Cape Cod & the Islands on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Phoebe Acheson

What a delight it was to have Dennis Minsky join us on The Point with Mindy Todd this morning on WCAI. Normally Dennis can’t join us in the summer, because he is tremendously busy guiding whale watching tours in Provincetown, but due to the pandemic the world as we knew it is considerably changed. In any case, what a treat and we hope that he might even be able to join us for a part two at the end of July or whenever he is next available for book talk on the radio. Needless to say, we had gigantic piles of books and probably only got through a third of them.

Thanks to all of our listeners who shared book titles with us, and if you have a favorite book that we missed (as we sure you do) save it for the next Cape Cod & Islands book show or you can just email us at info@falmouthpubliclibrary.org and we will add it to this list. So here are the lists!

Dennis’ Picks

Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau with an introduction by Robert Finch
The Outermost House: a year of life on the great beach on Cape Cod by Henry Beston, with an intro by Robert Finch. Please note there are many, many, many editions of The Outermost House, including a lovely children’s edition.
The Outer Beach: a thousand-mile walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore by Robert Finch
A Wild Rank Place: one year on Cape Cod by David Gessner
The Salt House: a summer on the dunes of Cape Cod by Cynthia Huntington

And an email from a listener that got to Mindy too late to read on air, but is fascinating nonetheless:

“Eugene Clark of Sandwich and an early speaker at Cape Cod National Seashore did some research into Coast Guard records and found that the shipwrecks that Beston writes of occurred in different years. From that he realized that Beston telescoped his book, which authors can do. This means that Beston lived for each season of the year in his outermost house, but did not live in it for one year continuously. Col Clark is now deceased, but I knew him and worked in the early years of CCNS. Peter B. Cooper of Yarmouth.”

Jill’s Picks

A Field Guide to Cape Cod Including Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, & Eastern Long Island by Patrick J. Lynch
An Illustrated Coastal Year: the seashore uncovered season by season by Celia Lewis
Wild Is the Wind by Carl Phillips. The poem I read was “Monomoy”.
Seaweed’s Revelation: a Wampanoag clan mother in contemporary America by Amelia G. Bingham
To the Harbor Light by Henry Beetle Hough

Listener Picks

Crab Wars: a tale of horseshoe crabs, bioterrorism and human health by William Sargent
Asia Rip by George Foy
Dreaming Monomoy’s Past: walking its present by Lee Stephanie Roscoe
Flintlock and tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War by Douglas Edward Leach
The Last Best League: one summer, one season, one dream by Jim Collins

Books About Insects on The Point

Posted on by Phoebe Acheson

Who knew that this month’s book show topic on The Point with Mindy Todd would bring us so many listeners calling and emailing to tell us about their favorite books about insects?! Of course, every month I do the book show, and every month I prepare as if not a single person will call us, as we want to be able to fill an hour of air time if no one calls. So, as usual, I had a pile of books about insects, and today’s co-booktalker, Dennis Minsky, had a pile of books about insects, never imagining that this would be the book topic for which, apparently, the listeners of the book show deeply care about! The titles were arriving so fast and furious that Mindy and I are not even sure that we have all the suggested titles written down! If we happened to have missed yours, do send us a note, and we will be happy to add your title to our list.

Because there were so many titles that neither Dennis nor I had time to talk about, our lists this month include everything that we brought along even if we didn’t actually get a chance to say anything about the book. I did have a moment to mention the spectacular digital Biodiversity Heritage Library, and I recommend you all take a look! Thanks so much for all of your suggestions, and it looks like we clearly will need to do another show on insects sometime in the not too distant future!

Mindy’s Picks

The Smaller Majority: the hidden world of the animals that dominate the tropics by Piotr Nasrecki. (A shout out to the Edgartown Public Library, as the only library in CLAMS that owns this title! Do remember you can request books, using your CLAMS card (or whatever network your town belongs to) in order to request titles CLAMS does not own. Check out the Commonwealth Catalog, which you log into using your library card and your pin number, and they will send a book right to your library.)

Ant and Bee stories.

Dennis’s Picks

Journey to the Ants: a story of scientific exploration by Bret Holldobler and Edward Wilson
Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley
The Mosquito: a human history of our deadliest predator by Timothy C. Winegard
The Last Butterflies: a scientist’s quest to save a rare and vanishing creature by Nick Haddad (Also only an Edgartown Public Library copy!)
Buzz Sting Bite: why we need insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson
Bugged: the Insects who rule the world and the people obsessed with them by David MacNeal
An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles by Arthur V. Evans and Charles L. Bellamy
The Infested Mind: why humans fear, loathe and love insects by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
Ant Encounters: interaction networks and colony behavior by Deborah M. Gordon

Jill’s Picks

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, illustrated by Garth Williams
Sex on Six Legs: lessons on life love & language from the insect world by Marlene Zuk
Edible: an adventure into the world of eating insects and the last great hope to save the planet by Daniella Martin
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: how Maria Merian’s art changed science by Joyce Sidman
Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis (also a listener pick!)
Joyful Noise: poems for two voices by Paul Fleischman
The Collector by John Fowles
Nabokov’s Butterflies edited and annotated by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle
Thoreau’s Animals by Henry David Thoreau, eduted by Geoff Wisner (which includes lots of insects!)
Angels & Insects by A.S. Byatt
Bug Music: how insects gave us rhythm and noise by David Rothenberg

Listener Picks

The Dancing Bees: an account of life and senses of the honey bee by Karl von Frisch
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
A Field Guide to the Ants of New England by Aaron M. Ellison
Ants of North America: a guide to the genera by Brian L. Fisher
For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
The Songs of Insects by Lang Elliot and Wil Hershberger
The City Under the Back Steps by Evelyn Sibley Lampman
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy
The Fisherman and His Wife: a brand new version by Rosemary Wells and illustrated by Eleanor Hubbard
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (which is a film)
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

Books About Fish & Fishing on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Phoebe Acheson

This morning we had the great pleasure of having Dennis Minsky back in the studio to talk about books. Our topic was books about fish and fishing. Our apologies that the show could not be live this month, due to my schedule, but please leave us a comment with any fish book you love that you would like us to add to the list. If you missed the show, you can listen online via WCAI!

Mindy’s Pick

I’ve Never Met an Idiot on the River: reflections of family, photography, and fly-fishing by Henry Winkler

Dennis’s Picks

Fishing Around Nantucket by J. Clinton Andrews

The Hungry Ocean: a swordboat captain’s journey by Linda Greenlaw

Four Fish: the future of the last wild food by Paul Greenberg

The Run by John Hay

The Most Important Fish in the Sea: menhaden and America by H. Bruce Franklin

The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham

American Seafood: heritage, culture & cookery from sea to shining sea by Barton Seaver

Consider the Eel by Richard Schweid

The Founding Fish by John McPhee

Jill’s Picks

“The Fish” by Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

The Shining Tides by Win Brooks

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean

The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation by Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton

My Moby Dick by William Humphrey

A Jerk on One End: reflections of a mediocre fisherman by Robert Hughes

Blues by John Hersey

Listener Picks

Even though we weren’t live for the fishing show, we got lots of books suggestions after the show! Here’s the list …

The Finest Kind : the fishermen of Gloucester by Kim Bartlett

Vermont River by WD Wetherell

Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky

Beautiful Swimmers : watermen, crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay by William Warner

The River Why by David James Duncan

The Longest Silence: a life in fishing by Thomas McGuane

Reading the Water: adventures in surf fishing on Martha’s Vineyard by Bob Post

Men’s Lives: the surfman and baymen of the South Fork by Peter Matthiessen

Books about Trees on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Phoebe Acheson

This morning Mindy and Jill were joined by Dennis Minsky, naturalist and a big reader! It is always fun for us when Dennis is able to find time to drive from Provincetown to Woods Hole to join us. We have previously talked with Dennis about nature books, maritime books, whaling books, and bird books. When we are done with the show, our books to read list is always longer than it was before we began, and we hope yours are as well! Dennis and I had both brought so many titles that we didn’t have time for, that we are making an extra long list today of both books we mentioned and books that we did not have time to mention, but are terrific. Miss the show? You can listen online!

I want to particularly thank our caller who suggested I read Trees in a Winter Landscape by Alice Smith, and to let her know that I was able to request a copy of the book from off Cape, so I should be seeing a copy soon! (And thus she won’t have to drive to Falmouth to deliver me a copy, but thanks so much for the offer!)

After we went off the air, I got an e-mail from a listener who wrote:

“I kicked myself for not remembering my decades old theory that looking at the sunset through winter trees was the inspiration for church stained glass.” What a grand theory!

Dennis’s Picks

“Lost” a poem by David Wagoner

The Hidden Life of Trees: what they feel, how they communicate: discoveries from a secret world by Peter Wohlleben

Thoreau and the Language of Trees by Richard Higgins

Essays: a fully annotated edition by Henry David Thoreau, specifically the essays: “Wild Apples,” “Walking,” “Autumnal Tints” and “The Succession of Forest Trees”

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Barkskins, a novel by Annie Proulx

American Canopy: trees, forests, and the making of a nation by Erick Rutkow

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Cape Cod Shore Whaling: America’s first whalemen by John Braginton-Smith and Duncan Oliver

Not Enough Time For:

Remarkable Trees Of The World by Thomas Parkenham

Trees, Woodlands, and Western Civilization by Richard Hayman

A Natural History Of Trees by Donald Culross Peattie

Jill’s Picks

Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams (and you can find lots more W.C. Williams in his Collected Poems!)

The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford

From the Forest: a search for the hidden roots of our fairy tales by Sara Maitland

Nature Writings by John Muir (Particularly his essay The American Forests.)

Trees by W. S. Merwin (and lots more tree poems can be found in Collected Poems, 1952-1993.) You also need to watch Even Though the Whole World is Burning, a documentary on W. S. Merwin and the trees he is trying to save.

The Tree by John Fowles

Novels in which trees play a role:

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (and notice the tree on the book jacket!)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (as suggested by Brian Engles)

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate (as suggested by Brian Engles)

And, of course, Shakespeare!

Not enough time for:

The Book of Trees: visualizing branches of knowledge by Manuel Lima

Arboreal: a collection of new woodland writing edited by Adrian Cooper (Includes essays, photos, and stories by, among others Andy Goldworthy, Ali Smith, Philip Hoare, and Germaine Greer.)

Oak: the frame of civilization by William Bryant Logan

Be in a Treehouse by Pete Nelson (Includes the Hidden Hollow Treehouse at the Heritage Museum & Gardens in Sandwich)

The Songs of Trees: stories from nature’s great connectors by David George Haskell

Maple on Tap: making your own maple syrup by Rich Finzer

Picture Books

Sugaring Time by Kathryn Lasky with photographs by Christopher G. Knight

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Poetrees by Douglas Florian

The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins, illustrated by Jill McElmurry

Patron Suggestions

American Canopy: trees, forests and the making of a nation by Eric Rutlow

Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wolfe