Maine Books

Everyone loved this book, it was just perfect for someone learning the alphabet and loves lobsters and all that Maine had to offer

This delightful book will definitely appeal to young children learning their letters, but perhaps even moreso to people of all ages.

Lobster, of course, indicates Maine and so the author takes us through the entire alphabet with animals, places, or ideas associated with that state. On each page is a simple rhyme concerning the word starts with that letter. On the side of the page is more information, perhaps scientific or historical. I learned several things I did not know. The illustrations are not only beautiful, but technically accurate as well. One must really see this book to appreciate it.

Interestingly, at no time does it seem that the author had to reach to come up with a word for any given letter. Quick: what would you think of for the Letter U? Why the University of Maine, naturally -

The University of Maine starts with U Here, students called "Black Bears" dress in blue. A University is a place where big kids go to learn about everything they should know.

This concept could easily be used as a family game while vacationing. It almost makes me wish my children were younger and still traveled with us.

I heartily recommend this book and as a teacher I would like to see something just like it for each state in the Union.

We bought this book for our trip to Maine The whole family found interesting facts and wonderful pictures. There is text geared to mature people - like even some adults - and, of course, the simple alphabet for the tots. We learned things about Maine we never knew and we've been going there for more than decade. Heck - our relatives who LIVE there grabbed the book. After all - Maine is WAY more than just lobsters.

I'd recommend this children's book to any family interested in learning more about the great State of Maine. We plan on buying others in this series.

Found this book purely by chance in the school library and fell in love. Bought a copy immediately. I works best for those that have had training or experience in cooking but the selections are so balance there is a lot there for everyone. Each recipe had a difficulty indicator and if you want to experiment with even the most difficult ..then ... why not..go ahead..you will definitely learn something..and enjoy doing it.

Very nice book indeed. I love it.

This is an excellent reference for experts and beginners alike. The book starts with illustrations and explanations for the most basic elements of cooking.

Each recipe, and this is its best feature, tells you the degree of difficulty with one (simplest) to three chef hats (most difficult). It also tells you the preparation time and cooking time, so you know before you engage in a recipe, how much time it will take you. Last but not least, the recipes are superb! You really have to try them! I bought the book in (circa) 1986 and am looking for a new copy/print.

Book is beautiful, full color, but is more of an encyclopedia of french recipes than a standard cookbook. Recipes are not given enough detail and more suited for very experienced chefs. More of a reference work than something helpful. Instead, buy Jacques Pepin's "La Technique" for step by step instructions on how to make gourmet french recipes.

This book is a charming gift for adults who like to garden, whether they live in Maine or not. The author has a special fondness for cats, and they appear in several of the beautiful illustrations in this book. Above average artwork, and the whole book has a lovingly crafted feel.
Highly recommended.

Wonderful illustrations for a charming journal of gardening which provides many tips for caring for plants as well as one's inner spirit.

I discovered this from a review in the Maine Sunday Telegram. I've tried nature journaling and so can really appreciate Krupinski's effort to document the birds and insects that visited her garden. The book goes beyond that, telling what she planted, and what she learned about pest control, care of roses and specific info on various plants and flowers.
Her artwork makes each page a delight with all the garden creatures (rabbits, bugs, butterflies, birds and cats) and lots of flowers.
The book would be particularly useful to anyone new to gardening in Maine, where the limited growing season and the thin topsoil present challenges.

Most of the time you read mysteries for a quick easy read. This detective team is deep, soulful, and pragmatic all at once. I love the atmosphere this book contains and the ability to inject a realistic soul into the writing. I have only read one other book in the series, but I will be reading more. This is a perfect mystery to discover. You get Amsterdam, philosophy, and a great who done it.

I don't even care much for mysteries but this one caught my eye while in a physical bookstore looking for the new Burke novel by Andrew Vachss. The book is interesting because the characters are real; this one gives a peculiarly Dutch perspective on American culture, which at times is laugh-out-loud funny, like de Gier, in his eternally curious cop mode, wondering why on earth anyone would buy bags of ice.

I loved this book. I've loved all the books in the series, but this one really sucked me in. The characterizations and plot descriptions are so realistic I felt as if I were in rural Maine too. Like the last reviewer, and also a foreigner, I found myself giggling at the cultural differences- they are so true! I've recommended this book and author to all my friends- mystery lovers or not, this guy has something for everyone.

This is the first book in a long time that I read with care. Usually I skim through pretty rapidly. I liked his candor and insight into his patients' lives. It was interesting how he managed to intertwine his professional life with his family. I enjoyed his constant concern about the effect of religion on his life and others. His questions about death and dying were good. It has to be of concern for all of us eventually. I recommended this book to our local librarian!

I had some spare time and was browsing through Amazon when I ran across this book. I have owned the hardcopy book for several years, I had purchased it after reading an article in "Life" magazine about Dr. Loxtercamp in which this book had been noted. I found the book most interesting and found myself walking through the area of Maine he practices as he went about journalling his days and his times & thoughts of his personal family time.

I found the man and his story most inspiring. Alot of people in today's medicine either are in the field for the money or find themselves disallusioned with the field because of all the insurance buracracy. I find those people who are in their field because that is where they truly want to be and for the want of helping others to be a rare find.

I could also follow along Dr. Loxtercamp's views and journeys of a small town doctor from working in the medical area. He tells his story compassionately and the reader can feel his humanity for others.

Over the past couple of years, I had looked forward for another publication and writing for Dr. Loxtercamp but sadly never ran across progression of this book. I found myself wanting to know more about how his journey has progressed along in the small town medical practice.

A highly suggested read.

I enjoyed this book a good deal, particularly Loxterkamp's attention to God and faith and the notion of ministering. I admire Loxterkamp's bravery for so much soul-searching over a year of his practice. This is a book to savor for those interested in rural medicine or family medicine. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because I found his writing a bit labored. It's slow-going reading. It's also very much about him, him, him. A good contrast is to read Verghese's In My Own Country. Loxterkamp lacks Verghese's fluid style and attention to others. Despite his efforts to humanize, Loxterkamp presents fairly 2-dimensional portraits of his patients. This book is really more of an interior meditation, albeit a very good one.

After two wonderful books (1942 & 1946) largely about herself and her relationship with the northwoods of Maine, Louise Rich was wise to shift her focus to the strong character, ethics and coping skills of her remote neighbors. My Neck of the Woods is a real treasure.

Louise Dickinson Rich was one of a kind and this is one of her best. This is one of those books that makes you a part of her fascinating and down to earth world.

Having read many of her books about her life in rural Maine, I was disappointed with this one. It is written in the same simple style which is enjoyable to read but the content was not as good. Most of this book is about the various people who lived near the author. Discussions on their personality quirks and the mundain details of their lives are not really all that interesting. The stories are only intersting to those who know these people. I enjoy reading books like this to learn what life is like for others is situations different from mine. I learned nothing new with this one. I am glad I did not read this book first or I never would have read her others.

just a warning though---amazon advertises this book as hardcover but it's a paperback (size of a hardcover but paperback)

He hit the mark dead center with this follow-up to Off Season. Well done! A must read. If you enjoyed the first one, this one will be sure to please you.

This book was a good follow-up to the original. It had a good storyline and plenty of gruesome details. If you liked the original this is a must have sequel.

I actually live in Portland - but I still love this book, and I often turn to it when I'm looking for somewhere new to eat or something new to see. It gives an insiders look into all the different restaurants, bars, beaches, and shopping experiences that you could want. Though a couple of the restaurants he lists are now closed - this book can stand the tests of time. Portland is full of tourists in the summer, so don't worry about sticking out. Just get this book to make sure that you don't miss out on any of the great things the city has to offer.

We just got back from a mini-vacation to Portland and it was one of the most enjoyable trips we've had. A lot of that is thanks to Mr. Barry's handy guide. We've been to Portland previously, but had not seen or experienced it the way we did this time. We would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is going to the area for the first time or even, like us, has been to the area before. We both probably still looked like tourists, but I bet that we experienced many things not normally experienced by other tourists, unless they had purchased this guide.

This book is a little silly. We are told to tip the waitstaff well since they really could be artists (as opposed to a mother trying to support her child?) If you can get past the hype about the city, and it is a great city, the book is well organized and offers solid suggestions for exploring the town. There is a section on the history of the town describing Indian raids and the destruction of the city twice by fire. The final rebuilding in the 1860's and 70's accounts for it's consistent architectural style.

Restaurants by category, wine bars, biker bars, coffee houses, dance spots, theatre, where to hear live music - this book tells all. It is exhaustive enough to provide plenty of suggestions but not overwhelming in it's coverage.

As far as looking like a tourist, don't worry about it. We love tourists, and I picked up a copy myself.

To get the full, in-your-face impact the author intended, one would have to have read this book in the late 50s or very early 60s. First copyrighted in 1955, The Revelations is a thorough-going condemnation of society's worship of success and the conformity it requires. It's the same message as that of the classic film The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and the early Beats (Kerouac, et al).

The main character is Hal Hingham, a Boston life-insurance salesman, who is a total failure professionally, socially, and personally. Spotting a mysterious ad in the paper that promises a technique guaranteed to reverse his failures and end his unhappiness, Hal writes to Dr. Modesto at his Nebraska post office box. Receiving Dr. Modesto's revelations in the mail, Hal commits them to memory and begins applying them. The results are immediate and miraculous: total success in every aspect of his life. The technique? Becoming the mirror image of whoever you're talking to. The book traces Hal's fall into invisibility and his quest to find the mysterious Dr. Modesto and get some help.

Though this book is seriously dated now, the dangers of conformity still exist. The modern reader would be better served if the message of this book were shortened and turned into an essay. Recommended with caveats.

Makes a change from reading pulp fiction to read a real book. I think he was on the ultimate imagination trip when he wrote this book. I guess if you like Herman Hesse then you'll like this.

A must read satire from the foremost expert on life, death and everything related to it.

As Peladeau shows, the field of Maine hooked rugs is surprisingly complex. It's certainly more involved and more fertile than ones who know it simply as a category of "Maine hooked rugs" realize. The field is given complexity and richness by different periods, rug makers, regions, and skills. The author brings all these elements out by an uncommon depth of research sustained by an intertwined personal and professional interest. She lectures on aspects of the topic, has organized exhibitions, and collects research materials on it.

Peladeau finds, for instance, that in the 1859 Maine Charitable Mechanic Fair, three rugs were exhibited. But she goes beyond this fact to relate what it says about the field at this moment in its history. That only the few rugs were exhibited indicates "that interest in rugs had waned somewhat..."; and even more, that the small number indicates that interest in rugs at the time "was centered in the Portland area" and other crafts such as quilts and shell box work had come into greater favor. Such continual details and commentary on what they tell about Maine hooked rugs makes for not only informative, but engrossing reading on the field.

Hooked rugs continue to hold appeal for many collectors and others in the antiques' field because they are a genuine folk art with old Maine and New England associations. Rug hooking was a traditional skill passed on to young woman. Hooked rugs served practical and decorative purposes in homes before surviving ones became desirable collector's items as homes became modernized and the frontier and Victorian tastes and skills they represented passed away. This comes through in Peladeau's text where she relates how rug hooking originated in particular places and spread to others; in her portrayals of individual rug makers or hooked-rug businesses; and detailed descriptions on how the rugs were made, which in some passages are specified to the point of reading like how-to instructions. But the visual matter especially imparts the folk-art aura of hooked rugs which makes them perennially appealing. The diary entries, the old pamphlets, the period photos of woman rug makers and old shops where they were made impart a feel for the combination of ordinariness, industriousness, and inventiveness distinguishing folk art. The many photographs of the farm animals, birds, flowers, patterns, and borders of hooked rugs all in varying degrees of primitive style impart this essential quality of such rugs too.

Peladeau's book is for collectors and the like looking for a discriminating understanding of Maine hooked rugs. The rugs always have an appeal for their folk-art appearance and association with Americana and traditional New England crafts. But for readers whose appreciation is enhanced by knowledge of weaves, recognition of regional variations, awareness of stages of development, and the like, Peladeau's book is for them.

I just received this book and initially thumbed through it. I almost sent it back - based only on the pictures of old rugs. I am so used to books based on contemporary rugs that my first thought was that these old rugs were somehow dull, but when I slowed down to read the history I had second thoughts. I started from the beginning of the book and read through it then studied the pictures. It is a wealth of information and an asset to any serious traditional rug hooker's library.

This book is a serious study of Maine's Rug hooking tradition. It is well researched and the stories flow easily and informatively. Color photos and paper quality is excellent. Worthy addition to any American textile/rug library.