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Boo!
It's that time of year when my neighbor's yard is
filled with offerings from their pumpkin patch in
Currituck. A smorgasbord of orange with jack-be-
littles, pumpkins, turkish turbans, creshaws and
gourds, gourds, gourds- my kids and I just can't stay
away! Almost every other day at least one of us
heads down the street armed with spare change to
get 'just one more'... for us it's the signal that the
haunting season is finally here!
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Between the Lines
Reading Recommendations from the Cottage Shelves
In keeping with the spirit of the season, I present
Extreme Pumpkins (Tom Nardone). This book
features 'diabolical do-it-yourself designs to amuse
your friends and scare your neighbors'. My favorites
include the Puking Pumpkin and the Punk Rock
model. If you're ready to take Halloween decor to
the next level, you need this book. I just finished Jon
Krakauer's Into The Wild for about the fifth
time. The story of Chris McCandless, an idealistic 24
year old who fancies himself a modern day
combination of the Jacks (London and Kerouac), and
his tragic journey into the Alaskan bush is both fixating
and fascinating. I really like Krakauer and highly
recommend his other books, Into Thin Air and
Under the Banner of Heaven as well; I only
wish he would write more!! Can't wait to see Sean
Penn's movie version. This summer a friend gave me
The Big House: A Century in the Life of an
American Summer Home by George Howe Colt. I
finally read it and loved it. Colt tells the history of his
family's Cape Cod summer house which dates
back to the late 1800's. Filled with eccentric relatives,
the detritus of 100 years of comings and goings,
hidden alcoves and secrets, it's hard not to wish you'd
been a part of the story. Customers are surprised that
we're carrying the Michael Gates Gill memoir, How
Starbucks Saved My Life. I figured 'Hey, why
not make money off them?'
This months
Must-Read: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy
Soldier by Ishmael Beah. This book covers
Beah's life from age 12 to 17 in war torn Sierra Leone.
Without telling anyone, Beah and his friends walk
to a neighboring village one day for a talent show.
While there, RUF rebels storm their homes, killing
everyone. He then walks for weeks trying to distance
himself from the violence but is ultimately
apprehended and conscripted by the national Army.
The next several years are spent as a drug addicted,
teenage killing machine until being rescued by
UNICEF. Every page is horrific, gruesome and so, so
sad but it needs to be read in order to appreciate the
awfulness of life in so many strife ridden countries,
and to remember how grateful we should be for the
lives we get to call our own. I gave it to my son who will
soon turn 13 thinking that as he enters these self-
centered teenage years it would be good for him to get
a better grip on just how fortunate he really is. He just
started it and is engrossed. (Into the Wild is
next on his list.) Along the same vein is Wolfgang
Samuel's memoir, German Boy, which covers
his childhood from age 9 to 16 as a german youth
who struggles with his family just to survive during the
final years of WWII and beyond. Very well
written.
National Book Award winner Ha Jin
has a new novel out at the end of the month. A
Free Life documents the immigrant experience of
Nan Wu and Pingping as they find their way from
Boston to New York and finally, Atlanta, where they
realize their version of the American dream. I thought
Jin's writing was succint and eloquent. Caroline and I
both liked Stewart O'Nan's upcoming book The
Last Night at the Lobster, which revolves around
the intertangled lives of the staff of a Red Lobster on
its last day in business. Fred pronounced
Beaufort by Ron Leshem 'a depressing story
about a depressing war. Probably a hit'. I love Fred's
reviews. My daughter Sarah is enjoying Flush
by Carl Hiassen and the Great Illustrated Classics
version of Pride and Prejudice that we're
reading together at night. Some fun reading for me
this month was comparing Tim Gunn's A Guide to
Quality, Taste and Style with Nina Garcia's
Little Black Book. If you are an armchair
fashionista like me, you'll love the fashion fix that both
these books provide (and so will your closet!)
More suggestions can be found by turning to the
current selections of several local book clubs- The
Epicure's Lament (Kate Christensen), A
Thread of Grace (Mary Doria Russell), A
Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini),
If I Am Missing or Dead (Janine Latus), and
The Birth of Venus (Sarah Dunant). And of
course, there's always Oprah's Book Club which
this month selected Love in the Time of
Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Enjoy!
Get some gruesome ideas at the Extreme Pumpkins website!!
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The Phantom
A fun Halloween tradition
Do you have a phantom in your neighborhood? Would
you like to get one? Here's how: Take a piece of white
paper. Draw the outline of a ghost on it, add eyes,
mouth, whatever you want. Cut it out. Put together
a goodie bag for two neighbors- in my 'hood
we include treats for both kids and parents (my
favorite treat to leave for the grown-ups: wine in a
black, cat shaped bottle).
Wait until dark, run up to
your target's house, tape
the ghost and phantom poem (see link below) on the
door, drop the goodies on the mat, ring the bell and
RUN trying not to trip over the grill, bicycle or
other
random driveway hazards!!! Once you've been
'phantomed' leave the ghost in a door or
window so everyone will know you've already
been 'hit' .
Because everybody hits two more, it doesn't take
long for a neighborhood to be covered so
consider hitting one house on your street, and a
friend's house in another neighborhood to get the
phantom started there. And just who IS the
phantom? Well, only the phantom knows!!
Get the Phantom poem here!!!!
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Flotsam & Jetsam
Footnotes from life at a coffeeshop
The First Annual Duck Jazz Festival was a
smash hit! The music was hot (so was the weather),
visitors and locals alike came in droves to hear the
jazz and the entire event went off perfectly... the
Second DJF is set for Sunday, October 12,
2008.. be there or be square, man!... what we're
watching: The Office is back and better than
ever... Hung took home the title, deservedly so, of
Top Chef... the latest foodie addiction in my
house: Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
(you may never eat out again)... who doesn't love
Tim Gunn's Guide to Style (and -thank god!
Project Runway returns on 11/14).... what
we're listening to: Kanye's Stronger,
Beyonce's Irreplaceable, Feist's 1-2-3-
4 and the cool music from the Last of the Mohicans in
the NFL Merriman commercial.... we lost two
restaurants in Currituck recently- both Pot's On
and Greentails (AKA the Point) have
closed and are for sale... I'll miss the corn cakes from
Pot's On... if the many rumours are true, a prominent
national chain of coffeeshops is opening a branch in
Southern Shores... we don't want to get NIMBY about it
but would like to remind everyone of the importance of
shopping locally, both on the Outer Banks and
wherever you're reading this...
The Benefits of Shopping Locally....
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And The Winner Is....
The 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature
I was thrilled to learn the winner of this year's Nobel
Prize for Literature was Doris Lessing. I have been a
Lessing fan since 1986 when assigned some
of her short stories in a Modern British Novel class
and have included her Booker short listed novel,
The Good Terrorist, on my list of Desert Island
books (see article below). Lessing is 87 and her
writing is prolific. Probably her best known work was
1962's The Golden Notebook, a book that,
unintentionally, spoke quite loudly to the growing
feminist movement. She was raised in Rhodesia
(today's Zimbabwe) which is the setting for much of
her early work, including her first novel, 1950's The
Grass is Singing which chronicles a white
woman's affair with her black servant. If you've not
read Lessing before, don't be intimidated now that
Nobel Prize Winner follows her name. Her work is
approachable, vast, enjoyable, interesting and
memorable. Congratulations Doris!
View the complete bibliography of Doris Lessing...
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Jamie's Five and Dime
Five For A Desert Island
Last April, a woman named Mollie Hoben came
into
our store. Mollie works for the Minnesota Women's
Press and arranges Readers on the Road trips
for 'adventurous women who read and want to explore
new ideas and new places'. In October, she led two
groups on a Books Afoot trip to the Outer Banks.
During their stay, they were beachcombers, porch
sitters, bookstore visitors and book readers. Duck's
Cottage was privileged to host them one evening and I
gave them some entertainment in the form of a little
presentation I called 'Jamie's Five and Dime'
composed of an assortment of five and ten book lists
like 'The Last Ten Books I Read' and 'Five Favorites
from the Kid Shelves'. I'm going to share some of
these lists over the next few months beginning
with 'Five Books I Would Need
on a Desert Island'. In no particular order they
are...
Nine Stories by JD Salinger
Yes, he
wrote more than just Catcher in the Rye and
Franny & Zooey. Why don't more
people know about this book? I have read these short
stories over and over and over again. His
characters get their hooks in me every time and I
always walk away wondering '... but what happened
next?'
The Wayward Bus by John
Steinbeck
Again, everybody
reads The Grapes of Wrath and East of
Eden, maybe
even Tortilla Flat, but no one ever picks this
one up! This is Steinbeck at the height of his game. My
goal in life is to obtain a copy of the 1957 movie
version starring Joan Collins and Jayne Mansfield.
Please, buy this book today. (Note: the Duck's Cottage
Book Group has read both of these books and were
mesmerized as well.)
The Good Terrorist
by
Doris
Lessing This book by Lessing, an extremely
accomplished British novelist, was assigned in a
college course on the modern british novel. My copy is
literally falling apart. Again, fascinating characters; a
snapshot of Britain at the height of the Thatcher years
and the dangers of playing with political protesting.
The Drifters by James Michener
I
read
this
book, about young people traveling around Europe
during the turbulent sixtie's, while I was a young
person traveling around Europe during the very non-
turbulent eighties. The settings are wonderful-
Kathmandu, Pamplona, Portugal, and more; the
characters and interwoven storylines captivating. I
recommend this Michener book more than any other.
And not to be cliched or anything, but my last choice
would have to be
Little Women by Louisa
May
Alcott Maybe it's because Alcott and I share
a birthday... maybe because, like Jo, I was a
tomboy who didn't understand the inherent
cattiness and meanness of other girls... maybe it's
because the copy on my shelf is inscribed 'Merry
Christmas Connie (my mother), 1950'. All I know is
every couple of years, I get it down (very carefully, the
cover has almost fallen off) and savour it all over
again.
Why these five books? As a group they are
characterized by characters- well developed, quirky,
interesting and entertaining men, women and children
of all ages, all walks of life and all nationalities. I'll find
myself thinking about the stories within these books
when I'm vacuuming the house, driving a long
distance, painting furniture, or performing some other
mindless chore that leaves plenty of mental down
time. The kind of time I assume you would have a lot
of on a desert island.
See other Desert Island lists and add yours!
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It's time to start carving some practice pumpkins...
don't forget to check out the extreme pumpkins site for
some amazing ideas... there's always the chance I'll
go all Martha Stewart-y and just drill holes all over for a
polka dotted effect. In any event, good luck with your
pumpkin, enjoy the rest of the month and have a
Happy Howl-o-weeeeeen!!
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