Slices of N.H. Life

A humorist and essayist sizes up his adopted state.Glenn Currie admits he’s a complainer, but he’ll tell you it’s a good kind of complaining, that he just wants to make our great state even greater and, as he puts it, “cure newcomers of potentially bad habits, especially if they have just moved up from Massachusetts.”In his recently released book, “Granite Grumblings” [Snap Screen Press, $24.95], Currie constructs a compendium of his complaints – 20 years of them, in fact – that range from the challenges of coaching girls softball (“the first practice I ever held nearly decimated my team”) to the après-Christmas bliss of no holiday commercials (“nothing can protect your sanity when assaulted with a steady barrage of ‘Holly Jolly Christmas'”) to the exigencies of his wife’s backyard vegetable gardens (“I once estimated that the average cost of a tomato was about $143”).Currie, a resident of Concord, expertly spins his yarns, each filled with humor, insight and, yes, a bit of crankiness no doubt absorbed from the 25 years he’s spent in this live-free-or-die state.The starting point – and ending point – for Currie is admiration for “the independence of our citizens, our ability to laugh at ourselves and the secure knowledge that N.H. has things figured out better than the rest of the country.” Ah-yup – a book well worth your time.