Autumn means foliage festivals (come to Warner’s Fall Foliage Festival on Saturday and Sunday; we’re celebrating the festival’s 70th anniversary and the bookstore’s 19th). Fall means the garden’s produce exploding everywhere needing to be processed, Halloween, the beauty of New Hampshire and celebrating the quiet. Here are a few of our favorite autumn picks.
Summer Over Autumn: A Small Book of Small-Town LifeBy Howard Mansfield
Howard Mansfield has done it again, writing so eloquently about our every day lives, making the normal feel extraordinary. Here he has collected seemingly small stories and observations through the lens of a journalist, historian and poet. You will want to keep this one by your bedside for comfort and reference.
“We get from stories what we bring to them, and in small towns, we may bring entire lives to the reading, and sometimes a simple story runs deep,” reads Summer Over Autumn.
Tamed & Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal KindBy Sy Montgomery
and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
We would be remiss if we did not mention that Howard Mansfield’s wife, Sy Montgomery, also came out with a new book this month. She wrote this with her best friend, the acclaimed anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
How cool is it that these two bestselling authors should team up to explore our relationships with the animals in our world?
Waters of the MonadnockBy Larry Bickford
and Richard Brandt
A simply beautiful little book, a keepsake. Lawrence Bickford is the photographer, Richard Brandt is the poet, and the lucky students of Hopkinton Middle High School get to have these two men as their teachers. Each page is a discovery and a delight.
The Big Book of Preserving the HarvestBy Carol W. Costenbader
There are lots of great books and recipes out there to help can, freeze, dry all the wonderful vegetables and fruits at this time of year, but this one seems to contain the most under one cover. The author will talk you through the very basics, and help you achieve delicious concoctions with the ingredients at hand. My copy at home is covered in dried juices!
The Halloween TreeBy Ray Bradbury
If you love Halloween as much as we do, check out this collection of stories tracing the origins of Halloween, from here and in other parts of the world. A history lesson of our shared cultures, this great book is appropriate for all ages, even as a read-a-aloud. Ray Bradbury makes the stories fun and so scary, just like Halloween!
Haunted Hikes of New HampshireBy Marianne O’Connor
Thanks to George Geers from Plaidswede Publishing for keeping this gem available, you and the family can do some great hiking through the Whites and beyond. A history lesson and a hiking guide in one, a great opportunity to be exploring outside and then hunker down by the campfire to get good and spooked.
Ox-Cart ManBy Donald Hall,
illustrated by Barbara Cooney
Can there be any more perfect children’s book than Ox-Cart Man, written by our own National Poet Laureate Donald Hall? Travel through the small towns of New Hampshire to Portsmouth during autumn, live back in time for a bit when markets provided the livelihood for the whole year and the whole family, and get swept away by the magic of this wonderful book.
Ask MeBy Bernard Waber,
illustrated by Suzy Lee
A lovely, seemingly simple picture book about a father and daughter walking together through all the colors and sounds and smells of autumn. Questions, questions, questions as they explore the different elements of nature and share the quiet of just being together with oodles of love.
(Katharine Nevins is co-owner of MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, an independent, family-run, community bookstore since 1998.)