What are some good books about Maine?
September 7, 2018 11:04 AM Subscribe
I just moved to Maine and am interested in learning more about this state and its people. History, fiction, non-fiction--whatever you've got!
There was a question like this back in 2009, and I'm wondering if anyone else has more to add.
Response by poster: I should have mentioned that I read Vacationland last month! I lived in Western Mass for 7 years so it was highly relateable.
posted by apricot at 11:21 AM on September 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by apricot at 11:21 AM on September 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
Fiction:
1. I'd second the suggestion in the 2009 thread for The Beans of Egypt, Maine (for a specific kind of struggling life of white poverty).
2. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Nonfiction:
Haven't read it yet but am planning to: Substitute by Nicholson Baker looks great.
posted by nantucket at 11:25 AM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
1. I'd second the suggestion in the 2009 thread for The Beans of Egypt, Maine (for a specific kind of struggling life of white poverty).
2. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Nonfiction:
Haven't read it yet but am planning to: Substitute by Nicholson Baker looks great.
posted by nantucket at 11:25 AM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
I once booked an off-grid AirBnb cottage on a teeeeny island near Friendship. Turned out, the house had been in one single family since it was built in the 1700s, now caretaken by the original owner's Great, Great, Great Grandson. The house was left untouched, and we were encouraged to rifle through the treasures contained in it.
I found this book, which is an oral history given by Ivan Morse ("old-timer" and ancestor of our host) and taken by the local historical society in Friendship. I devoured it in two days. It was enhanced by the fact that I was literally living as this guy did, surrounded by all of his stuff, and in his old stomping grounds, but perhaps you would enjoy it too!
posted by functionequalsform at 11:29 AM on September 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
I found this book, which is an oral history given by Ivan Morse ("old-timer" and ancestor of our host) and taken by the local historical society in Friendship. I devoured it in two days. It was enhanced by the fact that I was literally living as this guy did, surrounded by all of his stuff, and in his old stomping grounds, but perhaps you would enjoy it too!
posted by functionequalsform at 11:29 AM on September 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" captures a sense of Maine that is not too far removed from "The Beans of Egypt Maine"; life in the perpetually-economically-depressed former mill towns of central and western Maine. I grew up in Lewiston-Auburn and recognized everything in that book.
posted by briank at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by briank at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2018 [4 favorites]
I picked up this fun book of ghost stories from Down East Maine. The author teaches English and cultural studies at U of Maine, and he tells lots of different versions of the many, many ghost stories and spooky tales from the awesomely spooky region. Easy, easy reading, and good for this time of year! (Under 50 degrees in my town in NH this morning...that means it's Halloween now!)
posted by nosila at 11:44 AM on September 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by nosila at 11:44 AM on September 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
Bill Caldwell was a transplant, but his stuff is well worth reading
posted by BWA at 12:47 PM on September 7, 2018
posted by BWA at 12:47 PM on September 7, 2018
Best answer: Hello from Portland!!
First, a few non-book things:
- Visit the Maine State Museum in Augusta. It's actually surprisingly good.
- Visit the stellar Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor.
- Visit either (or both!) the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, and/or the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
- Find some recordings (not the books) of the Bert & I stories by Marshall Dodge. (You can find some of them on YouTube, but finding the CDs would be better.)
- Digital Maine is an online service of the Maine State Library, and they have a lot of great documents online, including old small-town newspapers and books with titles like "A Happy Abundance : Tales, Memoirs and More Past and Present in Wayne, Maine" - a great way to dig around and find out more about the history of specific communities.
Ok, books:
*** One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together :: this is probably the BEST book I know of that talks about the reality of living in Maine today. Highly recommended.
- Get -- and cook from! -- an older copy of Cooking Down East by Marjorie Standish. I'm pretty sure the 21st century versions have been changed in a number of ways. The 1970's editions are what you want.
- A Midwife's Tale, based on the diaries of Martha Ballard, a colonial Midwife in Central Maine.
- We Took to the Woods (recommended in the other post, I think)
- You may enjoy The Hidden History of Maine. Not a stellar book, but highlights a lot of lesser known figures and has a nice geographic distribution.
- Islands of Maine and Rivers of Fortune are companion books by Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Caldwell. Educated at Cambridge University, he moved to Maine in the mid '60's and fell in love with the State. He has a number of other books as well. You might call him a folklorist, or a folklore-historian, but I think he's just call himself a journalist.
- Fanny and Joshua is a wonderful book about Maine native, Civil War General, and later Governor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and his wife Frances Caroline Adams. Joshua is a near-mythical figure in Maine history, and the book does a great job of making him into a real person (plus gives Fanny her due).
- Mystery on the Isles of Shoals :: well known and well written
- Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned - the 1947 fires are mostly known for destroying the palatial vacation homes in Bar Harbor, but they did much more than that. Great portrait of small towns in Maine in the postwar period (and then, related, Lost Bar Harbor)
- A trio of books about the Maine Warden's Service (and the both the rural hunting culture and the tourism industry that surrounds it) : Life and Death in the North Woods, Open Season, and My Life in the Maine Woods: A Game Warden's Wife in the Allagash Country, which is a great portrait of the life of a rural housewife in the 30s and 40s. (See also A Good Man with a Dog and a number of other books (and TV shows). The Wardens have their own genre.)
- A Stranger in the Woods is the story of a guy called Christopher Knight, who lived in a tent in the woods near Rome, ME from 1986 to 2013. This guy is not Thoreau, by any stretch of the imagination. He broke into homes, stole things, and basically was an unseen creepy presence in a small town for decades. The book itself is controversial, largely because of the approach the author takes (he basically stalked Knight, who was (and is) in prison), but the book is fascinating and well written, and goes into a good deal of detail about the community Knight was robbing to survive.
- This Splendid Game is a great book about politics in Maine, and highlights the careers of some of Maine politicians who are nationally known (including Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, Ed Muskie, and Olympia Snowe, and Collins and King), but also will teach you about some folks who are not known as well outside Maine (like Jim Longley) but whose work still marks the character of the State.
- Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, is one of the seminal works in the environmentalist movement, and is a Maine book, but you should also read On Farther Shore, the biography of Carson, to get a real sense of her and her love for and work in the state. I also urge you to visit the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells if you have the chance. It is beautiful and peaceful in a way most Maine parks are not.
Sorry that's kind of a syllabus. I hope you find something in there that you enjoy.
posted by anastasiav at 1:08 PM on September 7, 2018 [15 favorites]
First, a few non-book things:
- Visit the Maine State Museum in Augusta. It's actually surprisingly good.
- Visit the stellar Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor.
- Visit either (or both!) the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, and/or the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
- Find some recordings (not the books) of the Bert & I stories by Marshall Dodge. (You can find some of them on YouTube, but finding the CDs would be better.)
- Digital Maine is an online service of the Maine State Library, and they have a lot of great documents online, including old small-town newspapers and books with titles like "A Happy Abundance : Tales, Memoirs and More Past and Present in Wayne, Maine" - a great way to dig around and find out more about the history of specific communities.
Ok, books:
*** One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together :: this is probably the BEST book I know of that talks about the reality of living in Maine today. Highly recommended.
- Get -- and cook from! -- an older copy of Cooking Down East by Marjorie Standish. I'm pretty sure the 21st century versions have been changed in a number of ways. The 1970's editions are what you want.
- A Midwife's Tale, based on the diaries of Martha Ballard, a colonial Midwife in Central Maine.
- We Took to the Woods (recommended in the other post, I think)
- You may enjoy The Hidden History of Maine. Not a stellar book, but highlights a lot of lesser known figures and has a nice geographic distribution.
- Islands of Maine and Rivers of Fortune are companion books by Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Caldwell. Educated at Cambridge University, he moved to Maine in the mid '60's and fell in love with the State. He has a number of other books as well. You might call him a folklorist, or a folklore-historian, but I think he's just call himself a journalist.
- Fanny and Joshua is a wonderful book about Maine native, Civil War General, and later Governor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and his wife Frances Caroline Adams. Joshua is a near-mythical figure in Maine history, and the book does a great job of making him into a real person (plus gives Fanny her due).
- Mystery on the Isles of Shoals :: well known and well written
- Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned - the 1947 fires are mostly known for destroying the palatial vacation homes in Bar Harbor, but they did much more than that. Great portrait of small towns in Maine in the postwar period (and then, related, Lost Bar Harbor)
- A trio of books about the Maine Warden's Service (and the both the rural hunting culture and the tourism industry that surrounds it) : Life and Death in the North Woods, Open Season, and My Life in the Maine Woods: A Game Warden's Wife in the Allagash Country, which is a great portrait of the life of a rural housewife in the 30s and 40s. (See also A Good Man with a Dog and a number of other books (and TV shows). The Wardens have their own genre.)
- A Stranger in the Woods is the story of a guy called Christopher Knight, who lived in a tent in the woods near Rome, ME from 1986 to 2013. This guy is not Thoreau, by any stretch of the imagination. He broke into homes, stole things, and basically was an unseen creepy presence in a small town for decades. The book itself is controversial, largely because of the approach the author takes (he basically stalked Knight, who was (and is) in prison), but the book is fascinating and well written, and goes into a good deal of detail about the community Knight was robbing to survive.
- This Splendid Game is a great book about politics in Maine, and highlights the careers of some of Maine politicians who are nationally known (including Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, Ed Muskie, and Olympia Snowe, and Collins and King), but also will teach you about some folks who are not known as well outside Maine (like Jim Longley) but whose work still marks the character of the State.
- Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, is one of the seminal works in the environmentalist movement, and is a Maine book, but you should also read On Farther Shore, the biography of Carson, to get a real sense of her and her love for and work in the state. I also urge you to visit the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells if you have the chance. It is beautiful and peaceful in a way most Maine parks are not.
Sorry that's kind of a syllabus. I hope you find something in there that you enjoy.
posted by anastasiav at 1:08 PM on September 7, 2018 [15 favorites]
Oh, and this is a nice little write up(pdf) of Marguerite Yourcenar, whom you should read, another transplant, this time from France, to Mount Desert Island. (My great uncle's family had a cottage on Mount Desert Island about that time; no idea if they knew each other.)
posted by BWA at 1:11 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by BWA at 1:11 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
A couple of fiction titles:
Pink Chimneys: A Novel of 19th Century Maine
Kitchen Boy, by Sanford Phippen.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Pink Chimneys: A Novel of 19th Century Maine
Kitchen Boy, by Sanford Phippen.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you enjoyed Richard Hooker's book M*A*S*H (or the movie based on it), you might like the sequel, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, which carries on in the vein of the original book as the doctors set up the Finestkind Fishmarket and Clinic in Spruce Harbor, Maine. Be sure you get this exact title — there were a number of novels based on the TV show, by William E. Butterworth, that are not nearly in the same league (and are mostly not set in Maine).
If you like mysteries, a couple of novels in the excellent Grijpstra and de Gier series are set in Maine, starting with The Maine Massacre, which won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1984. The author, Janwillem van de Wetering, loved Maine and eventually retired there. But since it's in the middle of the series, you might need to read one or two of the non-Maine books, starting with Outsider in Amsterdam, to get an better appreciation of the characters.
posted by ubiquity at 2:13 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you like mysteries, a couple of novels in the excellent Grijpstra and de Gier series are set in Maine, starting with The Maine Massacre, which won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1984. The author, Janwillem van de Wetering, loved Maine and eventually retired there. But since it's in the middle of the series, you might need to read one or two of the non-Maine books, starting with Outsider in Amsterdam, to get an better appreciation of the characters.
posted by ubiquity at 2:13 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Is Stephen King too obvious? His early stuff in particular is very Maine-centric. I think everything I know about Maine comes from Stephen King novels.
posted by cakelite at 2:52 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by cakelite at 2:52 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
do picture books count? after returning home from a trip to maine without my kids, we read robert mccloskey’s one morning in maine a lot.
posted by sabh at 3:25 PM on September 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by sabh at 3:25 PM on September 7, 2018 [3 favorites]
Ruth Moore wrote a series of novels set in coastal Maine. I read a few several years ago, I think they were all set in the same town/village, generational families, life in the '40s and '50s, quietly engrossing.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:13 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:13 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Country of the Pointed Firs is a classic.
You might also try the Moosepath League books.
Bradford B. Brown has written a couple of books about being a vet in Maine.
posted by gudrun at 7:27 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
You might also try the Moosepath League books.
Bradford B. Brown has written a couple of books about being a vet in Maine.
posted by gudrun at 7:27 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
Olive Kittredge, yes, but also anything else by Elizabeth Strout. The Burgess Boys, in particular, in particular is excellent.
posted by luckdragon at 7:48 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by luckdragon at 7:48 PM on September 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Cider House Rules by John Irving - quite wonderful. It's fiction.
"Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England."
posted by the webmistress at 6:18 AM on September 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
"Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England."
posted by the webmistress at 6:18 AM on September 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
This feels like a stretch, but Fudge-a-Mania by Judy Blume is set in Maine.
posted by knile at 6:47 AM on September 8, 2018
posted by knile at 6:47 AM on September 8, 2018
A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast is oriented towards actual traveling by boat to the islands but had amazing kernels of history and working/local knowledge.
posted by sammyo at 3:03 PM on September 8, 2018
posted by sammyo at 3:03 PM on September 8, 2018
Check out the books by Linda Greenlaw, fisherwoman and author. Especially her non-fiction such as the Lobster Chronicles.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:24 PM on September 8, 2018
posted by SemiSalt at 4:24 PM on September 8, 2018
Not a book, but the short-lived New Maine News really captures the mundane, non-romanticized side of the place. I think the jokes get better the longer you live there.
posted by gueneverey at 6:03 AM on September 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by gueneverey at 6:03 AM on September 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thank you, everyone! I have added these to my Goodreads list!
posted by apricot at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2018
posted by apricot at 1:21 PM on September 28, 2018
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posted by Chrysostom at 11:14 AM on September 7, 2018 [4 favorites]