Customer Reviews

The Most Beautiful Villages of New England (Most Beautiful Villages)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I took this coffee-table photo book out of the library once I realized that one of the featured "most beautiful villages" in New England was Stonington, Maine -- where I lived for nearly seven years. I wanted to see what they chose to show about the Deer Isle area because hey, *I* knew what made the area so gorgeous. If they could capture Stonington, perhaps they could also bring to life the beauty of the other villages covered -- from Essex, CT to Grafton, VT to Nantucket, MA.

To my disappointment, though, the photographers chose rather humdrum locations to highlight. Nothing here is _bad_, mind you. The photos are perfectly nice. There's plenty of predictable photos of clapboard buildings and small town churches and autumn leaves. But it's the predictability that makes this worth flipping through once... and only once. It's as though you had purchased large-format postcards from the ordinary gift shoppe -- not captured something unique and beautiful.

I'm a little astonished that this book has so many pictures of the (admittedly beautiful) autumn leaves in New England (that is, they're beautiful if they don't make you think "Oh geez we'd better top off the heating oil"). But not a single picture of the mountain lupine blooming in the spring that, in my opinion, is far prettier. You'll see several inoffensive photos of boats tied up at the dock at sunset... but almost nothing that reflects the sense of community that can make small-town living so precious.

I'd hoped that this book would bring back a tiny bit of my years on Deer Isle. Alas... I'll have to dig out my own photos for that.

I have never been to the region, but after doing a great deal of family research over the last couple of years I have discovered I have a lot of roots there. I had hoped this book would give me a feel for the beautiful towns, instead I got the postcard photos or pics of the inside of a church or the door to a building. Really? THAT is supposed to give me a feel for the MOST beautiful towns in New England? I'd hoped for more Main Street or City Square type photos and not so much of the generic, could have been taken most anywhere in Tennessee, where I live, photos that gave little to NO feeling of New England.

I love books that have high quality photography, this is a magnificent book on new england towns.

I'm a big fan of quality photography. This is a great book with terrific pictures of new england, and all the good reasons to move here.

Wonderful photagraphs and great images of beautiful New England! Reminiscent of my childhood, and old fashioned villages of yesterday. A must for the coffee table!