Armchair Travel
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
  Don't You Dare Read Coniston
I'm asking all the readers of my blog not to read Coniston by the other Winston Chuchill. That's because this book is my private sanctuary. It is a brilliant work of literature that is entirely undiscovered. It's like walking in a forest after a snowfall. No one has been there before.

You would find no interest in this story of an ignorant New Hampshire tanner who came to control the purse strings of state government. How he took the orphan child of a woman he once loved and raised her as his own. It wouldn't be of the slightest interest to you, I guarantee.

This guy has nothing to commend himself as a character. He eats nothing but biscuits and milk.

The other Winston Churchill wrote scads of other books. Read those. You can get them for about seven bucks. They all have red covers with gilt finish.

You don't want to know how the railroads got out of paying for fires started by their locomotives and people killed at unmarked crossings by giving free passes to state legislators. That was more than a century ago. That kind of thing never happens anymore.

In this antiquated volume, the laws of the State of New Hamsphire are hammered out in the back rooms of a nearby hotel. That couldn't happen in today's world. I know. I worked in the N.H. Senate for six years.

So please, don't read Coniston. It's where I go to be alone.
 
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Literary gadfly Stephen Hartshorne writes about books that he finds at flea markets and rummage sales.

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Stephen Hartshorne worked in newspapers and magazines around New England for many years and served as Information Officer in the New Hampshire Senate under Senate President Vesta Roy. He worked as a material handler for nine years at the Yankee Candle Company until the company was taken over by corporate weasels. He is currently the associate editor of GoNOMAD.com, an alternative travel website, which gives him the opportunity to correspond with writers and photographers all over the world. He lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts, with his daughter Sarah, a student at Drew University, and their cat, Dwight D. Eisenmeower. This blog is dedicated to his mom, who made him bookish.

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