Connecticut Books

An attempt at a comprehensive guide book of Greenwich, Connecticut compiled by a Greenwich Real Estate firm. The only entry in the Real Estate Category for a real estate firm is the publisher's own Real Estate Company. I don't think I would buy another edition of this book since most of the information is readily found either at the Public Library, on the internet or in other places in Greenwich for free. Why pay $12.95 (price on the book's back cover) for incorrect and outdated information? The cutesy illustrations and commentaries are not worth the price, in my opinion. For restaurant reviews I would stick with the Zagat Survey. The other sections of the book can be found entirely online.

While the 5th edition was current - this was the best Guide imaginable! But now, the 6th edition (totally updated) is now available. I couldn't live in Greenwich without it!

The Guide is now in its 6th edition. You need to search for it by its exact name: Anderson Guide to Enjoying Greenwich. For some reason, only the 5th edition comes up when you search for the "Greenwich Guide" The praise we have received for our Anderson Guide to Enjoying Greenwich is overwhelming and warms my heart. The talented Glenville Maverick Cheerleaders are on the front cover of the 6th edition. Jerry and I are grateful to so many Greenwich residents for their support and for their enthusiastic appreciation for providing the town of Greenwich with a useful guide. The Greenwich Library continues to order copies. They keep copies at the information desk and at community answers to help people with their questions. The Historical Society has the copies of our past editions in its archives. We are pleased to be documenting our town's many events, restaurants, shops and tips about Greenwich way of life.

The Guide is a list of our favorites...simply that. It is not a book of advertisements. No place mentioned in the Guide had any idea that it would be included. Establishments and programs are listed because we like them. Although the Guide is about Enjoying Greenwich, you will note many selections are outside of Greenwich's town limits. These easy to reach places complement our many in-town resources.

Initially, many years ago, our first Guide was prepared for our real estate clients. Then the calls came in-their friends needed a copy. The owner of Just Books saw it and said we must publish it, and that is where it started. Our initial reason for writing it has not changed. We know finding favorite spots takes awhile. We have lived in Greenwich for many years, and we hope the resources in the Guide will help everyone moving into town feel right at home.

The new 6th edition has over 160 restaurant reviews. Jerry and I anonymously visit each one at least two times before we write the review. We are looking at the whole experience-food, ambience and service. If a restaurant is disappointing in too many ways, we do not include it. Restaurant reviewing is a professional responsibility. We have a great deal to do with a restaurant's success or failure. Jerry and I have extensive food and restaurant backgrounds. I am the author of the Complete Book of Homemade Ice Cream and several other cookbooks. I am a cookbook addict with over 4000 cookbooks in my own collection. For a number of years we owned and operated a small vineyard. Tasting foods and wines and knowing how they are prepared is greatly helpful in reviewing quality. I am an interior designer, a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers; and before devoting myself full time to real estate, I designed restaurants-two in Greenwich. Many people remember the popular restaurant, Morgan, open for many years in Greenwich that I designed. Knowing the requirements of good restaurant design is helpful in reviewing. We love finding new discoveries in dining, and we hope our readers of the Guide will enjoy them too.

this book was very interesting in that one could explore the eIvertyday goings on of a time that we're so far removed from.I would like to have seen many more photos. You can identify much more with the characters in this way. from a historical point of view it was quite enlightening to see how black americans took a hand in their own destiny what with all the odds staked against them. we can see the format that is used even to this day. another interesting point is that there is noting new under the sun. It seems some of the everyday occurencess still prevail today under different circumstances. Though at times the letters were a little boring and written without prpoer punctuation, it helped to bring out the true personality of the writer. All in all for me it was a trip back into time.

Farah Griffin, editor of last year's "A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing" has done it again with "Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends." This wonderful collection of letters between Rebecca Primus and Addie Brown allows readers to enter the world of nineteenth-century black American life. Through the correspondence of these "ordinary" women, the reader gains invaluable perspective on the social, political,economic and religious concerns of blacks around the time of the Civil War. In addition, the correspondence between these two loving friends is a welcome addition to all the historical collections of letters, diaries, etc. that document so well the white American experience while neglecting the experiences of black Americans and others. This collection is important and timely and I applaud Professor Griffin's achievement of giving voice to these two women and the world in which they lived.

Very disappointing book. This is not "co"-respondence--it's two separate sets of letters that don't speak to each other; thus there's no dialogue. Further, the editor did not do her job of cleaning out the underbrush, so the letters are unflaggingly boring in their ungrammatical microdomesticity. Only now and then is there a flash of insight into the broader historical/sociological picture. This book is merely an assemblage of transcriptions interspersed with short bursts of mostly redundant editorial comment. With maps, historical timelines, sidebars, and incisive editing, this book could have been much more. As it is, it reads and feels like no more than a senior high school term paper. Shame on all concerned.

Melanie, Melanie, Melanie,

What is going on here? You are on your summer vacation, and instead of enjoying life at the beach with your son and your paramour, you actually manage to get asked by a murder suspect to help in finding the murderer. You try to beg off, but Alicia insists and you are such a sucker that you take over for the police (speaking of which, were are they in this story?) and start asking questions at each dog show that you attend over the coming weeks. This leads directly to another murder and then you solve the mystery after being threatened yourself. What a way to spend a summer vacation, eh?

This story line plods along. There is no excitement and nothing seems to happen except for descriptions of dog shows and what happens at them plus a few descriptions of some unusual dog breeds plus a lot of conversations with people who are part of the dog show scene. There are some red herrings that the sleuth falls into chasing and some mildly interesting twists in terms of how sexually active the professional dog handlers appear to be (everyone is having affairs with people who are NOT their spouses).

The mystery, when it is eventually solved, involves someone who is determined to get his way and develops this really strange and really weird method of getting the people he is interested in to convert to his way of thinking. To my way of thinking, this was a very weak point for this book as it was so convoluted and unbelievable!

In other Melanie Travis books there was always some humor and some interesting twists in her virtual life that raised the overall book score. This one is totally bereft of anything like that. Too bad.

I am hoping that this is a momentary aberation and that future volumes will be better.

I love this series of books! I'm not a dog person at all. But these books are written in such a manner that you can not help but drawn into a world which is like no other. I wowed my friends this year when I started talking about Standard Poodles during the Westminster.

When I read this author for the first time I was looking for a writer who writes like the Cat Who series. In Laurien Berenson, I found a writer who is more serious, better prepared, and knows the show dog world. I think she is getting better with each book.

I wish I could say I liked this book. But, it's slow, arduous and painful depictions were as agonizing to me as Tom's death. The only saving grace was the actual hatbox letters.

Kate's feelings, her view of nature and the world around her were very real to me.
I felt her loss, her frustations and finally her coming to terms with the hand that she had been dealt.
Looking forward to another great novel by this author.

On Canada's Atlantic shore, over a year has passed since her fifty something husband Tom suddenly died of a heart attack, Kate remains mourning and feeling all alone. Her adult children are long gone and having no Tom to age gracefully with. This makes for long days and longer nights. Only piano lessons during the day provide any relief from the solitude.

Her sister arrives with hatboxes filled with aging yellowing letters that she brought down from the attic of their grandparents' Shepton, Connecticut home. At first Kate ignores the boxes but finally begins to read the correspondence and is stunned. Apparently Grandfather Giles courted her grandmother's sister, who died from diphtheria in 1915. Kate learns more about her ancestors and begins seeing an old family friend Gregory Stiller, who just returned to the province following his son recently committing suicide. As Gregory pushes Kate to go out more, she misses Tom even more while on the other hand the letters make her feel nostalgic and remind her that her family will think lovingly of her and Tom.

THE HATBOX LETTERS is a fabulous character study that showcases a delightful protagonist still grieving the loss of her partner though one year has passed since he died. Kate is a fantastic individual, who makes the story line work as she slowly changes from constant loneliness to middle aged acceptance of the inevitability of life. Over time (and the course of the plot) she begins feeling better as her memories of her grandparents enhanced by the correspondence emphasize that nostalgia is good for cleansing the soul knowing that the next few generations will fondly remember you.

Harriet Klausner

I am a history buff, especially regarding clowns and circuses and I have long had an interest in what came to be know as "The Day the Clowns Cried", the circus fire in Hartford CT in 1944. As such I was really looking forward to reading this book. If the story had not claimed to be fiction that is based on fact, I'd have given it a great review. Unfortunately, the author does what several others (Lloyd Douglas, author of the Robe and The Big Fisherman, comes to mind) have done. She doesn't even care to get her facts straight. This is even more shocking considering she is actually from the town where the real fire took place.

Clown Emmett Kelly was not late; he was on his way to perform on schedule (he and another clown did a comedy routine while the Great Wallendas performed), not as the book suggests an act to keep the audience's attention away from the wild cats being removed from the ring. The entire big top was not coated with parrafin and gasoline, only the roof (although the stitching that held the tent together was easily flammable dry hemp). I could go on and on. My point is this. If you want an accurate picture of what really happened, read "The Circus Fire" by Stewart O'Nan. If you don't care about the historical accuracy and are simply looking for a good mystery book with a shock ending (also not remotely based on fact other than that experts today seem to agree the circus fire was arson), then by all means, enjoy the book. The author really is a good storyteller; she just doesn't care to get her facts straight and should probably steer clear of historical based fiction.

I read this after reading Stewart O'Nan's vastly superior book, "The Circus Fire." Otherwise, the the novel that is the subject of this review would have made little sense.

The problem is that things just seem to happen willy nilly. The fireman casts aside a girl he's about to marry to take up with a scarred survivor of the circus fire. Why? Why was the first girl even introduced? And the novel just goes on from there.

Most irritating, perhaps, is the daughter, Martha, whose only reason for being seems to be to explain to the dumb reader the psychological workings beneath the surface. I got to the point that I just didn't care. Martha reminded me of Scarpatta's niece in a Patricia Cornwell thriller: smarmy, irritating, and ultimately a pain in the you know what.

The denouement of this novel is just too, too pat. Still, it's an improvement over the middle third of the book, which is where we are treated to all the pop psychology. Alas, this could have been so much better if it had been thought out better.

This book springboards from the real-life fire 50 years ago that killed hundreds of people and destroyed the Ringling Bros. circus when it played in Hartford. One child survived, grew up and married a mysteriously solicitous fireman. This is the story, not only of their marriage, but of the secrets that, like one layer of an onion after another, peel off and reveal, finally, the unguessable ending. I couldn't stop turning the pages

One of my gripes with modern "great literature" is the omnipresent dysfunctional family. Well, this book is seventy years old and goes to prove that wacky families are nothing new in literature. It includes the last of the Oakes clan - early Yankee settlers who are now running away to the circus, crazy or simple. They can't farm their own land so enter the Polish immigrants. What follows is a clash of cultures, bigotry and a little romance.

While the plot could be part of contemporary fiction, it is the tone and style that sets this book apart. Some of the writing would not pass any political correctness test. Still, in other ways there is a gentle and calm quality that makes this book quite readable.

The good/bad part of the book is that my book group all agreed on it. We found it a pleasant window into a world that was fairly interesting. Still, it didn't incite much passion in any of us, let alone providing any juicy meat for disagreement.

"True" Baldwin, an aging millionaire, is ordered by his doctor to get out of the Chicago after the 1929 stock market crash takes a toll on his health. His daughter takes him for a drive to Connecticut to visit his birthplace. When True last knew the place, it was a rural farm land that was known for its crops of tobacco. Still having money, he is interested in purchasing a farm house and taking up farming.

True remembers his lost love, Judy Oakes. The Oakes were a historic family -- having owned the largest plantation in the county. However, Judy is long dead but her majestic house still stands. Ferber takes the reader into a long journey into the past concerning the history of this domicile. The story starts in 1700, with some of the first Americans to settle in the area. It covers the growth and struggles of the people there: their interaction with Indians, the harsh winters, and taming the land.

Ferber has done her homework and appears to know the ins and outs of tobacco farming. She also knows the mores and living conditions of the Polish farmers. The primary focus of the book is a love story set in the late 1890's. Judy's adopted niece (a reincarnation of an Oakes who died from exposure in the 1700's) and her hired Polish man, Ondy, fall in love and try to continue the Oakes' family line.

The book was interesting and I found myself absorbed. The characters are colorful and add charm to this book. It certainly wasn't action packed and there wasn't much as far as suspense, but it caught my fancy. I think the book has historical and social interest and I learned about what it must have been like to live in the late 1800's on a Connecticut tobacco farm. The title appears to come from the appreciation of all the events that went into making the Oakes' mansion. Ferber's clear writing is similar to Ellen Glasgow without the feminist overtone.

This would be a good book for someone that was only interested in carriages. We were looking for information on sleighs and the book proved to be a great disappointment since it only had three illustrations of sleighs. The title is very misleading.

Includes a wide variety of carriages for all uses, all presumably once available for purchase. Also includes catalog descriptions of each model, somewhat useful in learning about features on each item. Illustrations appear to be stylized a bit, very attractive. No photographs. The best book of its type I have seen so far.

Connecticut 24/7 was a disappointment to me. The cover proclaims ,
"Amazing Photographs of An Extraordinaty State". I found that approx. 50%
of the photographs did not give someone a "view" of Connecticut , but instead were somewhat "generic" in what they portrayed.
"a child reading a book in bed","a baby looking out a house window",
"children in art class","dogs in the back of a car","a man in a bathroom"
Photos such as these , did not serve to enhance my visual perception of
what Connecticut looks like. Do not get me wrong , "all" the photos are
indeed beautiful. It is just that I expected a book of photos of the
State of Connecticut, to have each photograph show a scence that was
"unique" to Connecicut.

I purchased this book to give to someone else as a gift -- someone from another country who might like to see a little bit of what life is like here in Connecticut. But now that I've seen it, I'm going to order another for myself. This is the most beautiful book that seems to capture the state we're from perfectly. I truly want to leave it out on my coffee table to look at time and time again and I have NEVER said that about a book in my entire life (except for personal photo albums perhaps).

The Connecticut walk book over all is a good resource of the hiking trails in Connecticut. However, it does have flaws. When using this book as a guide be sure to read the description thoroughly. The book tends to jump around in its descriptions. The author discusses one trail and in mid paragraph begins to describe an intersecting side trail. With out missing a beat the author will fall right back to the original trail. This has proven to be a good technique for getting hikers off track and temporarily lost.

The book does provide maps for all the trails it discusses. However, not all the maps have north marked on them and many of them are hand-drawn. Several of the maps or not clear as to which trail is which but can be deciphered by reading the descriptions. A few maps have seemingly been reproduced so many times they are no longer clear. It is much like when you make a copy of a copy of a copy of anything, you start to loose information.

Although the descriptions may jump a little there is a great detail of information in them. These detailed descriptions often provide you with pinpoint accuracy as to where you are on the hike. If combined with purchased topographical maps of the area the book provides you with some outstanding hikes. Some great adventures have been had by many on these hikes and it is recommended you try some out for yourself. Overall the Connecticut Walk Book is an excellent research but the new hike should prepare properly before venturing on a hike.

Each trail in this comprehensive book is described from start to finish with mileage given at each marker. The VERY detailed verbal descriptions of terrain, trail features, and surrounding flora MORE than make up for the maps, which are pretty unhelpful. In fact, for shorter hikes, the excellent descriptions render maps unnecessary (although I NOT endorsing hiking without a map). Although I'm rating this book a 4 out of 5 stars for the poor maps, I HIGHLY recommend this book to any and all hikers - you can get topo maps anywhere, but the top-notch trail guides in this book are hard to come by. Besides, it comes in a small 3-ring binder so you can take out just the pages you need or carry the tough, durable binder with you.

DANCE OF DREAMS is the follow-up book to DANCE TO THE PIPER, but doesn't focus on one of the O'Hurley clan. It has us continuing with the same cast of characters but focusing on Ruth Bannion who was a child in DANCE TO THE PIPER. Also includes is Nickolai Davidov - the former dance partner of Ruth's step-mother, Maddie O'Hurley, and now a big time choreographer. Ruth has always had two loves - dancing and Nickolai. She just needs to convince him that she's no longer a child.

DANCE OF DREAMS deals with fears - fears of the professional dancer and the cut-throat competition of that profession, fear of rejection and the fear of losing true love. With a background of dance practices and performances, Nora Roberts tells a love story that is anything but typical.

At times while reading this book, you'll want to grab one or both of the main characters and shake some common sense into them. However, it's a good story that's well told and brings people into the lime light with whom the reader can relate, even non-dancers.

This book explores the relationship between Ruth Bannion (you may remember her from the story of Seth Bannion and Lindsey) and Nick Davidov (who also appeared in the previous story as Lindsey's dance partner). Ruth gets her dream of dancing on stage in New York and for years both Ruth and Nick have longed for each other. In this story they finally come together. It's short, sweet, and lots of fun!