Gift-Worthy Ideas

Edward Curtis photographs are well known and widely reproduced, but this beautiful new hardcover edition with explanatory and historical text by Don Gubrandsen has the virtue of combining excellent reproductions with an extremely affordable price.

Edward S. Curtis: Visions of the First Americans

by Don Gulbrandsen

Hardcover, 256 pp/illustrated/index

$24.99

Another beautiful book capturing the life of the planet we love from outer space is Earth: Spirit of Place, featuring photographs from space by astronaut Chris Hadfield. This is earth, our beloved, threatened home planet, as you and I have never seen it. A book for artists and scientists, mom and pop and all the kids.

Earth: Spirit of Place

Softcover, 192pp

$35.00

There’s a two-year wait, I hear, for tickets to the see the musical version, but you can read the book now, and history buffs on your shopping list will be pleased to find it under the tree.

Alexander Hamilton,

by Ron Chernow

Paper, 817pp

$20

And last but hardly least, you may know Porter Abbott from his talks on narrative or his letters to the editor of the Enterprise, Record-Eagle, and Northern Express, but a new side of the scholarly academic is revealed in his new book of poetry and short fiction.

Falling Slowly Dreaming of Flight:

Poems and Stories

by H. Porter Abbott

Paper, 103pp

$18.85

(60% of price to be donated to Leelanau Township Library)

Books for the Little Ones

Poet on a Wobbly Bicycle

You already know Fleda Brown’s poetry, I hope. Maybe you attended one of her readings at Dog Ears Books. Now we all have an opportunity to know the former Poet Laureate of Delaware* (now a Traverse City resident) as a thoughtful memoir essayist. The pieces in this book, originally published in Brown’s blog, face her diagnosis and life with cancer directly, from the only possible standpoint for the experience: personal and subjective. Many also address what it means to live as a writer, with or without a life-threatening illness. In all of them, an honest, gifted woman looks for just the right language to convey her experience to others. Others with cancer. With aging parents. Other women. Other writers.

But you don’t have to have cancer or be a writer to get a lot out of this book. Or to want to read it more than once. Or to share it with a friend. 

Or all of the above.

My Wobbly Bicycle: Meditations

on Cancer and the Creative Life

by Fleda Brown

Mission Point Press

Paper, 197pp, $14.95









*Before correcting this post, I had given Vermont the honor of Fleda's poet laureateship. Apologies to both states. If I ever have the privilege of visiting, I'm sure I'll no longer mix them up.

New Book From Tom Hooker

You’ll remember Tom Hooker from his two previous books, The Last Ice Age and the Leelanau Peninsula: Pleistocene and Lake Michigan and his first book of poetry, Silent Woods: Beyond the Blue Door.

Tom’s new book of poetry, The Catcher: Shadows to Light, once again offers reflections on the natural world and our life in it.

The Catcher: Shadows to Light

by Thomas H. Hooker

Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing (no connection to Dog Ears Books)

Paper, 143pp, $14.95

Retirement? What a Concept!

I just received copies of Bill Peace’s new book, and I love the subtitle. Just looking at the back cover, I see too that he offers advice I could easily live with, such as “Never eat what you don’t want to eat.” I’m not retired, but that’s my new vacation meal philosophy, and it worked out fine in September. I also like “Strive for excellence vs. perfection,” and I like that because, as my old friend Marcy once said in an office staff meeting, “Perfection is a moving target.”

Yes, I think this will be an inspiring book and a great gift to give at retirement parties. Not a tome that will take your entire retirement life to read – more something you’ll pick up and read in here and there, and then find yourself re-reading here and there as time goes by.

Retirement: The Surreal Life Adventure

by William D. Peace, Jr.

Traverse City: Mission Point Press, 2016

Paperback, 178pp, $14.95

Trilogy Now Available as Gift Package

The third and final volume of Kathleen Stocking’s nonfiction trilogy came out this year, and now the author has packaged the three books together, for giving as a hostess gift, birthday or holiday present, or just a way of saying “I love you!” with books. At $19.95, $19.95, and $23.97, the three books purchased individually – Letters from the Leelanau; Lake Country; and The Long Arc of the Universe -- would total $63.87 plus tax, while in the gift ribbon they are priced together at only $50 plus tax, for a savings of $13.87.

Come buy the trilogy today or phone in your order for December.

Looking Ahead to Holidays

A new book from Bill O. Smith is available this season, certain to be one of this year's must-have Christmas books. What is happening at 4 a.m. on December 25? Bill’s gentle rhymes lead readers -- and children being read to -- around the world, through page after page of beautifully illustrations by artist Glenn Wolff.

Bill Smith of Traverse City is already well known in northern Michigan as the author of two earlier children’s books, Chickadees at Night and Chickadee Spirit (both of those books illustrated by Charles Murphy). Smith is donating all profits from sales of Four a.m. December 25 to veterans’ groups, specifically: Air Force Enlisted Village; Air Warriors Courage Foundation; Our Military Kids, Inc.; and Cherryland VFS Post 2780 Relief Fund.

Four a.m. December 25

by Bill O. Smith,

illustrated by Glenn Wolff

Sleepytime Press, hardcover, $19.95