September Bookshelf: New Hampshire with a Smile

The “Moose of Humor” is at it again

When you laugh out loud four times within two pages, it’s a good sign that a book that’s supposed to be funny really is funny. Such is the case with Rebecca Rule’s newly released book, “Live Free and Eat Pie!” [Islandport Press, $15.95].

Rule, who has been writing down funny stories she hears since age 6, in this book brings together her stories and the ones she’s heard in her storytelling travels around the state. Many of them she calls “apocryphal,” which to her means they “may have been true once, but over time have taken on shapes and truths all their own. In other words, they are big, fat, wonderful lies.” Rule’s love of New Hampshire clearly shows through in her writing (born in Concord, she says she’s “almost a native”) and her deep knowledge of the state is evident as well. “I’ll show you around,” she writes.

“Let’s go!” And so she does — from translating New Hampshire-speak (wahp is warp, e.g.) to advising visitors what to see and do in each of the state’s regions to providing their history and culture — all of it with Rule’s humorous spin and laugh-out-loud stories, which she says we should take with “a few grains of road salt.”