Buy local, read local
By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor
You’ve read every book on the New York Times bestseller list, and gifts of holiday cash have left your book budget bulging. What to read next?
When was the last time you grazed titles by local authors or books about local places and people? You may be surprised. It’s a feast for even the ravenous reader, with titles in every category: cookbooks, children’s books, coffee-table books, mysteries, essay collections, fictional stories, nonfiction narratives, spiritual tomes, inspirational pages and numerous histories and biographies.
The ‘Buy Local’ mantra isn’t just for the holidays. Shop at local booksellers’ and help keep the money in northern Michigan.
Here’s a sampling of “local” books to keep you company this winter. There are many worthy others waiting to be discovered.
Ready to drool? Find 66 mouth-watering recipes made using extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar in the new cookbook, In the Kitchen with Fustini’s, sold at Fustini’s storefront in Traverse City. Go green with Oryana’s practical, spiral-bound and affordable What’s For Dinner, a compilation of 80 recipes from a popular in-store program by the same name, which uses fresh, local, wholesome and sustainably-grown ingredients. If old-fashioned goodness is more your style, try Bob Schramski’s Favorites from Adeline’s Table, taste-tested re-creations from his Cedar grandmother’s recipe box. For a copy, call Schramski at (231) 947-3166. Northport summer resident Mario Batali’s latest cookbook from publisher Harper Collins stresses the importance of meal-time togetherness in Molto Batali: Simple Family Meals from My Home to Yours.
Equally filling are the latest essay and other collections of “place” by poet/essayist/playwright and Interlochen writing instructor Anne Marie Oomen, (An American Map), award-winning author Jerry Dennis (The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes), former local newspaper columnist and home gardener Dee Blair (The View from Sunnybank), and former NMC instructor and newspaper columnist Henry Morgenstein (TC, I Love Thee).
Traveling a bit further afield is Ron Jolly’s (and Karl Bohnak’s) 563-page book, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Almanac, offering an exhaustive collection of all things Michigan north of the Mighty Mac (culture, history, education, people, land and water features, weather and events), organized by county.
When you’re hungry for history, check out Vintage Views along the West Michigan Pike by M. Christine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson — about travel and tourism sparked by the first continuous, improved road between Michigan City, Ind. and Mackinaw City, Mich. Or check out two recent releases: John Mitchell’s Grand Traverse — The Civil War Era, pieced together from diary entries and Grand Traverse Herald accounts; and Echoes of Distant Thunder, the historical fiction story of a civil war veteran’s search for peace, written by Interlochen Public Radio regular Frank Slaughter, a gun corporal (First Michigan Light Artillery, Battery D) in a re-enactment group.
There’s an account of Michigan’s governors (Stewards of the State) and Sleeping Bear Dunes (Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today) by political columnist George Weeks and numerous titles by Leelanau historian Larry Wakefield. Cottage Book Shop owner Barbara Siepker interviewed 75 cottage owners for the award-winning Historic Cottages of Glen Lake, and Traverse City students Molly Tompkins and Ryan Ness interviewed over 80 sources for their Light the Night history of Traverse City’s Hickory Hills ski area.
Don’t overlook local historical organizations, which compile their own histories, such as the Empire Heritage Group’s Some Other Day and Benzie Area Historical Museum’s Shared Moments. BAHM offers titles by others, too, including Bruce Catton’s Waiting for the Morning Train and Grant Brown, Jr.’s Ninety Years Crossing Lake Michigan, a 2009 Michigan Notable Book.
Historical accounts of the former Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Center abound, and two of the latest are Northern Michigan Asylum, by William Decker, M.D., and the photographic montage Traverse City State Hospital, by Chris Miller.
If your ’buds lean toward biographies, read about Suttons Bay attorney-activist Dean Robb: An Unlikely Radical, by Matthew Robb, or Traverse City’s champion of the disadvantaged in The Heart of a Priest: Father Fred’s Life & Ministry, by Paul LaPorte.
Combining real events, purposeful prose and an unconventional approach to storytelling, Glen Arbor Sun editor Jacob Wheeler penned the nonfiction narrative of local resident and business owner (Wild Birds Unlimited) Judy Barrett’s search for her adopted daughter’s birth mother in Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey through Adoption. As northern Michigan mystery writer Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli wrote in her Northern Express review, “It is refreshing to read a book where the writer doesn’t supply dishonest answers or takes an untenable stand.”
Speaking of Buzzelli, her latest novel, Dead Dogs and Englishmen, (fourth in the Emily Kincaid mystery series), received glowing words from Kirkus Reviews. The latest works by acclaimed mystery writer Aaron Stander (Medieval Murders) and true crime author Mardi Link (Isadore’s Secret) will also keep you guessing.
For sheer escape, award-winning author and poet Jack Driscoll offers the fictional “Star Dog,” about a divorcee who takes a 1,000-mile journey after winning thousands at a casino. Driscoll’s first novel Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, won the 17th annual Pushcart Editors’ Book Award, and his subsequent short story and poetry collections have also received awards. A former creative writing instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy (IAA) and its writer-in-residence for 33 years, he will read from his latest work, The World of a Few Minutes Ago, at IAA’s Writing House, 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 1. Michigan author and poet Judith Minty will join him and read from her “Killing the Bear” tale, now found in a limited-edition, hand-printed, hand-bound book illustrated with wood engravings by local artist Glenn Wolff.
Last year, Michael Delp, currently a creative writing instructor at IAA, published his first collection of short stories (As If We Were Prey, described as “visceral”) joining his other published works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
Looking for adventure? During his life, one-time Suttons Bay resident James B. Hendryx — known for gold-and-adrenaline-rush stories — gave us almost 70 novels. (At the time of this writing, some were available at Dog Ears Books in Northport, which has numerous Michigan titles.) Try Blood on the Yukon Trail, Snowdrift or Raw Gold.
A hearty appetite for literature can be sated with the latest Dunes Review journal and 2011 chapbooks by Denise R. Baker (poetry) and Joan Schmeichel (short fiction) — all published by Michigan Writers.
A new year invites introspection. Rabbi Chava Bahle’s workbook, “Return to Bliss,” offers “a guided spiritual journey through the practice of teshuvah/return and devekut/God consciousness.” Matt Sutherland’s “Go Seek: Journaling to Spiritual Fulfillment” provides the inspiration (via quotations and ideas) and space for expressing oneself during a suggested eight-week mind/body/health spiritual quest.
A cross between the self-effacing humorist Erma Bombeck and the candid Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love), Traverse City author/artist Kristen Jongen (Growing Wings) continues her colorful collage of memoir, poetry and artwork in Attempting Flight, her second book. Michael Moore’s voice is uniquely his in Here Comes Trouble, the first of his memoirs. Each chapter is its own story, so you can pick up and put down the book’s 427 pages without losing the thread.
Children’s books by northern Michigan authors include Lynn Rae Perkins (Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth), Heather Shaw (Smallfish Clover), Erin Anderson (Look About You: A Magical Childhood in Michigan’s Wild Places), Dick Evans (Discover the Magic of Rainbows) Mike Kelly (Roy G Biv and the Color Wheel — with a music CD by local songwriter/musician Adair Correll) and Ron Schmidt (Twin Tales).
For moms and moms-to-be, there is Into These Hands: The Wisdom of Midwives, edited by Geraldine Simkins. For men and women who hunt, there is Richard P. Smith’s Deer Hunt and Understanding Michigan’s Black Bear, along with other Smith titles. Musicians and others who can’t get enough of the blues might appreciate The Blues in Black and White: The Landmark Ann Arbor Blues Festival by Michael Erlewine. Native American author, artist, teacher and storyteller Lois Beardslee offers books for children and adults, including Rachel’s Children, The Women’s Warrior Society, Lies to Live By and others. Amateur astronomers, science geeks and art aficionados might be astounded and interested to learn that NMC instructor Jerry Dobek updated and reissued E. E. Barnard’s A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, published by Cambridge University Press last year and still seeking a local bookseller.
Ask for these books at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Brilliant Books in Suttons Bay, Dog Ears Books in Northport, Leelanau Books in Leland, Interlochen Bookstore and Traverse City booksellers: Horizon Books; Brilliant Books; The Bookie Joint; So Many Books, So Little Time; Higher Self Bookstore, Barnes and Noble and Books A Million.
This GlenArbor.com story is sponsored by LVR Realty and Leelanau Vacation Rentals, whose exceptional staff will make your vacation a memory to treasure.
