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pamfritz's blog

We hear this alot – ”So many books, so little time.”  We’d like to invite you to curl up right here in the cozy quarters of B.F. Hiestand House Bed & Breakfast. Bring with you one or two of the books you’ve been wanting to read but that have remained stacked up on your bedside table. Or perhaps find something new. To stop time, there’s nothing like sitting in front of a roaring fireplace taking an afternoon or whole weekend stepping into the pages of a good book.

Top Four Fiction Picks this Season

It’s through fiction we find empathy, compassion, the horrors and beauty of the human condition. We get to relax into a story and be part of an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning adventure. Good stories are always more than just stories–they shine a light that broadens our understanding of the world. Our top book picks for fiction are best sellers and do just this.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman   
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Moonglow by Michael Chabon
From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.

North Water by Ian McGuire
A nineteenth-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp, and highly original tale that grips like a thriller.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The National Book Award Winner. A  magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

Top Four Nonfiction Picks of the Season

The New Year’s optimism for a restart often has us looking at our past and asking questions of ourselves for the future. The four picks below are selected for the broad historical perspectives, excellent writing and subject matter that will give you pause. What better way to start of the new year?

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

The Gene
An Intimate History BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
A magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information? This is the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master.

Secondhand Time
The Last of the Soviets BY SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH
In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake.

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
By Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrahams
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet. Wise, is to avoid reductive simplifications but still find the golden threads that weave people and ideas together into a shimmering braid.

Can you feel the weight of a book on your lap, and a hot cup of something warming the palm of your hand? Escape for a weekend of reading and quiet contemplation. Whatever your literary taste, we’d love to serve you breakfast and keep your tea cup warmed while you read to your heart’s content. Book your weekend here.