Fresh off the Presses: 3rd Edition of Take A Hike – Rochester « New York Outdoors Blog

POSTED October 8, 2010 by newyorkoutdoors

by Sue Freeman

New 3rd Edition

Yesterday, a tractor trailer truck once again pulled up to the worldwide headquarters of Footprint Press, Inc. (i.e. our home). This time, its contents were the bright new 3rd edition of “Take A Hike – Family Walks in the Rochester, NY Area.” The new, updated edition lost a few trails, added quite a few new ones and now sports 67 places to go for a walk in the greater Rochester area.

The books aren’t in the pipeline yet so you won’t find any at Amazon or bookstores. But, You can order them from our web site: TAH-Roch
Add a request in the comments line and we’d be glad to autograph one for you.
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This press release comes from the New York Outdoors blog, hosted by Rich and Sue Freeman. I've said it before and it bears repeating -- this is a great resource for NY State residents and tourists who love the outdoors. Always filled with info about hiking, camping, kayaking, and nature.

Our most recent posted hike was at Powder Mills Park: Trillium, Ridge and Hatchery Trails (photos!)

Starlight, a campfire, and a good book: Heaven

Camping offers us the chance to get away from our regular routine -- the mailbox and bills, email, household chores, the telephone and television -- whatever we choose to leave behind. We spend time with family and friends just talking, playing games, fishing, playing volleyball, swimming, hiking, and grilling food outdoors.

By the end of a good day at the campground the kids are exhausted and the grown-ups can gather around a campfire under a starlit sky. Heaven. Daytime's little breezes and noises die down in the darkness, and the night-bug chorus harmonizes with the sputter and crackle of burning logs.

Eventually, usually before midnight, those gathered around the fire stretch and yawn dramatically. Cloth chairs get stowed; trash goes into the embers; the bottles and cans are tossed into the bin for recycling.

"Whew, I'm beat. See you in the morning," is the parting consensus.

If I'm not too awfully tired, this is the time when I reach for whatever novel I'm reading at the time. I've got a big iron shepherd's crook I can stick in the ground next to my favorite chair. It holds the gas Coleman lantern at just the right height above my right shoulder.

Then I find the page where I left off, settle into my comfy canvas chair, and spend a solitary half hour escaping even farther from daily life into someone else's world. Beside me the lantern hisses softly. By now the campfire is a pulsing blend of orange and gray, with only an occasional quiet crackle. Surrounding campsites are silent and mostly dark. Makes it very easy to disappear into a well-written story for a while.

For me, that's the perfect ending to a good day. I'd never head for the campground without a good book from one of my favorite authors. Here's a review of the novel I just finished reading yesterday.

Book reviews: The Hard Way, by Lee Child

There's a line in Lee Child's tenth Jack Reacher novel, "The Hard Way," that sums things up perfectly:

"Reacher, alone in the dark. Armed and dangerous. Invincible" [page 420]

Former US Army MP Major Jack Reacher has been wandering among us for eleven years now, since "The Killing Floor" from 1997. Lee Child's debut novel and first in this series, earned both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel.

Reacher is a tough guy to know, much less to love. But he's the one person you'd want by your side in a showdown; that much is certain.

The man travels light:

"...Reacher had long ago quit carrying things he didn't need. There was nothing in his pockets except paper money and an expired passport and an ATM card and a clip-together toothbrush. There was nothing waiting for him anywhere else, either..."

Read more

copyright 2009 - all rights reserved
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How about you? Do you have a favorite novel you'd like to share? What do you like to do at the end of a long day camping? Drop me a line via Comments or by using the link at the top of this page.

Block's "Small Town" is big treat

Fans of Lawrence Block have waited a long time for a new, stand-alone novel. None of Block's series characters--Bernie Rhodenbarr,Matthew Scudder, or Keller--appear anywhere in the pages of Small Town [2003, Harper Torch-HarperCollins Publishers, NY,NY]. No witty buglarish comedy, then, no alcoholic (post- or otherwise) sleuthing, and no murders-for-hire awaits readers here. Instead, we are rewarded with an intriguing mixture of boldly-drawn characters who eventually disturb each other's orbits in the vast solar-system of the Big Apple. Fans of Lawrence Block know to expect the unexpected from his fully-fleshed villains and heroes. This novel's motley crew of flawed good-guys and sympathetic bad-guys certainly will not disappoint faithful readers. Might shock them, though. Small Town won't be featured anytime soon in the local library's Books Read Out Loud program. This one's strictly for mature adults.

Small Town builds its post-9-11 story one piece at a time, as Block introduces each character with revealing morsels and a smidgen of background. First we meet Jerry Pankow, an unassuming gay man who pays the rent by cleaning two bars and a brothel. He also picks up spare cash by tidying-up for a few clients he's acquired by word-of-mouth. One of them, lovely Marilyn Fairchild, turns up dead. Her death leads us to an acquaintance of the deceased: Susan Pomerance. She's the owner of a successful folk-art gallery, and she's looking for love in a whole lot of places. Perhaps the death of her one-time friend compels her to live life with a bit more gusto. Susan introduces us to her favorite attorney and some-time lover, Maury Winters. More on Maury shortly.

We're drawn, next, deep into the lives of two very dissimilar heroes: a struggling writer and a "retired" top-cop. The writer, John Blair Creighton, might have murdered the bar-cleaner's client--even he isn't completely certain of his own innocence. Fortunately for Creighton, his lawyer is the afore-mentioned Maury Winters, one very capable defense attorney. Meanwhile, the cop, former NYC Police Commissioner Francis Buckram, finds himself intrigued with the circumstances surrounding the first murder. (Oh, yes, there are many more murders along the way!) He finds himself even more intrigued with the gallery owner, Susan, who's busy discovering the power of love. Susan immerses herself in the lives of an entire collage of characters, some of them central to the story--some not. It's all fun to watch, at any rate.

As more people die, the circumstances seem to implicate the cleaning guy, Pankow. We know he didn't do it, since we know who the real killer is, and we know why. (No, I won't tell you his name here.) We can even sympathize to an extent, although this poor fellow's methods are rather disturbing. Meanwhile, the writer and his attorney must fend off an over-eager pair of detectives who, at first, feel sure the writer is the killer. Murder charges lead to amazing developments for John Creighton, the struggling novelist. The writer's notoriety ropes in Miss Susan, who knows the policeman, who's pretty sure the author is innocent. One of Susan's other "friends" tells her a story that eventually exposes the true killer, after a few more gruesome twists in the plot. And I haven't told you the half of it all!

I'm sure there have been hundreds of novels written since the fall of the Twin Towers. With nearly three thousand souls lost among four related disasters, there is an endless supply of stories to tell. Small Town is entirely fictional, however. This isn't Readers' Digest "Drama in Real Life." Instead, Block treats us to a mostly irreverent human drama. Don't read this tale expecting heart-wrenching descriptions of selfless heroism. Read it for the joy of a rambling and ambitious plot piloted by a wild and unlikely crew. If, in the end, the whole concoction offends your sensibilities--well, there's always next month's Readers' Digest. For all the rest of us, we can only wait for Block's next endeavor. We might be surprised, but we won't be disappointed.
--Highly recommended: 4 stars (of five).