A sense of each place, by the book

Pick up a copy of “The Big One’’ by David Kinney (Atlantic Monthly Press, $24) so you can read the book before you see the movie. (It’s been optioned by Dreamworks.) Nominally about the frenzy of the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, this narrative account of the madcap New England contest is a classic fish tale and then some. It’s essential reading for anyone who has ever chased monster stripers with a rod, reel, and a bucket of eels.

The fishermen who populate “Down at the Docks’’ by Rory Nugent (Pantheon, $15) are a decidedly rougher bunch, but then they’re manning New Bedford’s deep-water vessels and don’t give a whit about sport. Long Island preppie turned gonzo journalist Nugent revels in the seamy side of New Bedford. We bet the city fathers loathe this book, but it does provide a telling counterpoint to all that Melville worship.

As soon as we read Christopher Camuto’s description of the ebbing tide in the throat of a channel - “seconds and minutes of seawater straining through an hourglass of granite’’ - he had us hooked. “Time and Tide in Acadia’’ (W.W. Norton, $24.95) is a delightfully ruminative volume of essays about place. Camuto has intimately engaged with Mount Desert Island, and generously shares what he has learned.

When the New England acorn crop failed in fall 2007, naturalist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas began feeding cracked corn to the deer near her home in Peterborough, N.H. And then she watched them. Closely. The upshot was the marvelously lyrical and blessedly unsentimental “The Hidden Life of Deer’’ (Harper/Collins, $24.99). Not only is the book a terrific rundown on our region’s ubiquitous ungulate, it’s a soothing meditation on nature in New England.

When “place’’ speaks French, it’s called terroir - the real subject of “In a Cheesemaker’s Kitchen’’ by Allison Hooper (Countryman Press, $19.95). While much of this beautiful volume consists of great recipes using Vermont goat and cow cheeses, mascarpone, crème fraîche, and butter, it is really a love story about Vermont and wonderful food.

Patricia Harris and David Lyon can be reached at harris.lyon@verizon.net.