What are you reading?

[alsg]

"Becoming Teddy Roosevelt". I had no idea Maine and a Maine Guide played such an important role in Roosevelt's life.

Roosevelt | Andrew Vietze

A sickly Harvard student. A Maine Guide. And a friendship that changed a man - who changed a nation.

andrewvietze.com

 

[Patrick Corry]

Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney, by John Jennings

I read this years ago, along with John McPhee’s Survival of the Birch bark Canoe,long before I developed an interest in wood (and canvas) canoes. I now more easily recognize the transition to wood/canvas canoes and how some early commercial builders maintained bark canoe style components for some time into the (somewhat) modern era.

 

[Odyssey]

Thank you Patrick, your post caught my interest. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14609693-bark-canoes
I've added this book to my Christmas List.

 

[Odyssey]

I have been reading Paris, paris - Journey into the City of Light by David Downie.
Jumping around the book reading chapters in no particular order I've enjoyed learning many layers of culture, beauty, and history,
but finally in chapter one I discovered some early Parisian history connecting it to canoes.

"At once water and sewer, lifeline, moat, and swelling menace, the Seine suckled nascent French civilization. It made the founding of Paris possible, transforming a settlement of mud huts into a capital city whose symbol since the year 1210 is a ship, with the catchy device Fluctuat nec mergitur: "It is tossed upon the waves without being submerged"...

"Five thousand years ago that benign river provided France's mythicized forebears - Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois - with food, potables, and the protection they needed to build their island -city, which the Romans eventually called Lutetia. Until the 1980's no trace of the Seine Basin's early fisherfolk had been found, but while reconfiguring the formerly industrial Bercy area's warehouses, workmen turned up several Neolithic canoes...City officials quickly latched onto the canoes, seeing in them a symbol of pre-Roman civilization and the solution to an etymological mystery. The canoes jibe with the Celtic-language hypothesis of the origin of "Lutetia": luh (river) + touez (in the middle) + y (house), meaning "houses in midstream", an apparent reference to what is now the Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis." David Downie

So naturally I ventured down that archeology / canoe rabbit hole and found some further good reading.

Neolithic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Paris for Free - Neolithic Bercy

Free Paris site of a Neolithic archaeological excavation, history of Chasseen culture, museum with recovered artifacts, city park, and shopping.

www.womenstravelabroad.com

 

[frozentripper]

Expensive coffee table book borrowed from the library after a long wait in line... Georgian Bay-Discovering a Unique North American Ecosystem, Edited by Nick Eyles. Worth reading if only for the first chapter on geology by Eyles... really good insight on why the eastern North American landscape is the way it is including the last two billion years' worth of continental plates colliding to form the Appalachians and features west into the Canadian shield and Georgian Bay.

PS... a long, long time ago in another world on a canoe trip, I read what some say may be the best science fiction book ever written, Dune. The first movie adaptation filmed in the eighties failed bigtime, with even the director later apologizing for the poor quality... however the second kick at it is being released Oct 22 with some great reviews. So far it's getting a high 88% on Rotten Tomatoes... shot for the big screen and reading Dune first if you're a sci-fi reader before seeing the much-anticipated spectacle would probably help. Hey, winter's coming.

Dune - Movie Reviews

Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets

www.rottentomatoes.com

 

[Clint]

About the finish up "Paddling the Wild Neches" by RICHARD M. DONOVAN. I've done a race on the river and have paddled some sections of it. I am hoping to do some camping trips down it in the future. While reading I like looking on google maps and typing in the names he calls out and following him down through his journey. Hopefully the river stays the way it is with only one lake on it and it stays wild and free.

 

[WMass Paddler]

What is everybody reading?

I just finished reading/ looking at "In the Footsteps of Grey Owl : Journey Into the Ancient Forest" by Gary McGuffin, Joanie McGuffin. I must say not what I had imagined but inspiring and great photos.

I just received "Lands Serene" by Peter Kazaks.

"The Sicilian" by Mario Puzo

 

[Abenakiregion]

Penobscot Man, by Frank G. Speck

 

[Mike McCrea]

The Border, A Journey Around Russia through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage. (Erika Fatland, 2017, english publication 2021)

That’s a long title. History and geography disguised as a travelogue. Fascinating and informative, it bogs down a bit when Fatland, who is Norwegian, gets close to home. There is even a tiny bit of paddling, as Fatland and her father kayak camp along the Pasvik River border.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=cKp8OVUGKd&rank=1

 

[Mason]

"People of the Deer" by Farley Mowat. If you've spent any time in the Barrens, it's fun. We stopped by his cabin (remnants) on the Windy River a couple of years ago. The later "No Man's River" takes place in the same area, and is probably a better read.

 

[lowangle al]

I took "People of The Deer" and a book by Alan Kesselhiem "Water And Sky" on a trip and coincidently they were both about the same area and they met the same families, or so it seemed to me.

I would recommend "Water and Sky", I liked it enough to read twice.

 

[Mason]

I took "People of The Deer" and a book by Alan Kesselhiem "Water And Sky" on a trip and coincidently they were both about the same area and they met the same families, or so it seemed to me.

I would recommend "Water and Sky", I liked it enough to read twice.

Yeah, I've read it twice too! Kesselheim was a longtime local (Bozeman MT), until about a year ago. I picked his brain on some northern trips--he's done some neat stuff.

 

[Robin]

Handy to Home by Tom Hennessey. Used on Abe Books. Essays and art work by the author of the Maine outdoors.

 

[Boreal Birch]

I have this book also Robin, even if you didn’t know how to read the paintings and drawings would be worth the price of admission. This book will give you plenty of idea’s to mull over during the coming long winter nights, while reading by the warm stove and sipping hot tea from your blue speckled tin cup.
Winter has already started here, so I am going to dig out my copy this afternoon. I plan to start re-reading this evening. I will toast to you, with my speckled blue cup tonight.

 

[Loon]

My latest... "Above the Gravel Bar", "The Native Canoe Routes of Maine" by David S. Cook
and "Canoe Indians of Down East Maine" by William A. Haviland


I have finished Mr. Cooks book and am almost done with Mr. Havilands. Of the two I think I like "Above the Gravel Bar" best. A little easier to read and the author interprets the rivers and lakes from the native tongue to English. Example: Sebasticook, "The short Route". Both books, though, have a lot of info. on historic canoe routes and portages.

These are best read with the Maine Atlas open to the corresponding map so you can visualize the routes. (It helped me anyway)


My old copy which stays in the house. Many years of canoeing, fishing and hunting trip notes with circles and arrows and x's marking the good spots.

 

[Robin]

Thanks Loon, I just ordered, "Above the Gravel Bar".

 

[KeithA]

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard Irving Chapelle.

I hadn't heard about Edwin Tappen Adney until Donna and I took a trip to New Brunswick this fall. Fascinating guy - took a short vacation to Woodstock, New Brunswick in 1887 when he was 18, hooked up with Peter Joe, a Malecite who had set up a camp nearby and was working on a birch bark canoe. Adney was fascinated and quickly got involved and spent a fair amount of his life documenting and building full sized and scale model replicas of these canoes. Parts of his model collection are in the Smithsonian and the Maritime Museum of Virginia.

He documented not only the canoes, but also the language and lifestyle. His notes are credited as a key contribution to preserving what we know about the building of these boats.

Howard Chapelle took on the the task of organizing the notes into an extensive reference volume and added his own content on skin boats. There are extensive illustration and schematics, including paddles. It's not a fast read, but it's amazing to see what was done and how it has been translated into modern materials and methods.

The book is available from a couple of print on demand publishers. I got mine from Lector House through my local bookstore (support those if you can - they are an invaluable resource).

 

[Rubbaboo]

Currently reading Frontier Farewell by Garret Wilson.
“Frontier Farewell offers new perspective on everything from the transfer of Ruperts Land to Canada, the Manitoba Resistance of 1869/1870, and the Numbered Treaties of the 1870’s, to the surveys of the Canadian Prairies, the coming of the Northwest Mounted Police, and the fallout from the Battle of Little Bighorn”

Super interesting read for a guy who plays and travels a lot in Canada’s southern prairies.

 

[ErktheRed]

Currently, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi written in the 1600’s and translated by Victor Harris some time in the more recent days. It’s technically about martial arts and battle, however, there are many sayings and teachings that can be brought into todays life. And not necessarily to fight opponent. After searching through multiple narrators, I found one and listened to it twice before on my phone. There were several times I had to rewind, pause, restart that I couldn’t retain everything that I was listening to. So I decided to try the book form. Plus it’s a good size for travel.

My next read will be to pick back up Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne and finish that. As well as F*** it, I’ll start tomorrow by A. Bronson

 

[Mike McCrea]

Lots of geography (and geopolitics) stuff lately. Most recently The Power of Geography Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World (Tim Marshall, 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=nDiQ8JBFTl&rank=1

Interesting and enjoyable enough that I have a library loan request for his Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...y?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=IAEBguOXN3&rank=1