THE READING LIFE: THE COLLECTED COLUMNS

A savvy book lover once proclaimed: “Televisions are furniture, but books are life.” And Bridgton book lover Peter Bollen knows that better than anyone.

Bollen is an award-winning editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, book collector (more than 700 volumes), author of eight books and writer of the bi-weekly review column “The Reading Life” in the Bridgton News. This book is a collection of 84 previously published columns from 2015 to 2020, featuring selected reviews, author interviews and commentaries on writers — their foibles, feuds and unique places in literature and journalism.

The pieces are all short, each just a few pages, but they are colorful, poignant and funny, revealing Bollen to be a skilled writer and interviewer, and a true lover of books and the people who write them.

One column discusses the “lost” works of famous writers like Harper Lee, Ayn Rand, J.D. Salinger and Dr. Seuss, and how the “lost” works came to light. “Political Suicide” is a review of a book by Erin McHugh (2016) which skewers politicians for their misdeeds and scandals, proving that “Stupid never sleeps.” Bollen enjoys exposing famous author feuds, too (“the worst critics of writers are fellow writers”), such as the very public spats between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman, and William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Juicy stuff.

Bollen has also been lucky enough to interview many well-known authors: Gerry Boyle, Robert B. Parker, Carolyn Chute and Chris Holm, among others. He also includes excerpts from other interviews, revealing tidbits like E.B. White’s desire to start each writing day with “a nice dry martini,” and Stephen King’s wish that humorist Dave Barry write King’s biography. Learn about the Hoax Master and which U.S. president thought he would make a good pope.

This is fascinating fun.

COMFORT IS AN OLD BARN: STORIES FROM THE HEART OF MAINE

Fifty years ago writer Vincent McHugh said: “A writer’s business is to affect the reader,” and nobody does that better than small-market newspaper reporters and columnists like Amy Calder.

Calder is an award-winning reporter and columnist for the Morning Sentinel where she’s been since 1988 covering the full spectrum of hard and soft news and human interest stories. She also writes the popular “Reporting Aside” column for the paper. “Comfort is an Old Barn” is her first book, a delightful collection of 69 columns, essays and stories, from growing up in Skowhegan in the 1960s, to selected new stories, to a sample of the wonderful people she’s met on the beat.

And Calder has the unique writing talent that McHugh describes. Her writing is newsworthy precisely because it reflects genuine warmth, consideration, understanding and compassion. She affects readers with her honest concern and it shows.

Her stories of growing up in a large family (youngest of seven kids) are a hoot. She tells of playing in the sanctuary of the old barn, Halloween’s homemade candy and costumes, and working at the Lakewood Theater and meeting actors Farley Granger and Lana Turner. Other stories include meeting boxer Smokin’ Joe Frazier at a local furniture store promotion, other people’s annoying habits, oddball road names, and a charmingly nostalgic memory of the original social media: writing letters, sending Christmas, birthday and sympathy cards, thank you notes and other lost arts.

Best, however, are her vignettes about local people like the locomotive engineer on his last railroad run; three homeless friends taking care of each other; and the 92-year-old lady who hosts the annual reunion of the Skowhegan Class of 1947 (four people). Also discover what kids really learn on the school bus.

Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.

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