Bookstore Highlights: Sure-Fire Summer Hits

A couple books have been bestsellers ever since they first appeared. Trails of M-22 is one such (I’m glad to note that the author doesn’t stop at the top of the M-22 loop but comes through Northport and clear up to the lighthouse), and another is the Lake Michigan Rock Picker’s Guide.

Suttons Bay, Peshawbestown, and Bingham Shores, the second of Kathleen Firestone’s monumental “Meet Me at the Dock” trilogy, is here now, and you won’t want to miss it.  Perfect for the local coffee table to get visitors reading about the area's history.

The public clamoring for another Robert Underhill murder mystery is in luck this summer: Bob's new novel, One Cold Coffee, is here now!

Anne-Marie Oomen’s Michigan Notable As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, is her latest memoir, and I have a few signed copies on hand, along with two signed copies of an older Oomen memoir, Pulling Down the Barn. 

The first speaker in this year’s Summer Author Series sponsored by the Leelanau Township Friends of the Library is Dave Dempsey, and I have his Great Lakes for Sale now, ahead of his presentation at the Willowbrook, which will be July 11 at 7 p.m.

Dr. Bill Blair, of the Johns Hopkins University Space Telescope Science Institute, Department of Physics & Astronomy, is this year’s speaker in the Belko Peace Lecture series at Trinity Church. Dr. Blair, whose presentation will take place on Saturday, July 29, at 7 p.m. at Trinity, recommends Dacher Keltner’s Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.  

Finally, just in time for July 4^th, I have Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb. Not banned in Northport!!!

These are but a small taste of the treasures, new and used, awaiting you at Dog Ears Books, 106 Waukazoo Street in Northport, celebrating its 30^th anniversary this July. I’ll be sharing more book news throughout the season. For meandering thoughts on books, language, and my Up North world, see “Books in Northport”; for images that catch my eye, “A Shot in the Light”; and for random rants and musings from your Up North bookseller, “Lacking a Clear Focus.”

 

Summer bookstore hours are posted here on this blog. 

Happy 4^th, everyone! There will be a reading of the Declaration of Independence on the post office steps in Northport at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the 4th of July.

Bookstore Hours, Summer 2023

 DOG EARS BOOKS

1993-2023

Celebrating 30 years!

106 Waukazoo St., Northport, MI

 

Summer Hours 2023

 

Monday: By chance or appointment

 

Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. (or later)

 

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday:

11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

 

Sunday: CLOSED

 

 

 

Please note:

 

When the bookstore is open,

David Grath gallery 

(accessible from inside bookstore)

is also open.

A Small Package

You know the saying: “Good things come in small packages.” The new Wildsam Field Guide, Northern Michigan, is the example that came across my bookstore desk today. Only 115 pages (with several bloc-note pages in the back for your notes or sketches), it measures just 6-1/2” tall and 4” wide. There are no photographs and only a few two-tone color illustrations. 

 

But what a pure delight! 

 

Northern Michigan contains more history than you would find in the ordinary Midwest travel guide, along with stories by Michigan authors (past and present) and interviews with noteworthy individuals of the region. (Hemingway fans will be particularly pleased with the coverage given their favorite writer.) Pressing issues faced by the area, such as water quality and affordable housing, are briefly discussed. And amid tips about area farmstands and festivals, you will also find introduced to U.P. Hedrick (Do you know that name?) and not just cherries but also wild rice.

 

Places covered or mentioned range from those as far south as Idlewild, east to Grayling, and north to the Straits of Mackinac and beyond, though “northern” focuses mostly on the northwest lower peninsula and Lake Michigan. Older people will recognize familiar names, and the younger generation will come to know those who have gone before and something of the way things used to be. 

 

“Founded in 2012, Wildsam is an American travel brand that sits at the intersection of story and place. The acclaimed field guides go beyond typical travel information, instead revealing a deep sense of place through archival heritage, local commentary, cultural landmarks and inspired writing.”

 

This book certainly lives up to the claim made for the series.

 

Northern Michigan, from Wildsam Pursuits

Paper, $24

Summer Notes:

 

Dog Ears Books is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but whenever the bookstore is open, David Grath’s gallery of paintings is also open. This will probably be the last summer for the gallery, so don’t miss a chance to visit. 

Tour England from your Armchair

 

Have you long dreamed of visiting England's famous Lake District, exploring the Cotswolds, hiking in the Dales or the Welsh or Scottish border but feel that time has robbed you of the possibility? It’s never too late or too arduous for armchair travel, and the “Regions of Britain” series of books, written by various authors and published by Robert Hale Limited, might be just what you’re looking for. 

 

Breckland and Breck are arresting, alien words, suggestive of the stony, barren district they describe. It lies partly in Norfolk, partly in Suffolk, some four hundred square miles which might be roughly circumscribed by a line drawn through Narborough, Castle Acre, Watton, Attleborough, East Harling, Garboldisham and Mildenhall. Within that line the characteristics of the country are curiously like those of the steppelands of south-eastern Europe. For though it is bounded by chalk and peat, Breckland itself is covered by a pall of sand of varying thicknesses, where flowers, birds and insects flourish, some of which are unknown in other parts of England, while others are found only by the sea. Large, flint-strewn open fields and derelect areas are typical of every parish. They are known locally as Brecks….

So begins Chapter I, “At First Sight,” of Breckland, by Olive Cook. Published in 1956, Breckland is illustrated with photographs by Edwin Smith, the author’s husband. 

Cook was born in Cambridge and received her M.A. from Newnham College. She met her husband, artist Edwin Smith, while working with artists through England’s National Gallery, and the two of them collaborated more than once, his photographs accompanied by her text. Cook wrote other books on the English countryside and country houses, as well as children’s books, and earned her own place in the art world with her paintings. 

 

Flints and sand, heaths, warrens, and rivers fill the pages of Olive Cook’s account of Breckland. Open at any page, and you are offered the opportunity to lose yourself in delight. 

 

The rabbit is king of the heath, the animal that flourishes best in Breckland. The very aspect of the warren is due in part to the rabbit’s activities. Where he has cropped it, the heather is as green as grass and so short that it rarely blooms; he keeps the turf smooth and springy, he levels the moss which lines heathland tracks; he tunnels into every slope, kicking out the sand with his strong hind legs....

 

These are but brief glimpses into a single volume from the Robert Hale series. Volumes may be purchased individually, or the 17 volumes I have (thirty-one were published in the series) may be purchased together, at great savings and for lifelong enjoyment.