Maine Books

This was a very informative book about the history and caring for a Maine Coom cat. This is one of three books that I ordered on the subject. I now feel that I am ready to obtain one of these beautiful animals.

A lot of ueful and interesting information in a compact book. A pity that more of the photographs were not in colour rather than B & W.

We recently purchased a Maine Coon kitten and found this book to be very informative. It has given us not only information for the care of our kitten, but gave us background info and info on what to expect as our kitten grows. I highly recommend this book to anyone who owns or is considering getting a Maine Coon.

This book was very informative for Maine Coon owners and lovers. The history and background of this breed was informative and impressive in detail. Maine Coon owners will learn a lot and give them more to admire in their very special cats. A winner of a book.

I bought this book due to the great reviews given by readers, but I cannot see what they are so excited about (Maybe they were the author's friends). The photographs are really poor (blurred, poorly lit) and only a few are in colour. I would have expected at least a clear description (with images) of the different colours Maine Coons available, but again here were only written descriptions. The text runs on an on with no apparent point to make. This was clearly written for purple haired ladies who attend cat shows and go on and on about standards, not a cat enthusiast who would like to learn and appreciate a specific breed.

I liked the fact that the authors repeated some of the info in more than one section of their book. You don't have to guess where to find an answer. (Did they put this under "Basics" or under "Other Features"?) I found several interesting tips that I hadn't seen published anywhere else.

I just received my kindle and i like this device. I love having my books organized, my husband is overjoyed that he does not have to buy more bookshelves. I stopped for lunch and several people wanted to see the kindle and find out what it is like to use one. Many are surprised that newspapers and magazines could also be purchased wirelessly on the kindle. I can't wait for the experimental items to become part of the kindle experience.

I gladly wandered through the online thread gleaning kindle knowhow until this reference book was mentioned. Now I more gladly use my kindle search button with The Amazon Kindle FAQ on my kindle for all the instant answers to my questions. Love the concise "hands on" style.

This Kindle FAQ is a great addition for anyone who has a Kindle. Even though you may know alot of things this FAQ includes, there are alot of new things that you will discover just by reading this.

This FAQ isnt to long and its not to short. It gets straight to the point, and is very helpful. I would highly recommend this to anyone who just got a Kindle or has had one for quite sometime now.

I am neither computer or electronic device savy. I have difficulty text messaging, too slow. This is awesome for someone like me who needs simple directions. It has a wealth of information, great organization and is more informative that the book that comes with the Kindle. I think it is a must have for anyone with a Kindle and I know I will refer to it often as I began my Kindle journey.

This is a great personal history of the "back to the land" movement of the 70s and what happened to the folks who went there. I only wish there were a History Channel video version so I could show it to my younger friends who don't ever seem to have time to read. Some are, unfortunately, considering a similar path with many of the same unrealistic expectations. They call it "sustainability" these days but to far too many that buzzword is nothing more than the same old simplicity-lust that rears its longing head every every now and then in complex cultures. There is surely some path to a less hectic, more meaningful, more holistic life to be had than the conventional materialistic overachiever society we are (once again) ensconced in but my tongue-in-cheek advice to young friends, largely ignored, has been: "The 'simple life' isn't all that simple, the 'natural life' doesn't occur naturally, and the only real way to get 'back to the land' is through a six foot hole in the earth."

The author illustrates through stories about the lives of those who were there just how difficult it was to jump back into a more self-sufficient country life, especially as we had children who needed more social interfaces. Or as we just realized that getting sick, injured, and just plain older and feebler away from the protective elements of mainstream culture wasn't as great as it seemed when we were young, invincible, and blind with our own ideals. Maybe a few young people will actually read this book before taking a similar plunge and be better off for it. Forewarned is forearmed after all. I'd like to hope the new generation will find itself more prepared to create a better life by paying attention to what has gone before and what failed and succeeded.

Back in the 70's, I never dropped out of society and lived on the land, but I have friends that did .. and while they have some "conveniences" these days, to some degree they still lead the simple life. I am very much into voluntary simplicity but I never felt it should be so extreme. This was an awesome read that brought back many wonderful memories. At times, I was confused as to whether the author was talking first person or if she was quoting an interviewee, but despite that, the author did a great job of illustrating why folks dropped out and then what influences led them to come back to mainstream. Some of this I was exposed to ... some of this I lived ... but all of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed and I think you will, too.

Like an earlier reviewer stated, take it with a grain of salt. It is evident in this book that the author has a lot of nagative energy from her experiences attempting to homestead. It is well written, intersting and thought provoking. This book is worth reading if you would like a prespective of why homesteading did not work for many people.

One of the better books by former Hippies about the 60's and 70's. Well written and insightful. If you are really interested in the back to the land phenomenon and what it was really like this is highly recommended. If you want a light, "and then we all got stoned" sort of retrospective this will be too analytical but still interesting.

As oil and natural gas decline, many of us will have to go back to the land. There is something to learn from those who have tried this in the past. Although much has been said about why communes and Utopian communities failed, little has been written about the fate of individual homesteaders.

Part 1 is a book review of Agnew's very insightful history of this movement, and Part 2 is why I believe we need to go back to the land again and how to do it right this time given the problems and failures of homesteading in the `70s.

Part 1. Review of Agnew's "Back From the Land"

Eleanor Agnew, in her 2004 book, "Back from the Land. How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back", discusses the millions of young adults who tried homesteading. Agnew speaks from experience -- she went back to the land with her husband and two boys in Troy, Maine.

Agnew estimates between 750,000 and one million people dwelled on communes then. Millions more went back to the land independently. On the whole the movement consisted of educated, young, white, middle class men and women.

Their rejection of the current system wouldn't have been possible if the overall economy hadn't been so wealthy. It was a luxury to be able to experiment.

There were many reasons people went back to the land. The value system of American society was repulsive to many. They abhorred the rat race, boring jobs, crowds, the corrupt establishment; consumerism, destruction of wilderness, and advertising to get people to buy things they didn't need. Some also felt the need to "redeem their souls" because they'd done nothing to deserve the abundance they'd experienced. America has a long tradition of associating virtue with moderation, hard work, self-denial, and simple living. Many associated farming with the romantic notion of self-sufficient pioneers.

The oil crisis in 1973 led some to believe that the capitalist system was in imminent danger of collapse, so going back to the land would be a matter of survival.

Homesteaders wanted to invent a new and better civilization based on community, healthy food, a love of nature, and avoidance of toxic chemicals.

Many, if not most, were unrealistic about what it would take to make the urban to country transition.

Raising animals meant no days off, and the joy of raising them was shattered when they were slaughtered.

Farming was hard. Some bought land that was mostly rocks, which made building homes and starting gardens very hard. Good topsoil was washed away in storms. Then there were assaults by flies and no-see-ums, blistered hands, and aching muscles while tending crops, which in the end might be lost to drought, frost, hail, and pests. The surviving crops required hard work to harvest and prepare for storage.

In the winter, scraping ice off floors and walls, chopping wood, frozen pipes, broken cars, icy paths and roads, and uncovered wood piles frozen into a block of ice added to the discomfort and hard work.

Fires could be a problem if the wood hadn't been aged long enough - at least a year - because it didn't burn well and added creosote to the chimney - a fire hazard.

There were many new skills to master. Building a home, clearing the land, digging holes for the foundation through rock, fixing tractors, cars, chainsaws, chasing down escaped farm animals, cooking with wood, and canning food are just a few of the many skills needed to successfully homestead.

Although many had realized they'd be cash poor on the land, they hadn't thought of this as being real poverty. After all, they'd grow their own food, build their own homes, and trade with other community members for anything missing.

But they found out they couldn't be independent of the outside economy. Isolation meant even more dependence on cars, which were absolutely essential in the country, and repairs were expensive. People couldn't grow all of their own food and needed to get some items at the supermarket. And just about everything required money on the farm: seeds, animals, stoves, and so on.

People and publications made it seem easy to live off the land

Books like "Independence on a 5-acre Farm" made it seem like it was no big deal to go back to the land. Mother Earth News had articles such as "Raise Worms for Fun and Profit" that misled people into thinking they'd earn enough money on the farm to pay for necessities.

Eliot Coleman told people that they didn't need health insurance, and since everyone was young, healthy, and thought insurance companies were evil, they were glad to opt out. Agnew devotes a hair-raising chapter to how wrong Coleman was - just because you're young doesn't mean there won't be a need for emergency care, especially on a farm doing heavy manual labor, where the odds are many times higher than an office job that an accident will occur.

Health care was often poor in the country - there weren't enough doctors per capita.
Those who thought they could doctor themselves with herbs were sometimes dead wrong. Comfrey, which was supposed to cure just about everything, turns out to have liver damaging and carcinogenic effects. An alternative doctor prescribed Chinese herb cocktails that led to total kidney destruction in 100 women. Natural is not always better.

Scott and Helen Nearing were the role models for the back-to-the-land community. They built an ideal homestead working four hours a day, spending the rest of their time reading, playing music, etc. They made it seem possible to do this with very little cash.
But the Nearings made money from speaking, writing books, and donations. They had many followers who worked on their farm free of charge.

Thoreau made it sound easy to build a cabin and live in the wilderness. But the truth is, he was two miles from town, where he went nearly every day and visited friends, family, and where he dined out often.

Back From the Land - Why did people leave?

Economics. Many idealists had one-dimensional ideas about capitalism, that it was nothing but ruthlessness, and that they could avoid the capitalist system by becoming self-sufficient.

But Copthorne Macdonald believes alternative society never got large enough to separate from the mainstream society. You had to buy your tools at the hardware store since there weren't enough people making them on forges. The basic infrastructure of the economy forced people to buy outside the alternative lifestyle community. The bottom line is that small economies like communes and homesteads don't have the "size, complexity, cash flow, or diversity of goods and services to survive very well independently".

Doing something at home didn't pay well either. One farmer worked out he was making about ten cents an hour by the time he'd grown wheat and turned it into flour.

People had confused consumerism with cash - but even a sparse existence requires goods that can't be made or grown on the homestead.

To afford necessities and improvements, people found they had to take jobs that were boring, low paying, with no benefits, and sometimes dangerous. Those who'd thought their middle class careers were hard or dull discovered otherwise. Since most lived far out in the country, it wasn't usually possible to return to abandoned careers. By leaving homesteads to work outside, they lost the time and energy needed to make themselves self-sufficient - time versus money. They needed time to build homes and garden, but they needed money to buy cement and garden tools.

Homesteads failed as they tipped towards more time spent off the farm working than improving the homestead. People began to realize that rather than being homesteaders with outside jobs, they had awful jobs and happened to own a homestead. So many decided to return to the middle-class high-paying, rewarding careers they'd abandoned.

And many had no choice but to leave the land - they were bankrupt, out of savings if not deeply in debt. Many couples had children, and didn't feel it was fair to them to lead isolated lives on farms, far from good schools.

Divorce. Despite love being what the counterculture was all about, the reality of never-ending hard work, poverty, and lack of privacy in small cabins took a toll on marriages.
When a marriage failed, one partner usually had to quit the land and go back to civilization. The other partner often found someone who didn't want to homestead, or found no one and couldn't cope with all the work alone.

Commune failures. Meanwhile, people on communes were returning as well. Agnew lists these reasons for commune failures: lack of clear goals and structures, aggravations of shared space, irritating personal habits, and not liking each other once acquainted. Factions developed over all sorts of things - religion, politics, etc.

The "unanimous consent" nature of decisions also caused problems - either there was a hung jury or underground resistance. Mutual consent favors the verbally aggressive and quiet people lose out, but giving in all the time soon made the silent ones resentful.

New members threw communes off balance if they weren't screened well enough to see if they fit in.

Probably the most important factor that broke communes up was the resentment hard workers felt for slackers. People disagreed about work contributions and money making efforts. Those who worked hard didn't want to share money with those who didn't, and tried to get shirkers to work, but there was no way to enforce it, so these measures failed.

The Malthusian Die-off didn't happen. Back-to-the-landers hoped to escape the famine, overpopulation, war, and chaos that threatened to result from energy shortages and ecological destruction. But life went on, and friends and family on the outside were having it much easier, having more fun, living in warm homes, and leading far more interesting and intellectual lives in cities.

Fatigue. The novelty and idealism of hauling spring water in heavy buckets over rough ground, endlessly chopping wood, feeding fires all night and other hardships grew thin.

Conclusion. According to Jeffrey Jacob's research on the success rate of back-to-the-landers, only 3% subsisted on a combination of cash crops and bartering, only 2% through "intensive cultivation of cash crops". The others all found themselves preoccupied with money:
44% worked full-time away from homesteads
18% had pensions and investments
17% survived on part-time or seasonal work
15% got their income from businesses they could run from home

In the end they found they had to participate in the economy, capitalism infused every aspect of life and was beyond overthrowing or disregarding.

Part 2. Peak Energy: Time to Go Back Again

In the `70s, ecology, energy, population, and environment were common topics of conversation. Not anymore. It seems as if institutions and people have retreated from reality and reason. Environmental groups have abandoned population as an issue, even though they know it's responsible for all of the issues they're seeking donations for. In social networks, there's a taboo against discussion of ecological issues--the social pressures are to be witty and entertaining, yet another insidious influence of TV.

Most young people are aware they're being handed a crummy planet, but they have a vague sense of unease, not a fine-tuned understanding of the situation, because the vast majority don't read due to sedentary computer games, TV, and cell phones.

There's little awareness, as there was in the `70s, that a back to the land movement is even needed. If there were, would Generation Y, overweight and suffering from nature deficit disorder, be willing to be at the forefront of a growing return to agriculture?

Those who are aware, and would like to go back to the land, usually can't afford to buy a farm. Land is more expensive now than in the 70's because there are 100 million more of us, the majority immigrants and their children. We are losing land from development, erosion, and population at a rate where there won't be any crop land in 140 years.

Population has increased 2% a year since 1950, a rate 133 times faster than before fossil fuels powered civilization.
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One of the reasons we were even able to grow from 100 to 300 million people in only a century was to shift to vehicles from oxen and horses, which did the most brutal farm work and transportation. Not having to pasture oxen and horses on at least two acres per animal for labor and transport freed up a lot of land, which was then used to grow food for people and build suburbia on instead.

What needs to be done

Hirsch pointed out that you'd want to prepare for Peak Oil 30 years ahead of time with heavy oil, gas-to-liquids & liquefied natural gas, enhanced oil recovery, efficient vehicles, and coal liquids to mitigate the most critical weakness in our infrastructure: the utter dependence of combustion engines on liquid oil.

We don't have an alternative liquid fuel to replace oil, and it doesn't look like we'll have one for over a decade, if ever. Chris Somerville, head of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the joint $500 million collaboration between BP, U.C. Berkeley, LBNL, and the University of Illinois, has ruled out ethanol or biodiesel as potential biomass fuels. Instead, EBI is focused on researching how to make cellulosic biofuels from bio-diverse grasses with end-products of gasoline and diesel. Such fuels are at least 15 years away since there are so many problems to overcome. Dr. Somerville thought biofuels had more promise than solar and other alternatives (slides and lecture here).

Nearly everyone assumes that the next step is to throw huge amounts of money at energy research and building coal liquefaction and nuclear power plants, windmills, solar panels, and so on. Yet if all of the problems in all of these energy sources were solved today, there were enough engineers, and population growth stopped, it would still take decades to scale up enough to provide the same energy fossil fuels provide now.

And as Congressman Bartlett has pointed out, there's no point to all-out energy projects - because if we succeed, the population will double again, and the number of people experiencing hardship when the fuel runs out yet again will be even greater. Not to mention the continued destruction of fisheries, forests, and aquifers and potential extinction of humankind and other species from climate change by burning coal.

Even if an energy "Manhattan project" is attempted, we will also need to employ more people in agriculture to make up for the coming shortfall in energy. Changing agricultural methods and infrastructure takes decades as well.

The downshift from an industrial to an agricultural society must be funded by both government and private capital, because a huge amount of capital is needed.

Government needs to be in the driver's seat, since energy will need to be allocated across many other essential services besides agriculture, such as water purification, delivery, and treatment, garbage collection, military and police, roads, disaster recovery, and to keep our poorly maintained infrastructure from failing.

Educating and retraining people for coping with energy descent is essential. But since less than ten percent of Americans are scientifically literate, and any politicians who tried to educate Americans on how serious our energy and population situation is wouldn't get re-elected, it's unlikely any action will be taken at the top. The necessary changes and awareness will have to come from a grass roots movement of self-educated citizens.

The local food movement is one such effort. Many people are buying local organic food to encourage organic farming, assuming that capitalism will take care of the situation, because if we pay more for organic food, more people will become organic farmers.

But it's likely that once energy shocks hit, there'll be massive unemployment. People will have a hard time affording enough food, let alone farm land.

The local food movement also ignores the potentially higher amount of energy used to deliver local food. Mariola, in his paper "The Local Industrial Complex? Questioning the Sustainability of Local Foods", points out that energy used to move a large amount of food by ship or rail is probably less, due to economies of scale, than having hundreds of local farmers move tiny amounts of food to local markets which thousands of people drive to. Perhaps if customers walked, biked, took mass transit, the energy balance might be better, this needs to be researched further.

The most important lesson learned from the previous back-to-the-land movement is that we are all part of the capitalist system, and consequently, a new organic farming movement will not survive without government help. Large, industrial farms now depend on government help to some extent, and receive billions of dollars in subsidies. Over 5 million farmers were driven out of business against their will in the last century as farmers were forced to get bigger or go out of business. Now there are only 2 million farms left.

So the most critical reform would be to shift subsidies to organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and small farms, and to stop all development of prime farmland.

Making a downshift to agriculture will take many years to:
* Train enough people in soil science, plant propagation, integrated pest management, etc for outreach to farms to make the industrial-to-organic transition
* Shift people from ecologically unsustainable regions to food producing areas
* Improve topsoil. Industrial farming has ruined soil structure and nutrition. It will take at least five years to for soil to recover before organic food production gets back to previous levels.
* The learning curve for organic farming done in a sustainable way can take up to ten years.
* Plant forests to provide firewood, lumber, etc

The downshift needs to start now to mitigate suffering. Our nation needs to focus on a return to agriculture, not new energy infrastructure. To stay under the depletion curve, the number of people returning to the land to grow and distribute food needs to steadily increase.

As far as reducing the energy used in agriculture, we can start now by cutting back on calories, eat a vegetarian diet, grow victory gardens, use less packaging, etc. David Pimentel has a paper that will be published soon on how to cut the energy used in agriculture by half.

We need university students to major in agricultural disciplines, and above all, to try to shift mostly petrochemical and mechanization-oriented agriculture departments to teaching and researching sustainable farming methods. Cuba's success in coping with their downturn was partly due to having enough people trained in organic farming to train petrochemical farmers how to switch to organic methods.

The huge number of agricultural students we need doesn't exist. The Los Angeles Times article, "Agriculture schools Sprucing up their image", says that many professional agriculture workers in soil science, pest management, and growing crops are about to retire, but enrollment in these areas is declining.

Instead, students are majoring in professions that can easily be off-shored and will be useless in a world of declining energy.

Given the short window of time we have left, a better alternative than university agriculture departments would be John Jeavon's bio-intensive workshops, Rodale Institute programs, and gaining experience on sustainable organic farms (not all organic farms grow food with topsoil sustaining methods).

This time around, the model to follow for a group endeavor is already here - Community Supported Agriculture. Lazy members who don't farm their tract will earn far less than hard-working members. Pooling resources will be an advantage over individual farms, if the members can learn to get along, cooperate, and select good leaders.

CSA's and homesteads should be forming now, with a government agency acting as the central agent for connecting people who want to farm, providing agricultural scholarships, training, outreach, buying land and loaning money to farmers, and so on.

It will not be simple to make the transition. The easiest path is to ration the remaining oil to essential services like agriculture and continuing on as usual, not only to maintain social order, but to have food to export in exchange for oil and natural gas based fertilizers. Land will continue to be concentrated in a few hands, pushing society towards feudalism and fascism as people work for minimal wages to survive. Business as usual, until energy shortages cause sudden dislocations, leads to civil wars and collapse.

If the U-turn can start now, there's a better chance of remaining a strong democratic nation, and to finally do what we always should have done: live within our means -- what the ecosystem can provide sustainably.

There's no point trying to prepare for energy descent and climate change if the current levels of immigration, birth rate, and loss of prime farm land continues.

Everyone needs to get involved, because we're a social, cooperative species, utterly dependent on each other as much as bees or ants are. Peter Corning's brilliant book, "Nature's Magic", shows that synergy and cooperation at group levels were far more important in the emergence of homo sapiens than competition between individuals. We must all pull together and work towards the best possible future we can imagine, because we're all in this together.

It would be better if people chose an agricultural future with hope and courage. Farming can be an immensely satisfying and rewarding way of life. It would be best for democracy and preserving our remaining resources if Americans could embrace reality and take appropriate back-to-the-land action.

So far, it's only 2 books in the series, but I have really enjoyed reading both of them. I love how the author has worked in all the characters and hope for more development among them in future books. I look forward to the next Gray Whale Inn book.

This was a great read .. Am looking forward to more book's by this author .

I enjoyed the first book in this series (Murder on the Rocks) very much. This second offering does a great job of giving more background on the Cranberry Island residents and Natalie herself but the mystery itself falls flat. While the author throws around a lot of suspicion, the outcome itself seems quite random.

Its hard to say more without giving too much away (I hate reviews that do that) so I'll finish by saying I would recommend this if you really liked the first one and that I would read a third one if the author chooses to keep the series going.

I stumbled across the previous (and first) book in the "Gray Whale Inn" series -- "Murder on the Rocks" -- when looking at my Amazon recommendations. It looked so incredibly good, that I immediately picked up that book as well as this one (the second in the series). What a hit !!! Amazon didn't steer me wrong.

If you love cozy mysteries, you'll love this one ! I think it is one of the most well-done series I have read in awhile and I compare it to Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse mysteries. The location of Cranberry Island, Maine is what really makes the book. The writing is so descriptive that I expected to see the coast of Maine outside my window when a stopped reading for a moment. The descriptions of the setting are so intriging that I actually spent some time looking on Google for information on the Cranberry Islands --- I was that fascinated!

If you love a good mystery --- If you love the coast of Maine ---- If you love B&B's ----- this series is for you !!!!

Natalie Barnes is facing the beginnings of the off season. With few bookings at her bed and breakfast over the winter months, she's hoping to make ends meet. But that soon becomes the least of her worries. A stranger noise is waking her up in the middle of the night. Is her inn haunted? Her ex-fiancee has shown up as a guest, wanting another chance at making their relationship work.

But more troubling is the death of Polly Sarkes. Polly had lived on the island her entire life and helped with the laundry at the Gray Whale Inn. When she appears to vanish, Natalie goes to her house and finds her dead, an apparent suicide. At least that's what the sheriff quickly rules it, but Natalie isn't so sure. Her friend had too much life. Beside, she was in the middle of packing a suitcase. Natalie quickly learns that Polly was the only hold out in a deal to sell some land for a new development. Was that the motive for her murder?

I enjoyed the first in this series, so I was looking forward to this one. I was glad to join these characters again. After two books, they already feel like old friends. And the recipes at the back sound wonderful again.

On the whole, the plot was great with plenty of twists that kept me turning pages. I do have a couple complaints about it, however. Murder related to development on the island was the plot of book number one. I was disappointed to see that play such a prominent part of this book. Additionally, the ending, while satisfying, was rushed.

These complaints weren't enough to keep me from enjoying the book, however. I'm already booking my next stay at the Gray Whale Inn.

Monique St. Cyr dreams of becoming an investigative reporter, but currently works the obituary column for the Portland Enquirer. Next door lives her mother Anne Marie, who is better known as erotic fiction writer Busty Galore. As Busty, Anne Marie uses her daughter's identity to seem sexier and to obtain information on online dating for her new novel. One day after Monique leaves for work, Anne Marie enters her daughter's house to check the email as she put out a feeler for men to contact Monique. However, Monique comes home, hears a noise, panics and calls 911. Police officer Jake Dube answers the call that turns out to be a false alarm.

Jake starts dating Monique, as he is very attracted to her. To stay out of trouble at work, Monique concocts a plot where she pretends to have a street informer looking for money for information. Her editor funds her to buy the information. Monique hides her loot in a birdcage, but her foul-mouthed fowl chews the money into pieces. As she struggles to find a survival path, Monique dives from one problem into a deeper dilemma while losing Jake because the man she loves no longer trusts her.

Though the lies told by Monique will bother some readers, this chick lit tale is enhanced by the lead character's online dating fiasco. Jake is a wonderful hunk and Monique's mother is a work of art, but the tale belongs to the lead heroine who goes at one speed: full warp into an abyss of spiraling trouble regardless of personal consequences.

Harriet Klausner

Monique St. Cyr dreams of becoming an investigative reporter, but currently works the obituary column for the Portland Enquirer. Next door lives her mother Anne Marie, who is better known as erotic fiction writer Busty Galore. As Busty, Anne Marie uses her daughter's identity to seem sexier and to obtain information on online dating for her new novel. One day after Monique leaves for work, Anne Marie enters her daughter's house to check the email as she put out a feeler for men to contact Monique. However, Monique comes home, hears a noise, panics and calls 911. Police officer Jake Dube answers the call that turns out to be a false alarm.

Jake starts dating Monique, as he is very attracted to her. To stay out of trouble at work, Monique concocts a plot where she pretends to have a street informer looking for money for information. Her editor funds her to buy the information. Monique hides her loot in a birdcage, but her foul-mouthed fowl chews the money into pieces. As she struggles to find a survival path, Monique dives from one problem into a deeper dilemma while losing Jake because the man she loves no longer trusts her.

Though the lies told by Monique will bother some readers, this chick lit tale is enhanced by the lead character's online dating fiasco. Jake is a wonderful hunk and Monique's mother is a work of art, but the tale belongs to the lead heroine who goes at one speed: full warp into an abyss of spiraling trouble regardless of personal consequences.

Harriet Klausner

Getting Personal is a well written book. I haven't read a book I've enjoyed so much in such a long time. I like Monique and how she gets into trouble without trying. The parrot gives us a few good laughs too.

Her mother is so much like all mothers who want the best for their children. It's how she went about it that kept me laughing all the way through.

I hope we see more of Monique in the future!

What a funny book! I could not put it down for a minute. I picked it up one day, read a couple of paragraphs at random, and was hooked. A book that can make you laugh out loud, over and over,...well, in my estimation, that's a good book . I have recommended this book to everyone I know. Don't miss it, you will be sorry you did.

Sequel! Sequel!

GETTING PERSONAL is a delightful reading experience. It is a funny book with some suprises and human blunders. Monique is a very real character who comes alive under the author's pen and makes one feel as if you know her. Her relationship with her mother is one of respect and frustration. Other relationships ( with her boss, best friend and boyfriend )are both filled with surprises and humorous errors; but remain quite believable. I really enjoyed the book.

I live on Mt. Desert Island so I guess I'm not captivated by Mr. Sterba's anthropological examination of his brief stays each year on MDI. I read the book while traveling to capture that 'sense of place' I was missing while away from MDI. That's about the only thing I find captivating about the book.

There is no apparent organization to the rambling narrative which touches on wealthy but non-ostentatious 'summer people' and the 'quaint ways' of the locals. Random observations, lots of words in 'quotes'...kind of irritating. A few factual errors about directions and where things are located (surprising for a reporter) won't bother the average reader.

I found the book disorganized and saccharin, but I'm happy that Mr. Sterba is happy.

I just happened to pick this book off the library shelf and really enjoyed the whole thing. Most of the story is set in Maine and now I would like to visit that area. The author's mother lives just afew miles from me so I could relate well to that part of the story. Other parts of the book talked about New York and food, what's not to like!
Good story, well told.

There are not enough words to say how much I enjoyed this book. For anyone that loves Maine, seafood, politics, humor and history, this is a book you will devour. Having spent time vacationing in Maine while growing up, Jim Sterba's descriptions brought some of my favorite childhood memories back to me. As an avid reader of the New Yorker, I will now always, with a smile, think of the New Yorker as Toi Lit.

This is the best kind of travel memoir -- it has recipes, witty anecdotes and characters, natural and social histories, and enchanting descriptions of the land, sea, and sky. Oh yes, and lessons in battling house mice, an overabundance of tomatoes, and the encroachment of crass non-natives. But mostly, it has a narrator whose personal contributions to all of the above make it an even richer experience. Sterba has a journalist's innate curiosity about everything, a journalist's objective stance, and a journalist's heart -- he knows, in other words, wehere the stories lie and he knows how to spin them. He makes you want to know the people as well as the place. Frankie's Place reminds me of Peter Mayle's Provence stories, only less contrived.

Jim Sterba's Frankie's Place is an engaging autobiographical sketch with at least a little something for almost everyone: from an Horatio Alger story and the revival of a fractured family, to the history of seacoast Maine (Mount Desert), to favorite recipes, to a too brief recounting of his quite brilliant career as a NYTimes and WSJ reporter. What resonates most is his infectious delight when he at long last relinquishes the vagabond life for matrimony and a home of one's own -- albeit shared with various in-laws and sundry rodents. It's a love story for the final nesting of a man who came in from the cold.

I couldn't help but wish that Frankie, the historian Francis FitzGerald, could have become more than an elusive presence, but I could understand his need to respect her privacy. (That is the way of the Wasps.)

Such a beautiful story of a little girl. Both boys and girls in my class enjoyed this book. Nominated for Massachusetts Children's Book Award for 2006-07.

I read a good book titled Gifts form the Sea by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. It is a realistic fiction book set in the 1850's of the coast of Maine at a lighthouse on Devil's Rock.
The main characters in this story were Quila, Papa and Cecelia (Celia for short). Quila and Papa Mackinnon take care of Cecelia who they found in between two mattresses tied together. Cecelia means "a gift from the sea" so this name fits her perfectly. Quila is really sad, because her mother had just died, so Cecelia seems to fill in the hole that was left by Quila's mom. Two years later, the sea brings another gift but this one may tear a hole in Quila's heart and new family.
My favorite part of the book was when Quila helped heal a bird that had crashed into they're lighthouse. This was my favorite part because it shows how much Quila really cares about nature, and other living things.
I really liked this book because everything was connected in the story, and this made it easy to understand.
I would recommend this book to people who like the ocean and like good connections. I would recommend this book to people of all ages because it really was an enjoyable book.

I read a great Nutmeg book called Gifts From the Sea, by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. The story takes place at a lighthouse on Devils Rock near Maine.

Gifts From the Sea is about a girl named Aquila Jane MacKinnon who is 12 years old and lives in the Devils Rock lighthouse with her father. Aquila had a mom who had just recently died and was still in mourning. When a baby is found in the sea they name her Cecelia, it means a gift from the sea.

The problem occurs when a lady came to Devils rock to mourn for her sister who had a boat crash 2 years ago. That was when Cecelia was found. Aquila and her father struggle to tell the woman the truth about Cecelia. But when they do.....

My favorite part of the story is when the author explains how much the baby lifts their hearts and help them to not be to sad about Aquila's mother. This part just shows how much fun babies can be, and how much work they can be.

I like this book and would give it 5 stars even though it was kind of an easy read, but it was still a wonderful book. I would recommend this to all young readers, from 3rd grade to 5th grade. Anybody can read it, but if you are older, it might be a little easy.

I read a fantastic book titled Gifts from the Sea, by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. It's a sorrowful book that takes place in 1854-1856 on an island in Maine.
This book is about a twelve-year-old girl named Quila MacKinnon, who lives with her father and mother on Devils Rock. Her father is the lighthouse keeper so they live in the lighthouse, and can't leave it unattended. One day, Quila's mother gets very sick, but the father can't get help for he's not allowed to leave his job. After the death of Quila's mother, Quila is left with doing all the work, and her father, who has now lost his love, will never play another note on his fiddle again.
Quila's life is very lonely until one day after a huge storm Quila finds two mattresses strapped together wash up on shore, and inside a baby! This baby changes her and her fathers' life dramatically, and heals their broken hearts from the past. They name her Cecelia meaning "A gift from the sea", but call her Celia for short.
The main problem occurs in this book when two years later the sea brings another gift of a family member of Celia's, which may take Celia away. Quila has to find a way to stop this member of taking her only happiness.
I found this book very sad, but fulfilling too. This book moved my heart, and made me see how unlucky some people are. My favorite part of this book was when Quila's father start's playing the fiddle again. This was my favorite part because it made me feel glad that Quila's father finally stopped moping about his wife's death.
I think that Celia really grew on Quila, and helped her get by her mother's passing. I'd give this book 5 stars because it may be short, but the author did a fantastic job on making me want to read more.

Gifts From the Sea by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock takes place at Maine's coastline. It is set in the 1840's at Devil's Rock lighthouse.

Quila, Papa and Celia are the main characters in this book. Quila's mother just died so she is really sad and her father is very quiet. One day when Quila is exploring the beach she sees a two mattresses tied together floating on the water. In between the two mattresses is a little baby who they name Cecelia (Celia for short). Celia fills most of the hole left in Quila's heart from her mother's death. Two years after Quila found Celia the ocean brings something that could tear Quila's heart and new family apart once again.

I don't really have a favorite part in this book. One of the parts that I did like though was when Quila told Celia her favorite story so that she would go to sleep. I liked this part because the story that she told her had many details and it was very interesting.

I think that this book was okay. It was a very quick read and the start of the book wasn't very exciting. Also I think that I would much rather read a book about the story that Quila told Celia than this actual book. I would recommend this book to younger people because I think that they would enjoy it a lot more. I think one reason that I didn't like this book was because it was under my reading level.

Mr. Woodard takes on a large task wearing three distinct hats here: the historian, the environmentalist and finally the passionate insider. He approaches this project as a native son of a small isolated costal community and this experience frames the project and gives the reader access to what appears to be a closed world to those of us 'from away', in my case being far away in New York City.
The first half of the book explores the history of the Maine coast and provides a very interesting examination of the extremely difficult and often treacherous existence of the first settlers of the Maine coast. It's all documented in a thoroughly readable fashion: the first fishing colonies, settlers behaving badly towards the Native American communities, the rebelliousness of the settlers directed at the often unwanted influence from the southern New England colonists.
The writing is engaging, with just enough detail for the non-historian reader, with plenty of references appended.
The second part for the book deals with ecological concerns: the over-fishing in the Gulf of Maine and subsequent destruction of the fishing stock, the rise of lobstering and current issues confronting the remaining coastal fisherman as they attempt to mainatin their traditional livelihood while protecting the lobster population.
The last chapter addresses the profound challenges of gentrification of the coastal communities and touches briefly on community planning issues. I would have like to see this part of the book expanded, perhaps at the expense of some of the oceanographic details.
I approached this book as a seasonal visitor who has returned to Mt Desert Island almost annually since 1978 and also spent some time in York county vacationing. This book showed me how those two areas of the coast have very different histories, economic challenges and development issues.
I'm sure that when I return to the coast next summer, I will be seeing the people and places I visit with a much more informed and nuanced perspective. Of course, I will always be 'from away' but will now understand my place and how I am seen by the natives much more clearly.

This is an absolute must read for any Maineac like me. Highly readable. Written with style, grace, flair and humor. The total opposite of a dense historical tome. Full of fascinating history. Quite wonderful.

This book is a page turner I couldn't put down. Beautifully written, it does a thorough job of concisely telling the history of coastal Maine and, by so doing, gives us a start on the history of New England. It takes us from the earliest settlers to today, and even if one has, as I have, lived on the coast of Maine for close to 40 years, one can learn from the book. Put it together with "Islanders" by Virginia Thorndike, and you have a picture of one of the last best places on earth. Please don't let these books persuade you to move here!

is a all encompassing look at mid coast Maine, both present day and historically. It took me back to High School US history and made the French Indian wars come alive. Hear about modern day lobster pirates from of all places, "Friendship" invading a small island's lobster fields.

Look ahead for what is in store for a severely depleted fishery
then chuckle when a hidden camera reveals the secret life of lobster and captor. Great read, it belongs in your Maine libary.

After finishing the first short section, my first thought was that the book was a bit of a lightweight -- at best, a paperback to read while flying across the Atlantic. But when I got to the second section which filled in many of the historical gaps -- particularly the "why's" -- from Elizabethan England to the Pilgrims to the modern era, I realized how interesting this book really was. Anyone who enjoys travelogues will enjoy this book; perhaps you need to have visited Maine at least once or have some connection to the state, but if you do read it, you will learn much more about the history of the western world than the title suggests.

These trips taken before the Civil War, Thoreau makes the journey that people dream of today. He had to be one of the first conservationists, noting that killing animals indiscrimenatly and over-harvesting the forest was a bad thing. Yet even back then he recounts seeing these practices being done. It was fun to follow his trail on the Gazetteer, and find the names of the rivers and lakes that the Indians had given them.

Published posthumously, this volume lacks some cohesiveness as it is divided into 3 separate trips. Thoreau is a master of blending materials from different experiences into one single cohesive and consistent volume -- he did that in Walden (which gives one the feel of one year even though he lived there for about two years) and Cape Code (which gives one the feel of one long walk, even though the material is from several trips), so it makes me wonder what he could have done had he been able to finish this book in his lifetime?

That being said, it is still a great book. Thoreau's observations of nature and of Native American people are vivid, his cry for conservation profound and still resonating. There are also sparks of the dry New England humor here and there, making it a very enjoyable read. One only wishes that he had lived longer and given us more -- what if he had been to the Rockies, the desert southwest? It gives me chills just thinking about it.

In a sense this is a travelogue, but I don't think we should be too critical in judging it -- not every book has to be Walden, and there can only be one Walden after all. It is a travelogue with authentic Thoreau flavor. I would gladly take 10 more travelogues like this one if only I could.

What a shame most people will never get beyond Walden...

This title is a joy and stands on its own. First up is a short piece about an early ascent of Ktaadn, followed by a longer one on the Allegash & East Branch. If you read nothing else, open it to the middle of pg 22 (& ends on 23). It will take 1 minute and enthrall you with observations and the call of the Wild Boreal North Woods as they were long before roads or even trails and certainly before the great northern paper companies cut their unending swaths through virgin lands. His reflections on the ponds and natives (the Brookies) are as intimate and priceless as the jewels themselves. His opine references to the Greeks are as relevant today as they were then or 4,000 years ago. I first came across a copy in the White House Library (at a dinner reception i could not resist seeing what comforted our leaders during long & troubled nights). It took me several years to track down a copy but it was worth the process.

Do not read this and compare it to Walden or as a some window into Thoreau, but for sheer joy of kicking off the canoe at Telos and the wonder of the north country.

"The Maine Woods" relates three separate trips Henry Thoreau made to the Mount Katahdin and Allagash Wilderness Waterway region of Maine At 29 years old in 1846, at 36 years old in 1853, and at 40 years old in 1857. In each of the stories he travels with a friend by rail, steamboat, and coach to the starting point, hires a guide, and embarks on his adventure. Even for a reader familiar with the region, it is essential to keep a map handy to follow the author in his travels. In the first trip he hires a local outfitter as a guide, and poles up the West Branch of the Penobscot River, across lakes and up streams, as close to Mt. Katahdin as he can get, then climbs to the summit of what the Indians called Ktaadn, or "highest land," and now called Mt. Katahdin. His route up the mountain approximated what we now know as the Abol trail, though with no trail to follow, his experience was very different from today's Abol daypacker. He summited on a cloudy day, and missed out on the breathtaking views, though he did get infected with the spiritual bug, and he waxes philosophical as he makes his way back down. Thoreau's enduring memory of the region is "the continuousness of the forest." Thanks to the generous 209,501 acre gift of one of Maine's Governors, Percival Baxter, that memory of Thoreau's is also likely to be yours.

By contrast, the second story is less adventurous, being a canoe-camping trip on Chesuncook and surrounding lakes. Thoreau ends the story reflecting on man's vulnerability in the wilderness, and prays that man will not become "civilized off the face of the earth." I take this trip to be fundamentally a reconnaissance for the third and most ambitious of his trips, titled "The Allagash and East Branch." He went to Maine this time intending to make the standard Allagash Wilderness Waterway trip that many of us plan and few ever make. He lets himself get talked out of it and into a considerably more difficult trip. He starts as with the Chesuncook trip, but carries on northward into Chamberlain, Eagle, Telos, and Webster Lakes, and through Webster Stream to Second Lake and Great Lake Matagamon. From there it's flat water down the East Branch of the Penobscot. The Webster Stream segment was basically a ten mile portage. Fortunately he had hired a most remarkable Indian Guide, Joe Polis. Polis took his homemade birch bark canoe down through the Webster Stream rapids alone, and Thoreau and his companion (whom he unaccountably never names), fought their way through the thick underbrush and the jumble of trees along the riverbank. In summary, he takes the West Branch upstream as far as it goes, traverses the high elevation lakes over to the headwaters of the East Branch, and completely circles the Katahdin massif in the process.

Thoreau does not consistently delight the reader with is craft; his creative spirit is intermittent. But when inspired, he rises to the task:

Referring to the logs which get hung up along the shore, waiting for a freshet to carry them down to the sawmill, he writes, "Methinks that must be where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks along some distant and unexplored stream, and waiting for an unheard of freshet to fetch it down."

And about the noises he hears at night, "When camping in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which give voice to its wildness."

And his boatmen: "...so cool, so collected, so fertile in resources are they."

And anyone who has trod through the dark, damp woods between those lakes will recognize this: "It was impossible for us to discern the Indian's trail in the elastic moss, which like a thick carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth.

And while experiencing one of the Allagash's classic thunderstorms: "I thought it must be a place where the thunder loved, where the lightning practiced to keep its hand in, and it would do no harm to shatter a few pines.

This screed from Thoreau is obviously not as classic as his work on Walden, but here we may be seeing the beginning of the travelogue business. Thoreau is often misrepresented (by those who haven't read his works, or have read them too many times) as a hardcore back-to-nature hermit who lived off the land and rejected civilization. One read of his Walden story disproves that stereotype, and in this work about three trips to Maine's wild country, we can surely see Thoreau's social side all the more. At the time, the Maine Woods were surely a thrilling landscape ripe for exploration and adventure, and Thoreau gives us an enjoyable travelogue of his ramblings and recreations. A bonus is great coverage of the Indians of the area, especially Thoreau's longtime traveling colleague Joe Polis. The only problem here is that Thoreau's introspective naturalist philosophy is mostly missing at this stage of his career, and he pretty much accidentally invents descriptive travel writing instead. This is still a worthy exploration if you're interested in the Maine Woods either as they were then or if you wish to explore them today. But Thoreau's classic naturalism is better found in his other works. [~doomsdayer520~]

The Maine woods are never the same after being visited by Hawkeye and Trapper John.

I'm a big fan of the TV series of MASH, but had not read the original book. This sequel has some funny scenes on the golf course and in the hospital. The story involves Hawkeye, now back in his home state of Maine, and his plans to reunite the 4077 MASH team there. The commentary on the local doctors and their lack of ability is scathing. The descriptions of Maine characters, behavior and speech patterns was sometimes baffling, but maybe my two summers in Maine hasn't been enough exposure to recognize the real Maine types shown in the book.
If you want Maine humor, I'd recommend The New Saturday Night at Moody's Diner by Tim Sample.

"M*A*S*H Goes to Maine" is Richard Hooker's hilarious sequel to his classic book "MASH" and, for once, the sequel is better! Living a quiet life in Maine after the Korean War, doctors "Hawkeye" Pierce, "Duke" Forrest and "Trapper John" McIntyre are at it again, trying to establish a medical hospital while fighting the snobbiest doctors in America. Funny and very relaxing, you'll love "M*A*S*H Goes to Maine".

OF THE INEVITABLE GREAT MOVIE THAT WOULD COME FROM THIS INCREDIBLE BOOK!????

I HATE THE TV SERIES MASH!!!!!!!!!

THE MOVIE AND BOOKS ARE THE ONLY MASH!!!!!!

THERE'S A REASON WHY MASH DIRECTOR ROBERT ALTMAN HATED THE SHOW!!

anyway great read.

There are a lot of "MASH goes to..." books. This is the original and one of the best. The first sequel to MASH, this novel brings the characters from the original stateside. If you've read any of the other MASH goes to books (written by Richard Hooker and William E. Butterworth, though I strongly suspect except for lending his name, Hooker had nothing to do with) and were disgusted by how tedius and down-right horrible they were, don't let them put you off this book. This, along with MASH Mania, was written by Hooker himself and is every bit as good as the Butterworth books are bad.