BOOKPATHS

Brattleboro, Vermont

Author Archer Mayor talks about his "Brattleboro-based Joe Gunther detective series."

Even in beautiful Vermont, Archer Mayor finds shadows among the lush low mountains and pretty little towns, and his detective, Joe Gunther, finds a way to beat them back.

Route 100, Vermont, U.S.

The Robert Frost Cabin is one of the Jonathan Kandell’s stops along Vermont’s Route 100.

The Frost log-and-wood slat cabin stands in a clearing outside the town of Ripton (pop. 566), where the poet spent summers and wrote from 1939 until his death in 1963 at age 88. (Today, the farm, now a National Historic Landmark, belongs to Middlebury College, which maintains the property as a Frost memorial. The public has access to the grounds.) Behind a forest of 100-foot-tall Norwegian pines, the weathered cabin looks out on an apple orchard, a meadow carpeted in wildflowers and a farmhouse. – from “Vermont’s Venerable Byway,” by Jonathan Kandell, Smithsonian

Naulakha, Dummerston, Vermont

Anne Lawrence Guyon visits the Vermont home “where Kipling reared Mowgli."

With his study in the prow, kitchen in the stern, windows along the port side and staircases hugging its starboard wall, Naulakha (pronounced now-LAH-kuh) has been fully restored and contains nearly all original furnishings, including traces of Kipling’s Bombay birthplace and British parentage. – from “Where Kipling Reared Mowgli (in Vermont),” by Anne Lawrence Guyon, The New York Times

Related Website

Landmark Trust USA – Naulakha

Vermont, U.S.

Charles Bock explains why we “must read” Go With Me, by Castle Freeman, Jr.

Go With Me employs the simplest of setups: Ragtag underdogs take on unstoppable evil. On the way, readers get an expertly guided tour of a disappearing Vermont, one that's still occasionally visible behind the touristy sheen of roadside farms and ski lodges. In one running joke, various local landmarks and former stores have now become candle shops. – from “You Must Read This,” by Charles Bock, NPR Website

Weybridge, Vermont, U.S.

Julia Alvarez explains why she likes living in Weybridge, Vermont.

“What holds us all together is unspoken, sturdy and as deep as the limestone and marble once quarried from our hills. A love and respect for the land—that's our abiding bond.” – Julia Alvarez, Smithsonian Magazine

Norwich, Vermont

The Norwich Bookstore is profiled on the American Booksellers Association website.

“Penny McConnel and Liza Bernard founded The Norwich Bookstore almost 13 years ago, before a building even existed to house it. What is now a 2,000-square-foot general bookstore occupying two stories in Vermont's Norwich Square downtown shopping area was then merely a big hole in the ground. A local builder was razing buildings to create new retail spaces that resemble private homes.” – from ABA Website

Shelburne, Vermont

The American Bookseller’s Association profiles The Flying Pig, a children's bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont.

“Founded in November 1996 as a children's bookstore in Charlotte, Vermont, The Flying Pig celebrated its 10th anniversary last Saturday as a general bookstore specializing in children's books in the neighboring town of Shelburne. In September, owners Elizabeth Bluemle and Josie Leavitt moved the store to the newly restored 200-year-old Shelburne Inn, where its selling space doubled to 1,400-square-feet.” -- ABA Website

Bookpath; Thetford Center, Vermont

First Person Rural : Essays of a Sometime Farmer, by Noel Perrin (Boston, MA : David R. Godine, reprint 1990)

In 1963, Noel Perrin, a former New Yorker, bought an 85-acre farm in Thetford Center, Vermont. First Person Rural : Essays of a Sometime Farmer is the first in a series of books about his life there. Essays explain the grades of maple syrup, how to make butter, sell wood in New York City, build fences, raise sheep, how to buy a pickup truck or a chainsaw, and more. The essays charm, inform, and share time and place.

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

“…by the year 1800 the two states [Vermont and New Hampshire] looked pretty much the way they do now, in their unspoiled sections, except that the soil and the people were both richer in 1800.” – from First Person Rural : Essays of a Sometime Farmer, by Noel Perrin

Montpelier, Vermont

The American Booksellers Association profiles Bear Pond Books, in Montpelier, Vermont.

“Since 1973, Bear Pond Books has been selling books and creating a sense of community in downtown Montpelier, Vermont. The store has brought dozens of well-known authors to the store and took a well-publicized, defiant stand protecting the privacy rights of its customers in the face of the USA Patriot Act.” – from ABA Website

Bear Pond Books Website

Manchester, Vermont

Publishers Weekly has chosen Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, as their Bookseller of the Year. Northshire Bookstore is owned by Ed and Barbara Morrow and has been in business for thirty years. Visit them online.