Editorial Review

To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finnand Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, the asthmatic 11-year-oldboy at the center of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like aRiver. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of thenorthern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's howit went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty.

Reviews (8)

Excellent book!
I was what you would call a "Noobie" to all of Garrison's work until recently.I picked up this book at a college library after speaking to my mother about the Minnesota author project I was recently assigned.She was familiar with his work and suggested that I look into it....so I did.I never thought that this would open up such big can of worms, and I mean this in a good sense.After reading the book from cover to cover, I went on the internet to find out more about Garrison's work and turned up some very interesting search results.I then read it again and now I guess you could say that I'm hooked on the Lake Wobegon saga and I am planning on picking up a couple of his earlier writings related to Lake Wobegon.
I really enjoyed reading this book and I would recommend this book to anyone who has vast, little, or no knowledge of Lake Wobegon.

A new addiction ;)
I was what you would call a "Noobie" to all of Garrison's work until recently.I picked up this book at a college library after speaking to my mother about the Minnesota author project I was recently assigned.She was familiar with his work and suggested that I look into it....so I did.I never thought that this would open up such big can of worms, and I mean this in a good sense.After reading the book from cover to cover, I went on the internet to find out more about Garrison's work and turned up some very interesting search results.I then read it again and now I guess you could say that I'm hooked on the Lake Wobegon saga and I am planning on picking up a couple of his earlier writings related to Lake Wobegon.
I really enjoyed reading this book and I would recommend this book to anyone who has vast, little, or no knowledge of Lake Wobegon.

Nostalgia at its "Best"
Fans of Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" are already an imaginative sort.We know what Arlene Bunsen looks like, or Pastor Inquist.We've got a good idea how Roger Hedlund has been rotating his crops, and the main goings on on Main Street.We don't need pictures of this area because we already know it by heart--we've seen it on the radio.This book does exactly what it should...it doesn't dispel our images of Lake Wobegon, but gives us pictures of its neighbors and people living their lives in rural Minnesota.All the images are sepia toned.With a few exceptions, the subjects are unposed and candid, getting ready for the prom, or readying the field for corn.

The composition of the shots are superb.The short prologue gives a first person retelling of how Keillor invented the town that "time forgot and the decades cannot improve."That introduction, however, is so short that it's almost unfair to say that this is a Garrison Keillor book.He essentially wrote the foreword (although it's not titled that way), and the pictures tell the real story.

My only disappointment is that there isn't any color.Certainly sepia tones give us nostalgia the way we'd like to remember it, but sunset on a farm is something you can't appreciate in shades of brown.Rural life has its monochromatic moments, to be sure, but there's enough color and life to help us remember that not everything is nostalgia.

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An engaging and refreshing tribute
Small Town Minnesota A To Z by Minnesota native Tony Andersen is an engaging and nostalgic look at a wide variety of small-town communities in Minnesota from Argyle to Zumbro Falls. Most of these distinctive Minnesota communities have fewer than 1,000 people. Full-color photographs and an engaging text written with wry humor and replete with candid, anecdotal stories of conversations and adventures with small-town folk make Small Town Minnesota A To Z an engaging and refreshing tribute to an outstanding Midwestern state, as well as a less crowded, less hyper, and less pressure-intense way of life.

More than words, more than pictures
The photos and stories are amazing. I wish I could write somthing that would do this book justice, but I guess that's why Bill Holm wrote the forward. His words describe perfectly the beauty of this book.

Reviews (22)

Wonderful gift from my father.
My father died recently, and in clearing out his things I found his copy of this book. As a child, I remembered him showing this book to me. Ithad been one of his favorites ever since he had read it in high school. I never got around to reading it until now.

Giants In the Earth is the story of Norwegian immigrants trying to make their home in the great prairies of the new territories. They choose a spot marked by the huge sky, a duck swamp, a lonely Native grave, and nothing else. The immigrants face birth, insanity, religion, locusts and sickness-- all the time wondering if they did the right thing to have left their villages and boats.

The book was enough to move me by itself. Rolvaag is a skilled writer, and Per Hansa is a charming character. Hansa is real and human, and Rolvaag accomplishes that in a seemingly effortless way. I liked him, and liked Beret and it was hard not to like the book-- as hard as was the world that it portrays.

I have some quarrels with the translation. The punctuation and sentence structure felt off at times. It almost seemed as though in trying to capture the authenticity of the original language it sacrificed a little bit of the clarity. The notes are well done-- just enough, and with the right amount of information to explain background to the reader.

The book should appeal to readers who like either the history or the literature of the early American experience. Even if you question the authenticity of the settler moments, it should provide a good look at the experience of the Norwegian immigration.

I only wish that my father was still alive to discuss it with me.

The American story
This is a story of Norwegian immigrants to America and how they struggle against the harshness of nature to make new homes in a new land. This work was once required reading in schools in New York State and I remember as a schoolchildreading it with a certain degree of puzzlement and bewilderment. Now I understand to be a work through which many Norwegian Americans feel their own Americanization story is most accurately told. But the farming world of Per Hansa, the many complications of his family'sand neighbors' life struck me as in some way alien. Yet the persistence, the courage of Per Hansa and the whole immigrant society did teach a lesson i.e. that the making of a new life in America would only be made through enduring and overcoming extraordinary hardships.
The characters in this book are well- drawn, and there is a narrative that moves along if at times with difficulty.
But to know a very special kind of American world and character this book is highly recommended.

Reviews (9)

The Insanity and Necessity of Adventure
Walter Port and (Arnold) Eric Sevareid took an amazing trip that they started by skipping some of their high school finals so they could get the boat they could afford. Though the project appeared to have been Port's pet, it was Sevareid who came up with the way to fund it: writing about it for the Minneapolis Star. It was clear that once the project began both of them were truly enthralled by it and could not be put off. The tale is told simply, but with a clear affection for all of the people who helped them try to reach their goal, even though few of the people who helped were confident that these young men could make it or were even very encouraging.

The book is written from the journals that were kept along the trip. It is clear that this is a book of its times written by a man who was still quite young. While I would strongly encourage any teens to read this book to realize that they too can give themselves a goal that is worthwhile if only for being difficult, I would also encourage their parents to be ready to answer some questions about the wisdom and risks of such adventures and about some of the attitudes of the past. There is a casual acceptance of the bigotry against Native Americans that was common at the time and Sevareid was not yet the mature thoughtful man that we may remember from the CBS Evening News.

Still, the fact that a reasonably literate student was able to take, and appreciate, such a grand adventure while trying his best to bring it alive for us was a remarkable feat. Twain, at his best, gave us better feel for river adventure, but he had the advantage that he could embroider the story whenever necessary, while Sevareid was already writing and thinking as a journalist. This is a quick read that almost anyone, from a child in middle school to an adult whose days of imagined adventure are long past, can enjoy.

canoeing with the cree
I thought that this book was a great wiild life adventure. It's about two boys going aginst their odds in a canoeing trip from St. Paul Minneapolis all the way to the Hudson Bay. Nobody thinks that they will make it. The two young boys come close to death many times. They almost get lost and find their way thanks to many kind people that help them overcome the impossible and they make it. They encounter Indians and some very nice people, and this makes their trip much easier even though they really struggle through all those miles. That's why I think this book was a good book.

Reviews (2)

Brautigan Revisited, or Trout Fishing in the Slipstream
Sometimes a book can be outstanding despite, or because of, the author wearing his influences on his sleeve. Such is the case with "50,000 Watts of Jazz From Fargo," the second published novel by Tim Rundquist, which borrows heavily from the tradition of Richard Brautigan but nonetheless succeeds in "adding something new to the lexicon of great American drivers and passengers." Set in the mid 1980's, the book begins as two recent college graduates set off from California on a directionless, 60's-style journey across the American hinterlands, in search of nothing more tangible than "the view inside the maple syrup bottle." And, as Brautigan's alter ego seemed to encounter a trout stream at the foot of many of his adventures, the two young men, and later a third, prevail in seeking out, at nearly every turn, the "elusive radio waves" that clue them in to the constancies of heartland America.
The book, too, succeeds on a variety of fronts, from capturing small-town essences to detailing the thoughts and issues, profound and otherwise, crossing a young person's mind at that certain "exploratory" phase of life. Of particular interest are the segments detailing the boys' sojourn in the Florida Keys, as well as their wintertime visit, unheated Volkswagen and all, to northern Minnesota. Ultimately, "50,000 Watts" not only takes the reader to a lot of interesting, out-of-the-way places, but makes the trip enjoyable and worthwhile.

Editorial Review

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings."Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--"Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

Reviews (37)

Main Street, USA; it's everywhere
When "Main Street" was first published Sinclair Lewis did not expect it too sell that much. He was wrong, within a few weeks the book sold more than he ever imagined.
It also received a lot of criticism, the book is scathing towards middle-town America, of which America in 1910's (and in a way still is) full of. Small communities where business leaders who vote Republican and drive around in cars see themselves as the moral standard to which the world should live by. The main character in this book, Carol Kennikut, marries one of these: one of the town doctors. He believes in American values, democracy and social clubs. His wife however is a modern woman who went to school and immediately wants to change the village of Gopher Prairie (another name for Lewis' hometown of Sauk Centre). She is however constantly worked against by the other local women. She tries to change the look of the town, starts a book and a play club but they are all overshadowed by the conservative voice of many of the other women. Of course she is drawn to the other outcasts but they leave the town, leaving her behind. Even the boy she has an affair with is forced to leave.
Sometimes she can't stand it at all, other times she seems completely satisfied with life in Gopher Prairie, but she is always restless, culminating in leaving the town for more than a year to work for the Red Cross in DC during the Great War.

Lewis has made it clear that these towns are all over America. On trips her husband hangs out with the other people from Main Street, wherever that street may be. It is most of all a book of social commentary, and at this Lewis was one of the best and deservedly got the Nobel Prize for Literature.

"Main Street" was voted one of the best 100 novels in American literature. I am not sure if it ranks higher than the excellent "Babbitt", which has even more irony and sarcasm. There is a lot of sarcasm in this book, but by writing and seeing the world through Carol's eyes, he has to restrain himself somewhat.

Just think of all the Main Streets around the US, or even the Main Street in Disneyworld, where everyone seems to feel at home, but a home of conservative values that veil the world with a shroud. It may be a warning too, for in the end Carol wonders if her newborn baby will live in the same world; a world that does not appreciate those that think and act different, that is in a more East Coast and city manner. She always longs to go back to Minneapolis or Chicago, but is stuck, like so many of us, in Main Street, Gopher Prairie.

Main Street
In Main Street, Sinclair Lewis satirically examines the narrow outlook and interests of the small town American Midwest.The book focuses on Carol Kennicott, a librarian from worldly Minneapolis, who takes on the task of reforming her husband and the rest of the the fictional town of Gopher Prairie.

The book is quite funny and I laughed out loud a few times.People who grew up in the Midwest will recognize a lot of the characters here.

Although he pokes fun at them, Lewis is not unkind in his assessment of the townspeople, and the book has many touching aspects.For example, Carol's husband, Will, is maddeningly unromantic: he is happiest when he is in the basement feeding and caressing the furnace. But he is also a country doctor, a devoted husband who knows that he has a prize in Carol, and a competent man who can amputate a limb, or handle a team of horses in a blizzard.Their marriage is a strange alliance of two unlike beings but it nonetheless holds something of great value for both of them.

Lewis also writes with great feeling about nature - the force of the seasons on the prairie, the hush as twilight falls on farmers' fields, the spectacle of ducks over a lake.

This is a fine piece of work that memorializes life in a quieter time.

Editorial Review

Reviews (13)

Entertainment at its best
I am a Minnesotan.I love this "Liberal Icebox" as my Texan friend says.This book is so full of sterotypes it was easy to laugh at, but sometimes I would catch myself thinking some of the things were uncannily familiar.It was good for some laughs.

i just don't get it.....
I've been living in Minnesota for 14 years and consider myself a Minnesotan. I married a Minnesotan, and I know many, many Minnesotans. None of them are the dim-witted, non-expressive, unexitable simpletons that this book makes them out to be. This book is chock full of stereotypes, and I, personally, don't want people from all over the country to think that this is how all Minnesotans are. I found this book insulting.

Romance Will Enter Your Life Unless You're Careful
I was given "How to Talk Minnesotan" by some wonderful friends as a 'welcome to Minnesota' gift back in 1995, and found it instantly hilarious. What was less obvious, though, was how accurate this book was in many ways, most particularly in rural Minnesota. Although I wasn't born in Minnesota, I now love it and consider myself an adopted Minnesotan, but after nine years I am still learning to master the subtle complexities of Minnesota interactions so perfectly defined in this book.

Howard Mohr ("Creator of Minnesota Language Systems"), a brilliant writer for 'A Prairie Home Companion,' details all the basics of talking Minnesotan form the viewpoint of a visitor. After reading this book, you will: learn how to refuse food three times before accepting it; learn to reduce anxiety with the all-purpose reaction "it could be worse"; learn proper conduct at Bob's B-17 Park, the Particle Board Pageant, and the Deep Woods Tent Casino; and learn the proper way of accepting a gift from a Minnesotan (hint: never call it a gift).

Reviews (2)

If you're been up North, you'll have a laugh...then despair
I lived in Finland for six months and Sweden for two months, and most of them were in Lapland - Swedish or Finnish, what's the difference?Then I hitched down the entire coast of Norway (four days minimum since drivers, rare anyway, won't pick you up)to Oslo, back to Sweden, back through Denmark and into Germany.The temperature dropped to 32F, and I felt very warm indeed.

I loved Scandanavia and I fit right in, with my droll and melancholy Irish background.But there's no denying that the people there tend to excessive brooding, stoicism, analysis, jealousy, drinking and inferiority complexes.Their food is not so all bland-white as the book implies, but it hits it pretty well on the button, that they are very suspicious of spices, and "food that hurts" (all these darn trendy ethnic restaurants).

Their clothes fit the weather - if it's not freezing and snowing, then it's raining, windy, foggy, or at least overcast.Forget your happy California fantasies or take them elsewhere.So they all look plain, uniform and functional, well, it's cold!Have you been to Alaska?That lumberjack look ain't too pretty but it will do when there's icicles on your moustache.

The funniest part for me was the illustrations of the various types of Scandanavians and how to distinguish the nationalities.Naturally, the model is always the same whether it's Erik Erikson, Lars Larson, or Jukka Suomilainen.

Of course this book is aimed more at Scandanavians living in USA, especially in the Minnesota area.I haven't been there, but I surely will go and see how the polyester pants are doing.In fact, they remind me a lot of my parents' Irishness except that we make noise, have great wit and humor and drink less.

Read this book and then drown your sorrows if you are a Swede!

This tells it like it is!
My sister and I were talking about this book yesterday and I checked to see if it was still available.Thank goodness it is!

I first read it in 1987 and laughed out loud at parts.It is all so true.If you grew up in the Midwest with Swedish-American parents like we did, it is all familiar.Particularly funny are the photographs and captions.

Sections on the Lutheran Church are just the way it was for us. Jello was the food of choice at every church occasion that required food and from what I've heard still is.

I think it helps if you have a Scandinavian background so you can understand the jokes which are so funny to us, but may not be to outsiders.

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Reviews (8)

Everyone should see this place!
Noted conservationist Sigurd F. Olson wrote this collection of essays about his years canoeing, snowshoeing, skiing and fishing the Wilderness areas of Superior National Forest and the Quetico of Canada.

The essays are organized according to the four seasons. Olson has an almost metaphysical relationship with the animals that live in the wilderness: red squirrels, loons, otters, even field mice are fellow travelers.

Olson canoes and portages scores of miles to listen to the loons sing on Lac La Croix. He searches hundreds of lakes, looking for the perfect wilderness area, unspoiled by civilization. And he finds it! Saganaga, "a symbol of the primitive, perfect and untouched." Later, he hears that a road has come to Saganaga and he ventures back to see what's been done to it. It seems the same until he rounds a bend and is confronted with a modern lodge. He's conflicted; he wants human companionship but he doesn't want to lose his "singing wilderness."

In another essay, he tells of "flying in" to one of the lakes, rather than spending days canoeing and portaging to get there. He feels disoriented and can't really appreciate the experience. He hasn't put in enough effort; he doesn't deserve it. And he never does this again.

Olson is a sentimental, nostalgic man. He tells of catching trout for his grandmother, whom he credits with instilling a love of nature. While fishing on the Manitou, he is confronted with an eighty-year-old trout fisherman who's come to his favorite fishing spot for one last time.

Olson also limns essays that show the brutality of nature. In "The Storm" we see white-throated sparrows, Killdeers, purple finches, chickadees, and robins returning to the wilderness area after a long and brutal winter. Olson is marveling at their music until snow begins the fall and the temperature plummets. Thousands of confused birds freeze to death.

Admittedly, there is some clunky writing in the SINGING WILDERNESS; one gets the impression that Olson is writing from memory in a lot of instances. Also, at times he doesn't tell you where he is: he refers to the "lake" as if we should know which one of the thousands in the Superior/Quetico wilderness he's referring to. There's also a dearth of people. Often, he refers to "we" but the person or persons he's with are invisible.

That said, I think everyone would benefit from reading these essays. I couldn't help but wonder how many people know this place exists. These days the area is called the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness. No motor boats allowed; no ATVs allowed! Everyone should see it at least once in his/her lifetime.

have you heard
great book for outdoor enthusiasts. bet you find something you can relate to and some you realize you overlooked

Reviews (10)

The Price of Timelessness
Garrison Keillor's literary devices have served him (and us) extremely well.Those who thought he was in danger of becoming a victim of his own success have been proved right.But we are victims, too.

As a fellow only a few years younger than Garrison Keillor, I, too, bemoan our culture's voracious appetite for "content."The universal availability of our culture cannot be criticized.That's like saying there is too much breathable air.

But, it has its consequences.We drown in words now.What used to be made precious by its limited availability in libraries is now everywhere.When we got what we wished and worked for - universal access to literature, art, music - we did not fully understand the scope of human ability to adapt to environment.

Something about "evil overlords" has been making its way around the internet recently.There are 100 top things a current-day evil overlord can do;here are the last two:

"99.Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size."

"100.Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access."

Drowning in thought, we lose the ability to think.Garrison left home, as he had to;we're all with him now.

An accidental read......
As I was browsing through the library one day last month, after reading some Latin short stories, I came upon this book. I was intrigued by the cover at first. So I sat down in MY SEAT in the library. Then I began flipping through the pages. Man, was I surprised. I thought, in the beginning that these stories were fiction, but when I finished it, and read the last lines, my god, it's all true. The stories, not all, but most of it, hit you somewhere. It really does. It makes you say, "Hey, I know this.. This is...(name here-me?)." There's not much continuity in the chapters, like from TRUCKSTOP to DALE. Anyway, it makes the book greater. Again and again, the book is fantastic. Well, if you don't believe me, read the book. Then you'll realize that there is one more thing constant in the world... It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.....

Favorite Stories - Dale, The Ticket, Aprille, The Royal Family, uh, some more... Truckstop... hell, the whole book!!!!

Lake Wobegon Favorites Gathered Here to Re-Read
This has many favorites from PHC shows, including my favorite, "Pontoon Boat."Certainly, the original delivery of Keilor adds much to the presentation, but easily any of us who have heard these can still here his pace, and emphasis as we glide across the words.And, for those who haven't, this is still such entertaining tales.

"Hawaii" and the Usher competition is another fav.How about hand signals for such as "child removal" - "crossed arms and kicking motion?"Or "A Glass of Wendy" --- "if a horse got on the sauce himself, he might get mixed up, but usually they did hte job and if the sheriff came, all he found was a wagon and a horse with red eyes and bad breath."