Jon is the receiving manager and unofficial wellness director at Northshire and has worked here since 1998. He loves all things guitar- and listens mostly to blues, classic and selected contemporary rock, and most of all, music that defies genre- most especially The Derek Trucks Band. He loves the Maine coast and most frequently finds himself reading sports non-fiction, music memoirs and selected contemporary lit fiction. Personal gods include guitarist Derek Trucks and writer Ann Patchett.
$19.95
ISBN: 9781941040959
Availability: Click Title for IN STOCK Location
Published: Tin House Books - July 10th, 2018
It would be easy to write off Samantha Hunt's nineteen year old female narrator as unreliable and delusional, drowning in her own solitude and sorrow in her soggy, salty northern coastal home. Submersing herself into the whole mermaid mythos, after all, would be a fairly logical madness given the grey-blue existence that has consumed her remote world since her father walked into the sea twelve years prior. Of course he may not have walked into the sea, per se, from the aqua-marine perspective of our heroine; he simply, unavoidably, returned to it. Which of course is fate fulfilled if that's where he came from.
From the beginnings of this love and pain-racked little gem of a novel, Hunt weaves a dual reality that leaves the reader enthralled. We do not need to know if our water-logged young guide is truly a maiden of fantasy or simply living in her own crazed mind; both realities are truth. There is no need to explain away all of her wet visions, preoccupations and fantasies; they are every bit as real as the dry “rational” explanations the world may offer. The submersive, hopelessness of her impossible love scenario with the older, war-wrecked fisherman Jude is a salt-stained watercolor portrait of the wrathful power, ridiculousness and abject suffering of unrequited love.
Bring an open mind, an open heart and... a towel. Hunt's "The Seas", a re-release from 2005, will saturate you with its imagery and its longing.
$26.00
ISBN: 9780812993547
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Published: Spiegel & Grau - July 14th, 2015
This is one of those “buzz books” that anyone with any interest whatsoever in the history and current state of race relations and police-minority relations knows they eventually have to read.
Coates' very language and attitude towards his topic can, at first, be off-putting or even hard to grasp for those in the racial majority who have, through location and life experience, much safe distance from the danger and struggles of being dark-skinned in America. He even refers to “those who think they are white” and the illusions of whiteness and blackness in a way that wholly transforms the readers assumptions and presumed knowledge of race and racial history. He succeeds, like few authors I've encountered, in revealing the ultimate truth as regards to “having a black body” in our nation and the devastating realities of police brutality, frequently lethal, carried out against this population both day to day in modern times and throughout history with little to no repercussion.
This can be a daunting read. Coates pulls no punches and softens not a drop of his ire towards those in the “white” power structure as well as those of us who live lives of privilege while still in denial of the true historical and human costs of the “American Dream”. There is no quarter offered for those who would presume to push the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and ongoing institutional racism- as well as the continuing endangerment and destruction of black bodies by contemporary police forces- into the past or to deny its valid presence in the future. As American citizens we all own it, the history, the reality, the ongoing struggles and the endless racial prejudice and Coates is, quite rightly, quite vividly and most brilliantly unwilling to buy into America's material-wealth-at-all-costs “dream”. It is a dream built on a tortured history, a dream that can only be a dream when viewed with the blinders of ignorance or racial intolerance in place.
A must read ~ Reviewed by Jon Fine
$16.99
ISBN: 9780062666383
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Published: Custom House - April 24th, 2018
Ms Perry is a gifted novelist with a masterful understanding of the human race and for depicting the many blessings and foibles of its participants in all of their glorious and sprawling mess. The litany of fully etched characters in this book trip forth effortlessly as do the various British landscapes, perhaps the foggy tides and moist, marshy breath of Essex- the home of the much feared and rumored serpent- the most strikingly realized.
Without giving away a thing, the serpent itself is somehow both integral and non-essential to the story line. The true stars of this 19th century tale of death, unrequited love, requited love, religious devotion, disease, medical innovation, poverty, violence, death and rebirth are its cast of human characters. The widow Cora Seaborne, her faithful companion Martha, the Reverend Will Ransome and wife Stella, that terrible Serpent and so many more all await you on a captivating journey into another era and another land, but a world most recognizable for its timeless humanity.
Your boat to Essex is leaving soon- don't miss it. But do, of course, watch out for that fearsome winged wretch from the Blackwater who most certainly will steal your soul if you're not careful. Perhaps even if you are. ~ Reviewed by Jon Fine
$27.00
ISBN: 9780399178481
Availability: Special Order
Published: Del Rey - August 22nd, 2017
The delightful, nearly eternal tale of Milo who is almost out of time ( 10,000 lives! ) in his soul's quest to attain perfection. If he fails: death ; success: eternal bliss. An imaginative romp through countless lives and brilliant worlds! ~ Reviewed by Jon Fine
$28.00
ISBN: 9780544814615
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - May 16th, 2017
Retired Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, Big Papi, is a one of a kind champion, a big man with a big heart and the rightful owner of one of the most storied careers in modern sports. The previously unattainable World Series championships (unreachable without him?), the PED accusations, countless opponents and teammates , behind-the-scenes machinations of the Red Sox organization, and the ever-present Boston media; it's all here! Ultimately, spoiler alert, we do learn that there are still some role models and heroes left in the world. Papi! ~ Reviewed by Jon Fine
