PORTLAND, Maine — When the staff at “Down East” magazine started compiling a list of “100 Books Every Lover of Maine Should Read,” no one knew the extent to which we’d all be hunkered down and looking for entertainment, enlightenment or escape—or maybe all three. The timing couldn’t be much better.
To be considered, a book needed to meet just one criterion. It had to be set in Maine and be about it in some way. The list ranges far and wide, with volumes for kids, for cooks, for connoisseurs of Stephen King. “These are the books we’d include on the Maine Studies syllabus, the ones we’d stow on the interstellar spacecraft so aliens could come to know the Down East culture and character,” the magazine says. “They’re the books we would want on our desert isle, assuming we were marooned with a fairly sizeable trunk.”
You’ll find the list in the June issue and learn much more about it in our conversation with editor in chief Brian Kevin. Watch the interview, then get ready to read. So many books, so little time….