The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Author: Henry Beston
In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." Beston stayed for a year, meditating on humanity and the natural world. In The Outermost House, originally published in 1928, he poetically chronicled the four seasons at the beach; the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, storms, stars, and solitude. The landscape was his major character, and his writing provides a snapshot of the Cape, a place physically changed yet as soulful 80 years later. Like Henry D. Thoreau before him, and Rachel Carson after him, Beston was a writer of stunning beauty, importance and vision. Robert Finch once wrote of him, "His are burnished, polished sentences, richly metaphoric and musical, that beg to be read aloud." The Outermost House is a classic of American nature literature. It is now available, for the first time, on audio.
Bernard E. Morris - Library Journal
Echoing Henry David Thoreau's life at the edge of Walden Pond, Beston's year on the beach of Cape Cod results in a classic record of a naturalist's encounter with an environment still unspoiled. Though Beston lives that year by himself in a small house built on the edge of the beach, he is never alone. Surrounded by a large variety of migrant birds, he delights in watching their habits up close and muses on the forces impelling them. Members of a nearby Coast Guard station offer occasional human company as well, but Beston's main focus stays on the rich variety of life around him. He describes the minutest detail of this world in thrilling language. He sees the full spectrum of colors in the waves, the sky, the topographical features of the Cape, the vegetation, and, of course, the fish and birds. While maintaining a respectful distance, he communicates an appreciation of the environment that is vitalized by his superb prose rhythms and a vocabulary that captures every nuance of his meaning. Brett Barry's narration is ideally suited to Beston's principal work, and Daniel Payne's interview with the author, though relatively brief, enhances the book's message. Highly recommended.
New interesting textbook: Our Daily Meds or The Leadership Challenge
Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets
Author: Mark Moran
For over a decade the Marks, publishers of Weird NJ magazine, have traveled the highways and back roads of their home state, camera and notebooks in hand, searching for the odd, the offbeat, and just plain weird places and people that make New Jersey the truly bizarre place that it is. They met some incredible people along the way, and all of them had a story they wanted to tell.
Their best-selling book, Weird NJ, was a publishing phenomenon, its appeal stretching far beyond the Garden State. So, camera and notebooks again in hand, Mark and Mark expanded their universe and found stories of weirdness in every state of the country. The result is a travel guide of sorts to America's local legends and best-kept secrets. It's chock-full of the crazy characters, cursed roads, abandoned sites, and bizarre roadside attractions that the authors feel reflect the shared modern folklore of our time.
So, come along with the Marks now. Visit places like the Coral Castle and Albino Village, explore abandoned insane asylums and forgotten tunnels—in one of them you just might run into the maniacal Bunnyman! Go off the beaten path and look for Melonheads, Frog People and the Melungeons. Take a ride down the Devil's Road and enter the Gates of Hell. Some of the people and places you'll see are disturbing, others are hilarious, but all are very very weird.
It's a journey you'll never forget.
Library Journal
There's something deliciously demented about two young men who wander the country in search of the bizarre, unexplained, or just plain nutty. Having had success, and plenty of reader response, with their magazine, Weird NJ, in which they documented New Jersey's less celebrated tourist attractions, they felt compelled to expand their research to encompass this entire land of Melon Heads, Phantom Clowns, Foulke Monsters, Prairie Moon Gardens, and Slimy Slim. Chapters are divided into enticing sections-"Fabled People and Places," "Bizarre Beasts," "Gateways to Hell," and "Cemetery Safari," among others-and are remarkably detailed, listing confirmed accounts of the events that have colored the countryside. A more valuable resource than similar titles such as New Roadside America and America Bizarro, which touch only briefly on the freaky attractions, Weird U.S. is a marvelous work of entertainment and the basis for a truly unique vacation. It deserves a prominent place in all public libraries.-Joseph Carlson, Lompoc, CA
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