sthurner

• Rated 2 stars

“I thought I was being clever downloading Dirk Gently onto my iPod for a train trip of several days. Silly me. After listening to it twice I still have very little idea what it is about - time travel? lost cats? murder? Maybe I should reread, but I don't think I will.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite writers, whether writing fiction or nonfiction. I purchased this book to read on a long train trip home from Seattle to Wisconsin, and it turned out to be perfect for that trip through the high plains. This slim volume is a collection of essays covering a variety of subjects, his life, the geology and ecology of the West, analysis of his own writing and of other writers who wrote in or about the West. His writing is always clear, intelligent and straight forward. The third section "Witnesses" in particular interested me because he discusses writers such as John Steinbeck, Walter Van Tillberg Clark, George Stewart and Norman Maclean.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“After I got home from a vacation to Washington state this book just called out to me. I fell in love with Paradise Inn, the wonderful lodge at Mt. Rainier National Park, and I couldn't find any information there about the building. This 1997 edition is a little out of date, but the photographs and history of many great western lodges are a treat. Barnes covers Old Faithful Inn (Yellowstone), El Tovar (Grand Canyon), Glacier Park Many Glacier, and Lake McDonald Lodges (Glacier), Paradise Inn (Mt. Rainier), Bryce Canyon Lodge, The Ahwahnee (Yosemite), The Prince of Wale (Western Lakes), Oregon Caves Chateau, and Timberline Lodge (Mt. Hood National Forest). ”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“The edition I read had both the short story The Shawl, and a novella called Rosa. The first is a heart rending story of a Polish woman, her daughter and niece in a concentration camp during World War II. The second takes the story of the mother thirty years later in Florida, and tells how her experiences in the war affected her, and how another person brings her back into the world. I am very glad I read the two together, because they complement each other perfectly and bring a satisfying conclusion.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I didn't know a thing about The Saffron Kitchen when I checked the audio version out of the library, but I was well satisfied with this story told from the points of view of an Iranian born mother and her English born daughter. The mother, seen as moody and difficult by her daughter, returns to Iran, and eventually calls the daughter to join there. Little by little we learn the real story of the mother's life, and both the daughter and we come to understand her better. The story shifts in time and point of view, so those who prefer a linear plot beware.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“On those days when the wind stops blowing across the face of the southern plains, the land falls into a silence that scare people in the way that a big house can haunt after the lights go out and no one else is there.

It is with this image of fear and emptiness that Tim Egan begins his prize-winning book about the people who stayed on their land during the great Dust Bowl era. I knew something of the Dust Bowl days from teaching The Grapes of Wrath, about the push to plow the sod in order to grow wheat, about years of drought that turned the soil to dust, and winds that stripped the earth of soil. The strength of this book is that it not only talks about the facts, who lived there, why they came, what they did, but it also tells personal stories. The land may have been dry, but this book is not. I found myself moved by the stories of farms, health, and often hope, lost. Sometimes the sadness was almost too much, and I found myself wishing for something less grim to read. But in the end, I was glad to be reminded of the tenacity of people in the face of really hard times.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“First off, I'm sure many readers will be put off by the dark content of the book; its themes of obsession and revenge are dark indeed. There is sexual content, though it isn't as explicit as I feared.

That said, I couldn't put the darned thing down. I recognized the book's debt to Wisconsin Death Trip right away, since I'd read that book last winter. That 1970s nonfiction book chronicles a strange series of murders, suicides and epidemics in turn of the century Wisconsin through photographs and newspaper articles. I refer anyone who thinks such references in A Reliable Wife are excessive to Wisconsin Death Trip. LOL, it's enough to make a person run out and buy a condo in Florida.

I liked the way the story in ARW built, how both the main plot line and the back story developed. While the main characters were flawed (to say the least), the reader comes to understand the circumstances that built each person's character (or lack of), and perhaps have some sympathy for him or her.

The setting is gothic Victorian (isolated, dark, cold, big old house); there is obsessions and sins of all sorts, action, blood, money, beautiful people, and violence. But there is also love and opportunity for redemption. Perhaps one might describe it as classy trash.

Anyway, I had great fun with this one.”

sthurner wrote this review Monday, July 20 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I picked up an audio version of The Memory of Old Jack for two reasons. First, Berry came highly recommended by Wallace Stegner, an author I very much admire. Second, Berry is scheduled to speak at the Wisconsin Book Festival in the fall,and I wanted to have read some of his fiction before hearing him speak.

The story unfolds slowly, no fast action here. Jack Beechum is the main character, an old farmer, whose life remembered makes up the book. The story takes place on the last day of Jack's life in 1952, and it encompasses not only the important events and family in Jack's life, but of the peripheral people who know him: his barber, his landlady, his lawyer. Jack isn't perfect, but I couldn't help but come to admire him over the course of the novel. The author, besides writing beautifully and perceptively about characters, also has a love and respect for small towns and the rural landscape, and this, as much as the depiction of people, is what made me enjoy the book most.
”

sthurner wrote this review Wednesday, July 1 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women of the house knew it and so did the children."

Beloved, a beautiful, horrible, frightening novel, opens with the ghost of a murdered baby. Through the course of the novel we meet a large cast of characters, living and dead, black and white, who are twisted and damaged by the institution of slavery. This is not an easy book, but it is an important and memorable one, probably a great one. The writing style is so experimental, that I don't see how the movie was ever made, and I wouldn't judge the book by the Hollywood version of it.”

sthurner wrote this review Tuesday, June 23 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“"The sun poked out briefly, evidence of a universe above them, of watchful things-- planets, and stars and vast galaxies of infinite knowledge-- and just as suddenly it retreated behind the clouds."

I began reading The Last Town on Earth the same day that news of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico was on the radio. It was a surreal experience reading about the horrors of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and hearing/reading about the current flu scare at the same time. This novel is set in the fictional town of Commonwealth, Washington, 1918. World War I is still being fought, people are frightened. Their sons are dying overseas; they see spies everywhere, and the terrible flu epidemic is killing millions of people - in the end more than died in the war. Commonwealth, an isolated mill town, decides to quarantine itself to prevent the spread of illness among its inhabitants. Then things go terribly wrong.

This is a dark novel, posing many moral questions. What is the best way keep one's family, community, and country secure and safe? What should the responsibility of the individual be compared to the larger group? What cruelties are people capable of in the name of the public good? I was fascinated by both the descriptions of labor issues, public response to World War I, and the flu outbreak itself. I'm not sure I was satisfied by how fully the characters were developed, or even by how the plot was resolved, but I still am glad I read The Last Town on Earth.”

sthurner wrote this review Friday, May 8 2009. ( reply | permalink )