Books and Literature

The father/son writing team behind the popular Adirondack Kids books, and their fans, are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the series this summer. Gary and Justin VanRiper live most of the year in Camden, in the Tug Hill region. They and the rest of their family also spend lots of time on Fourth Lake in the Adirondacks. The award-winning Adirondack Kids book series has become a regional best seller. But Gary told Todd Moe that the first volume wasn't really meant to be a book.

There was a time not so long ago when nature writers shaped the national debate.

Books and articles by authors like Rachel Carson and Bob Marshall helped build popular support for conservation, environmental laws, and creation of the national parks.

But in the age of oil spills and climate change, some of the country’s top nature writers wonder whether their work can still make a difference.

Brian Mann attended a conference of writers earlier this month and has our story.

Not all thrillers are set in New York City or Chicago. Don Bredes sets his new novel in a fictional tourist community in northern Vermont. Betsy Kepes has this review of The Errand Boy.

When it comes to writing and thinking about rural America, no one is more influential than Verlyn Klinkenborg.

Klinkenborg runs a small farm in Columbia County, New York, and sits on the editorial board of the New York Times.

His “Rural Life” column may be the mostly widely read chronicle of small-town and farm culture in the country.

Klinkenborg was in the North Country over the weekend for a writing conference hosted by Paul Smiths College and the Adirondack Center for Writing.

He sat down on the shore of Upper St. Regis Lake and spoke with Brian Mann.

Our book reviewer, Betsy Kepes, can't stand the taste of most goat cheese. But, she thoroughly enjoyed Brad Kessler's new book Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. It's part memoir, part how-to and part history.

Cheese will be the topic of a series of lectures around the region this month. The authors of the new book, The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses, will share their love of cheese and what they learned during four years of research. Russ Hall and Peg Rooney met cheesemakers, breathed the aromas in cheese shops and made many different cheeses in their kitchen. Hall and Rooney were early fans of New York cheddars and cheese curds. They spoke with Todd Moe about their book, and what they call the “Adirondack Crescent”.

It's summertime, and the living is easy. Well, not for every living thing. UVM biologist Bernd Heinrich says summer is "the season of reproduction, feeding, growing, and trying to avoid being eaten." Betsy Kepes reviews his new book, Summer World: A Season of Bounty. More...

Author, educator and artist Nell Irvin Painter spoke at the Elizabethtown County Courthouse on Sunday. She read selections from her new book, "The History of White People," and fielded questions from the audience. The talk was part of a series sponsored by modern day anti-slavery organizations John Brown Lives! and John Brown Coming Home. Sarah Harris attended and has our story.

You're invited to take part in a marathon reading of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the Keene Valley Library on Friday. Librarian Karen Glass says the day-long "Huck Finn Out Loud" event starts early in the morning and will feature 30 readers reading aloud for 30 minutes each. Twain spent the summer of 1901 on Lower Saranac Lake. Glass told Todd Moe it's part of a series of events this summer that celebrate Twain's connection to the Adirondacks.

Food is an important part of the summer season — think family reunions, neighborhood parties and picnics. In the North Country, we have lots of regional food traditions and flavors — trout, rhubarb, wild mushrooms and locally grown vegetables. Food writer and community organizer Annette Nielsen has edited a new collection of recipes from four decades of Adirondack Life magazine. It's called Northern Bounty. Todd Moe spoke with Nielsen about picking out dozens of recipes for the new book and celebrating the region's favorite spring and summer foods.