Arkansas Books

This is just an increadible good book, as well as an incredibly wierd book.

It really can't be done justice to in a review, so I won't bother to try, but go an read it if you can find it, and don't let the title put you off.

Anyone who has read "Tess of the d'Urbevilles" will instantly recognize the plotline of this fable about a roosterroach (never "cockroach") maiden who is ... well, read it for yourself. I was enthralled by the title, then enthralled by the book. Author Donald Harington lost his hearing at age twelve, but his agile, retentive mind has accurately retained the inflections and pronunciations of his native Arkansas mountains. The book is witty, scary, insightful, and great fun as well as being a deeply philosophical book on relationships; both Man and Roosterroach. It is, as another reviewer stated, impossible to adequately review this book as it fits into many categories, or into a category of its own. Buy it.

As a refugee from roach-infested Houston, I never thought I'd have a reason to admire the little buggers. Donald Harington has almost given me a reason to like 'em--and, better, a reason to look up more books written by Donald Harington. His view of an Arkansas town infested with Bible-busting bugs managed to be both biting and touching (and nastily familiar to those of us assaulted by similar humans). And, I now know there's more to cockroach physiology than that ugly crunching sound under your shoe.

Really an excellent book, well written, fine photos, five stars. Essentially a collection of 50 articles, each about catching different species on different rivers and lakes in Arkansas, but so well written you don't need to live in Arkansas to enjoy it. Author describes some unusual fish and how to catch them, e.g., bowfin, padlefish, skipjack, gars, et al.

Fishing Arkansas: A Year-round Guide To Angling Adventures In The Natural State is a comprehensive, user friendly guide to the manifold opportunities that Arkansas has to offer licensed fishermen and state travelers in search of a good place to drop their line. The month-by-month organization of the text allows the reader a detailed examination of the life histories of many Arkansas sport fish, the best lakes and streams, and the most successful tactics and tackle to use at any given time of the year. Enhanced with color photography, this superb guide includes twelve sections on popular game fish (including large and small mouth bass, crappie, catfish, bluegill, and trout); provides an introduction to often-overlooked species (bowfin, gar, carp, paddlefish, pickerel); offers hundreds of fishing tips gleaned from decades of on-the-water experience by dozens of guides, biologists, and expert anglers. If you are a fisherman living in, or just passing through, Arkansas, plan for your next angling venture by reading Keith Sutton's Fishing Arkansas!

Keith Sutton, editor of Arkansas Wildlife magazine and award-winning photographer and outdoors writer, has put together another great fishing book with a simple, effective structure. The chapters lead you through the months of the year, with multiple pieces in each chapter that suggest specific species to catch that time of year and where you'll find them in the Natural State. Along the way, you'll pick up tidbits on under-publicized species (carp, drum, and gar, for example) and tips from Sutton's own experience and his network of friends and fisheries professionals who've fished the lakes and rivers mentioned from every angle. The writing is straightforward and takes on a conversational tone that makes you imagine a comfortable old friend is giving you some mighty fine fishing advice.

Laura Ingalls Wilder watch out! Frances Bennett has picked up where your family left off. In the late 1890's, the Stegall family traveled with a caravan of covered wagons ... from North Carolina to Southern Arkansas. They settled on some land that the family still owns today. "The Journey" describes in beautiful and sometimes frightening words the adventures, pain and suffering, and ultimate joy the family experienced over the following decades. Frances Bennett has brought The Journey to life with her exceptional storytelling skills.
Thank you, Frances Bennett.

This is a wonderful story of how a young couple from North Carolina traveled by covered wagon in 1899 to the southern Arkansas wilderness and established their homestead near the Ouachita River. Based on facts revealed during childhood to the author by her grandmother, Bennett weaves an intriguing fictional account of how the Stegall family made the journey and then contributed to the settling of this area. Adventure, curiosity, bravery, work, patience, endurance, pride, loyality, integrity, friendship, community, family, love, longing, hope, sorrow, disappointments, and joy are just some of the words that came to mind as I read this compelling novel. This book is a wonderful way to learn not only the day to day life of our pioneering families, but is a study in the character and characteristics of this hardy breed of people who came west years ago and established the rural communities that are now a part of the history of America.

This is an enriching book that is also ideal for younger readers curious about how communities came into existence in more primitive times.

"The Journey" is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. When I received the book I began reading and could not put it down until I finished it. This book is fiction but based on real life information the author got by questions she asked her grandmother. Imagine traveling all the way from North Carolina in a covered wagon to homestead in Southern Arkansas. The book is full of the dangers that were incurred, but also the joys of traveling in a wagon train.

I wish I had asked my ancestors about their early lives, and I'm glad Frances did. It was just a few generations back that our forebears lived as described in the book. This book was a joy to read and you will find it great reading.

Brent Patterson

Donald Harington, a protege of William Styron, introduces us to the whacky and wonderful Stay More, Ark. Harington is a masterful storyteller who is just started with this funny, poignant, sometimes bawdy tale of the crazy cast of misfits that live in Stay More. This is not for those who prefer a straight linear story, for Harington is both narrator and character in this story as well.

It began with that sound.

I traveled to Stay More on this book for the first time in 1999. It was a wonderful visit and provided the road map for many more visits over the next year or so. Each visit was very different, but all were enjoyable and I always looked forward to going back.

I am currently riding this book back to Stay More for another visit, and this trip is even more enjoyable than the first. I'm having fun here. It looks exactly as I remember it.

This book will be endearing to any and all who will read it. I will encourage you to pick it up and take the trip. You will not regret it.

Since reading this book years ago in college, I have bought dozens of copies to give to friends, and teach it now myself . It is a wonderful, fun and easy to read story that also plays intricately with the standards of literature, storytelling and relationships.

This is a wonderful book. From one of the best Sicilian writers of all times, an insightful and extremely entertaining story of life, religion, and spirituality.

The Little Jesus of Sicily is a wonderful story that transcends both age and religion. The author recounts his experience as a young child chosen to be Jesus for a day for the Feast of Saint Joseph in a small village in pre-World War II Italy. As the story winds through the fanciful imaginations and commonplace activities of a youngster, the reader is reminded of his/her own experiences as a child and is introduced to an historical glimpse of a bygone era. The translation from the Italian is superb -- it was awarded the PEN American Center's 1996 Renato Poggioli Translation Award -- and the thoughtful illustrations, which burst off the page, are an asset to the work.

The Little Jesus of Sicily can be read at many different levels. On the surface it is a captivating tale. At a deeper level, it is a voyage in time, an account of life in a rural Sicilian community, a reality that has almost vanished. Pasqualino ponders the loss of customs and traditions of his native village while reflecting on the impact of industrialization and modernization on society. It is possible to discern a still deeper level--a spiritual one where Pasqualino shares his Christian beliefs without ever resorting to pious platitudes. Imagination, poetry, and faith are at the core of Pasqualino's spiritual quest as he asks simple but fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. A profound meditation on the human condition, this novel depicts in great detail the hardships and the ordinary pleasures of day-to-day life while examining the beliefs and forces that sustain people through suffering and adversity. The novel renews a tradition of literature found in works of regional and southern Italian inspiration and belongs to that category of rare books which are suited to please children and adults alike: Grimm's legends and fairy tales, La Fontaine's fables, Saint-Exupery's Little Prince, or Cervantes' Don Quixote. I decided to translate The Little Jesus of Sicily for one simple reason: I feel in love with it. I started the novel and could not put it down. I saw myself in it, I saw my child, and I saw the child who resides in all of us and longs for wonder. It was beautiful, it was funny, and it made me happy; I wanted to share this precious feeling of joy with other readers. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed translating it.

For those of us born in the late '30s and early '40s, Larance has magically rekindled a time that while not free from complication and struggle, certainly was more secure in many aspects. It centered around family, work and church, and an often unspoken but universally applied set of values -- love, charity, honesty and integrity.

This cocoon of safety provides a perfect foil for the natural curiosity of the young boys looking for adventure as a part of their initiation into manhood, and Larance captures this environment with warmth, humor, and generosity toward the characters described.

The social tensions of racial relations in Arkansas and elsewhere had yet to erupt, and Larance treats them fairly from the eyes of a child, alluding to both the coming storm and his bewilderment.

The setting may be Arkansas, but Larance aptly described my childhood in a western suburb of Chicago. In it, and perhaps characteristic of communities nationwide during that era, neighborhoods reigned and everyone was your parent, doors were left unlocked, people shared their bounty, money was tight but poverty was negligible.

It would be a shame to characterize Miss Myrtle's Boy as only a regional memoir. In truth, in addition to heartwarming episodes of a child's coming of age, in a larger sense, and without preaching or nostalgia for an age gone by, Larance instructs young and old alike on the values that are the great promise of America -- perhaps somewhat out of focus now, but worthy of redemption.

Stylistically, Larance speaks to us directly, clearly, intelligently, with charm and understated humor -- in a way we're sneaking a peek at his diary. Miss Myrtle's Boy is an excellent read that will leave you smiling and musing on your own life look after you've finished it.

"Miss Myrtle's Boy" is a story elegant in its simplicity. It serves as a good reminder of the importance of the journey over the destination, and of what's special about everything in life that is ordinary. If you like the style of Mildred Walker's books, taking us back to a time and place we all know a bit of -- where values endure, common sense rules, and land shapes the people -- then you'll love "Miss Myrtle's Boy." Its lessons are timeless. Charles L. Larance has delivered a delicious bedtime read, as effective as cocoa and a slice of pie to ensure sweet dreams (but with none of the calories)!

"Miss Myrtle's Boy" is a series of vignettes about growing up and coming-of-age in an idyllic small-town Arkansas community in the 1940s and '50s. If you are a male in, approaching, (or exceeding) mid-life and you want a quick nostalgic escape back to your youth--no matter where you grew up or what your family circumstance-- this book IS for you. I grew up in a large city in the Northeast, the product of a divorced home and still virtually every chapter "pinged" me and brought me "home" again. The simplicity, the reality and the honesty will touch you. And this book isn't just for men in their 50s. If you are married to one, or you are the child of one and you want to better understand where he came from, read the book. If you still have an appreciation for the American values of the 1950s, read the book. If you feel stressed out by the pace and pressure of of the world around you as we rush into the next millenium and you want to slow down a bit, read the book. It would be very easy to read this book in "bite-size" pieces whenever you have a few minutes, since each chapter is a story unto itself. But, if you're anything like me, once you enter the world of "Miss Myrtle's Boy," you'll want to linger a while longer. If you'll soon be getting on a plane for a business trip, or if you're headed for vacation, or if you're able to take a "time-out" at home on an evening or weekend, do yourself a favor and pick up "Miss Myrtle's Boy." You will be glad that you did!

I checked this one out from my school library because I so greatly enjoyed Steele's ALL THE FUN'S IN HOW YOU SAY A THING. To be certain, this book is a whole lot denser and than FUN'S. I wouldn't go so far as to say more scholarly, but it is less accessible.

Which is fine. As long as you know your poetry, and your history of poetry, you will find Steele's arguments well-reasoned and balanced. Steele posits that the Modernist movement did not mean to overthrow meter and rhyme, or at least meant to replace it with another formal system. He quotes William Carlos Williams and Eliot and Pound in effect saying, "We failed."

Steele brings in a lot of background about ancient quantitative metrical systems and why they don't work in English to show why the one that has developed, accentual-syllabic, does work. If I've lost you here, the book is perhaps not for you. If you haven't read Steele's ALL THE FUN'S, I recommend it to read first. This book is great, just not as accessible. 5/5 stars

Absolutely tremendous work of scholarship. This book is not a denunciation of "free verse," but a defense of formal poetry against irresponsible charges made by the practitioners of free verse--most remarkably Pound and Eliot. In lively and engaging prose, Steele traces the history of metrical writing from the Ancient Greeks to the moderns, following the rise of metrical poetry to its status as "the superior art"--and its critical decline in the post-Victorian era when influential writers began to feel that "verse must be at least as well written as prose if it is to be poetry." (Ford) Steele's knowledge of his topic is astonishing, and the breadth of his research impressive. His points are generously illustrated and footnoted. His argument, which the dust jacket blurbs describe as "controversial," is, to say the least, persuasive. A must-read for students or devotees of verse (formal or free), and simply a marvelous read for anyone else.

Missing Measures is a great book. Steele is a remarkable scholar. The book is well researched and written in a style that is easy to understand as well as being a very enjoyable book. It's of interest to anyone who enjoys poetry, formal or not. This is a great text in literary history/criticism. And it is important for those who want to understand the Modernist movement.

I could not put this book down. There was action and suspense on every page. This author definitely knows how to capture the reader's attention and hold it. Bayer is Clancey and Grisham rolled into one. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves thriller/suspense novels without the "trash" and foul language.

Protagonist David Michaels is every man's "want to be" and every woman's "dream". Each page is action packed and the suspense keeps the pages turning. There is just enough romance to keep you wanting more. The plot keeps moving and has a surprise Stephen King type character. A must read for thriller and Cussler fans!

Believe you me when I say that getting a book like this is no risk at all! I'd waited and waited to read something by Bayer, but for some reason I wanted to start with his first, and if I liked it, then I'd check out more. I will certainly be checking out more of his stuff! Bayer packs an awesome plot into something huge that any action buff can appreciate. Take for example a little red car that is going about 110 and still in 2nd gear, just getting warmed up! That would be how I would rank John F. Bayer. He's just getting warmed up, folks!

This book centers around Navy Commander and Chaplain David Michaels who is looking into his brother's death. His brother worked at a plant in Arkansas. The more David looks into it, the more it looks like murder rather than the accident his brother's employers are making it out to be. This book asks the question, and will certainly be asking the reader, 'what do I really believe... and why?' I hope that there are people who come across John F. Bayer's name on websites like Christianbook.com like I did. Something about this book caught my attention like so many unknown authors do, and I took a shot at reading his first novel. Awesome! So, in closing, I will say that I praise God for finding me another example of something that amazed me.

This is the kind of poetry book you read in bed before you go to sleep. You poke your husband with your elbow and say, "Listen to this one." He does.

Some of the most amazing poetry written in recent times is contained in this book. The works truly exemplify the American poetry scene.

This book of poetry will stay with you. You will take it off the shelf time after time to reread a poem that had a distinctive ring of truth and feeling of place about it.

My favorite poem, "Dr. Invisible and Mr. Hide" by Charles Webb. Close second was "Mean and Stupid" by Christopher Howell.

I read O Paradise last year, during my junior year of college, trying to escape the boredom of survey literature courses. I fell in love! Trowbridge is Mark Twain meets Sylvia Plath. He has such an honest simplicity that makes us understand how amazing and horrible life is and can be. Reading the poems in O Paradise remind me of the movie Stand By Me. He seems like a writer who puts importance on life and futiliy on materialism.
Of all of the poetry I've read, I have loved William Trowbridge more than any other. I recommend this collection of poems HIGHLY!

I've already written a review of this book (excerpt included under editorial reviews), but I can't help adding a few words here. Trowbridge is every bit as good a poet as, say, Billy Collins, and ought to be celebrated with equivalent hoopla. It's a mystery to me why he isn't better known. Trowbridge can be a very funny poet indeed, but to my mind his best poems are often the serious ones, plenty of which are featured here in what may be his strongest collection. His newest one, *Flickers*, is also excellent, and won't disappoint anyone who likes this one.

Let me be honest. I just finished writing my opinion about Trowbridge's other book, Enter Dark Stranger, on Amazon.com. In that space I admit that I know Trowbridge, have known him for six years or thereabout. But I didn't decide to write that opinion, or this one, and give him five Amazon stars because of our acquaintance. What I noticed is that he needed - a crazy thing - someone's opinion on his book sites, because, you see, he's really one of the brightest, most genius poets this country has to offer, and I guess his readers took that for granted, that the general population already knew it, so an opinion or review might be redundant. Let me say a few honest things, as if I didn't know Trowbridge, nice guy that he is, complicated fellow, dark and wry and full of wit. First of all, this is a great book. I don't want to compare him with other known poets. This book, O Paradise, is a startling piece of writing in the sense that I was taken back to my own childhood and teen years in a sharp, almost uncomfortable way - but swept up with such poignant, gorgeous images, and memories - then rocked forward to another poem that affected me in that I thought of my own foolishness, and others', and morality, my shortcomings and the world's - and I was smiling and frowning on and off all the while; Trowbridge uses humor as a moral weapon. He takes our daily darkness and mocks it so that we laugh at ourselves. I can tell you, he's a melancholy man, and when he says something it sticks. He is also a man who writes with dead-on perfect exactness; his words race and stick across my heart, and gallop and halt over and through public life without error. What I love about Trowbridge the person and Trowbridge the poet is this constant: that he refuses to apologize for his concerns, that he is not sentimental, that he is not excessive. He never loses sight of the tragic.

What do you think of this; it's called The Dead:

They like it quiet,/slow-paced, no renters. Some/have practiced all their lives/for this, sitting stone still/at their desks, nodding/off in the BarcaLounger/after the network news. Nothing/could possibly be further/from their loamy minds than a call/to resurrection. They're tired of hearing,/of seeing, of trying to carry on/a halfway decent conversation. They keep their noses turned up,/even at the smell of fresh coffee./ And they don't take kindly/to square-peg types. Once a vampire/got transferred here by mistake,/complete with fifteen brides/right out of a Frederick's catalogue/and a record as long as your arm./The family trade went down/the toilet; even the police/steered clear, till the block committee/paid a call. He sold low/to the judge's daughter, a plain woman/who sleeps with the porch light on.