Tag Archives: Big House

Oh Brother!

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My all-time favorite author came to Concord last night to speak at  the Concord Bookstore. He wrote a book previously called “The Big House”(2003). I blogged about it on September 2,2012-I read it at the end of every summer as I am packing up to leave the Cape.

His new book entitled Brothers is a “captivating blend of historical anecdote,personal revelation,and psychological insight,this lively and imaginative book will serve up a great deal of wisdom(and just as much fun) to anyone who has ever been a brother or had a brother. In fact, maybe all you have to do is derive pleasure and nourishment from Colt’s book is simply to have once met a brother-it’s that appealing”.

” George Howe Colt is a master at balancing the personal and the  universe-the book makes a powerful case for sibling rivalry-and love-as a driving force not just in individual lives but in the world”.

GREAT Christmas gift idea!

 

End of Summer

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End of summer-a very melancholy time in everyone’s life.Whether you have been at a beach house,a mountain house,had vacations or stayed at home it still signals the end of a season and one that most people treasure.

I have a favorite book for this time of year.I don’t read the whole book but I do always read the first few pages. It is called” The Big House” and is written by George Howe Colt. He says it so perfectly for at least those who of us who are headed back home after a wonderful summer. “After gorging on summer for three months,the house has gone into hibernation.They call it the off-season,as if there were a switch in the cellar,next to the circuit breakers,that one flipped to plunge the house from brimming to empty,warm to cold,noisy to silent,light to dark”.

Howe talks about history-families who come back to a house year after year,decade after decade.He has a wonderful passage about coming in June and finding things just as they were from the summer before:”a striped beach towel tossed on the washing machine, a half-empty shampoo bottle wedged in the wooden slats of the outdoor shower,a fishing lure on the living room mantle, a half-burned log in the fireplace,a sprinkling of sand behind the kitchen door.”

These pictures are of a house called “The Oyster House”. It is a small house,right near a pond. The son has since built a beautiful house in front of it towards the road but kept his father’s beloved smaller house. His father was quite a collector-reputedly even strapping items he found onto the wings of his small plane. I love,in particular, the wall of doors-ones that he found interesting and put up to create a wall in his bedroom. It was indeed his very special place to return to every year.