What’s New on the Bookshelf?

Here are three more books for our B&B guests to enjoy. Well, “enjoy” is perhaps not the appropriate verb for The Body Toxic by Nena Baker, although the book is extremely informative. I will share some of what it taught me throughout the new year. Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness is ideal for B&B guests because they can pick a short story or two to read while here. Finally, Rachel Dickinson’s Falconer on the Edge: A Man, his Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West. I bought this slim volume to give Sven for Christmas because he makes me stop and look up at the sky every time a red-tailed hawk sails by. I’m not a bird person but got hooked by the first chapter, an explanation of how the author’s interest in falconry developed. Rachel’s husband turned out to be a falconer and this discovery sent her down a path to understanding the exceptional allure of the sport. In her search, she encounters master falconer and bird expert Steve Chindgren, admired by everyone involved in falconry. If a friend told me her husband spent half the year living alone in a cabin in Wyoming studying sage grouse, I would think the man was slightly nuts, but, by the last page, Steve’s lifelong passion for his birds made perfect sense. Falconer on the Edge is also an ode to the landscape of the American West, vanishing due to suburban development and natural gas exploration.

Buy these books online at Main Street Books, get a discount, and send 10% to a worthwhile charity like Doctors Without Borders. Read about this local store ready to battle Amazon here.