/American artists who were influenced by the British. Lambourne was both academic and insightful. He seem knowledgeable of aspects of the artists' lives that are not usually in an academic work. The reproductions were great but I was disappointed that some were so small. However, I can understand the design trade off vs. cost of the book. So if you're looking for an extensive survey of Victoria period art at an affordable price, this is your book.



4. Two of the best books about general Victorian paintings are Lionel Lambourne's and Christopher Woods'. Although both book discuss the same broad subject of Victorian art, they do not seem to overlap each other but instead seem to reinforce each other, filling in gaps where one left off. Don't be afraid to own both books. Both books are packed with beautiful images and interesting notes about so many Victorian painters. Lambourne's book is almost twice as heavy as Wood's but the image resolution is smaller but he seems to give a better account of the events surrounding the paintings. The topics of both books are very well ordered (historical events, animals, nudes, outdoor etc)
   
   In an environment over-saturated with the mediocrity of Modern Art, Victorian art is ever increasing in importance, and no serious lover of paintings should ever be without both books.



5. Although it has been much maligned by critics and art historians, the Victorian period was actually a rich and dynamic era in the arts. Modern art historians have been brought up with the notion that the concept of a narrative in a painting - essentially a painting that tells a story - is either mere illustration or "kitsch." Once this view of painting became the conventional wisdom early in the last century, Victorian Art, so much of which was narrative, was relegated to the basements of museums and even became an object of ridicule. In art history classes around the world, paintings of the Victorian era, whether by Leighton in England or Bouguereau in France, were used as a foil for the Impressionists and early Modern movements. The Victorian era was a sentimental time and there is a fine line between a romantic sentimentality and being overly sweet or saccharine and there were many times when Victorian painters vaulted over that line. However, like any other art form, you only become an effective and intelligent critic of a genre or period when you know it well. And, if your art history courses have taught you to dismiss it out of hand, you will simply be pathologically unable to make intelligent distinctions or draw proper conclusions.
   Lionel Lambourne's book is a comprehensive survey of Victorian Art. It is a massive volume that is beautifully illustrated with exceptionally good plates. All too many art books suffer from poor color, clearly drawn from poor transparencies or scans, but this book doesn't stint on the number or quality of the illustrations, so it will be popular with those who simply want to enjoy the images as well as those who have the time to read the text. The author, who is the head of the paintings department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, clearly knows his subject well and he has broken the long Victorian era down into logical chapters, beginning with a survey of the "Victorian Art Establishment" and then diving the Victorian period by subject and movement rather than simple chronology. He covers all the major movements such as "The Frailer Sex and the Fallen Woman," "The Pre-Raphaelites," "Aesthetes and Symbolists," and "Childhood and Sentiment."
   The book is not devoted solely to the artists who lived in Great Britain but also includes painters from the British colonies and former colonies in order to show the connections between their art and that of England. Without descending into the jargon that is too frequently relied upon by art historians, Lambourne is scholarly, providing insight into the influences and motivations of the Victorian artists and then explaining why Whsitler and the Aesthetes rebelled against the prevailing style. Victorian painting has remained popular with artists and a segment of the public precisely because of some of the qualities that repell many art historians - the high level of craftsmanship, sentimentality, the narrative drive so common to the era and the moral element that is part of many paintings from the epoch - but in recent years, more and more exhibitions have been mounted and new books seem to come out each fortnight. Now that Victorian Art has regained some of its lost luster and popularity, it deserves to have an elegant book like Lionel Lambourne's "Victorian Painting" that gives readers an overview of a rich artistic epoch.

No comments about Rand McNally New Hampshire and Vermont: Highways & Interstates (Rand McNally Folded Map: States).

No comments about Cut & Assemble an Early New England Village (Cut & Assemble Buildings in H-O Scale).

2 comments about The Dog Lover's Companion to New York City: The Inside Scoop on Where to Take Your Dog (Dog Lover's Companion Guides).

1. Living in an area where there aren't many dog friendly places, yet within commuting distance of NYC, I thought this would be a good book to add to my collection. It has valuable resources like maps and contact numbers for the places they list. There are a variety of places you can go to with your pet.
   
   The reason I gave this book a 3 instead of a 5 is it lists Eisenhower Park as allowing dogs on leash. I have lived near this park for most of my life. To my knowledge they had never allowed dogs. I called to see if they changed their policy - so happy that a nearby place would allow me to bring my pet. Sadly, they confirmed never in their history have they allowed dogs within the park and you can receive a big ticket if you do.
   
   When I contacted the books publisher, I was told that was why the caveat of checking first is in the book. The caveat is nice, but I was still frustrated they listed this source when it was never an option.
   
   I have not had a chance to check on the other sites listed yet.
   
   So in summary, good for dog lovers living near or visiting New York City, but do your homework before you bring your pet.



2. Exellent. I've bought several books in this genre, but "The Dog Lover's Companion to New York City: The Inside Scoop on Where to Take Your Dog (Dog Lover's Companion to New York City)" is the only one that's easy to read, addresses exactly what you're looking for (the best time for you and your dog) and then get you jazzed to try the exciting destinations listed.