North Dakota Books

Midwest Marvels: Roadside Attractions Across Iowa, Minnesota, The Dakotas, And Wisconsin by freelance writer Eric Dregni is a handy 437-page travel guide to many of the munificent and iconic roadside attractions scattered along the highways and byways of five midwestern states. Lavished throughout with black and white photos of strange scenic wonders, Midwest Marvels is a type of entertaining curiosity tour featuring a text which is illustrated with photographs and down home folk tales. All of the attractions are real and actually exist, albeit sometimes hard to believe (Og the Gorilla, King Kong of the Prairie?). Midwest Marvels is well researched, as for example, the chapter on Peanuts Park, in St. Paul, Minnesota which has a thumbnail sketch of the famous comic artist, born in St. Paul, containing little known facts about Charles Schulz's history of leaving the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1950 for greener pastures when it decided his weekly fee of $10 was "too much for simple drawings (p. 149)." Midwest Marvels is filled with the quirky, wild, wacky landmarks of the Upper Midwest. From the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, to the Effigy Mounds of Marquette, Iowa, Midwest Marvels presents useful information about attractive features, history, locations, hours, prices of admission, and local colour stories. It is well worth the price to the traveler unfamiliar with what the five-state Upper Midwest area has to offer the curious passerby.

As a lifelong resident, I've always found the caricatured depictions of the Midwest and we Midwesterners (e.g. Fargo) pretty entertaining in that there's an undeniable kernel of truth. This book, to my simultaneous horror and delight, does not require suspension of disbelief. The narrative, maps and photos cast crossed kino eyes on the sublime weirdness of Midwestern reality- like the Ron Schara Wooden Leg Museum in Gaylord, MN.

Read this book. It will inform your roadtrips and make for swank church-basement conversation on Saturday night.

This book was very dear to my heart as both my parents were of Norwegian descent and grew up close to where the author did in Western North Dakota. It's a wonderful portrait of what life was like in the rural Great Plains in the early part of the 20th century and a thought-provoking contrast to our lives today. And I never did get Mom's recipe for Glorified Rice so I was glad to find not one but several ingredient lists for this nostalgic dish!

Let's just put it this way, I read the whole book in one sitting. In fact, I couldn't put the book down. The author wrote short histories and included recipes to go along with the family history. Of course along the way, she told some mighty funny stories, especially about how one of her sisters managed to set the out house on fire. Really funny. I haven't laughed so hard while reading a book in sometime. A definite buy --- even if I haven't tried her recipes. Most recipes are common to Scandinavian cooking and Scandinavian American cooking.

Adrian Louis opens his Introduction with a poem named The End of the Trail Is the Beginning of the Trail which alludes to how many Native Americans, like the Sioux in the collected poems, have gone off the trail. With no idea just what the trial was like or how to find the way back, the Sioux drift aimlessly and hopelessly. A couple of lines of the poem are, "...Sleep/deep & bring us a dream." But no dream comes. Trevino L. Brings Plenty ends one of his poems, "...I don't dream anymore,/I only remember." The memories are of romanticized Plains Indians for the most part an image created by white Americans. Such memories offer no sustenance or guidance in the present; offer no ideas about adapting to the realities of the Sioux's plight in present-day America.

In his Introduction, after the poem, Adrian notes the poems of the four contemporary Sioux poets combine the public image of Native Americans who are mostly artists and educators with those who are the "grassroots people" of the medicine men and women, story tellers, and community activists.

The poems are simple in form and language; though each poet has his own voice. Many are based on simplified settings, a typical situation, a dialogue between two persons, or a monologue. Again and again they circle back to the core subjects and themes of the materially and spiritually impoverished plight of Native Americans, particularly the Sioux of the upper Midwest and the plight's diffused angers and stultifying confusions. Despite their raw emotions and dehumanizing circumstances, the poems are free of complaint. The poets realize complaint is useless. Their aim is to describe and record, and in a way to witness though in a lively, involved, not typically faceless or anonymous manner.

Joel Waters, Steve Pacheco, and Luke Warm Water with the already-mentioned Brings Plenty evidence awareness, but not much digestion of the plight they write about. It is as if they are of a generation of Native Americans that has had history dropped on it like a ton of bricks: The poets are reacting to the event and its immediate effects. This uncompromising assault of history, so to speak, occurs hand-in-hand with the flight of the protective and consoling myths and lore; a process that has been called disenchantment in other areas of the postmodern culture. As the poems relate, the Native Americans however have not naturally adopted the illusions, evasions, and blindnesses many others have been able to; thus leaving the Native Americans naked, vulnerable, and helpless in an anti-Eden.

Edited by Lovelock Paiute Tribe member Adrian C. Louis, "Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets" collects selected free-verse poems from four Lakota (a.k.a. Sioux) poets -- Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Steve Pacheco, Joel Waters, and Luke Warm Water. Each poet offers his own perspective upon their heritage, legacy, and the difficulties of grappling with modern social issues including homelessness, poverty, urban decay, and depression. A singularly poignant and relevant work of contemporary Native American literature. "It Is Called a Chow Line": I see them every morning / waiting for breakfast / in a line along a building / wrapping around the city block. / Homeless men and women / smoking cigarettes, / nipping at bottles, / wiping rain from brow. / They squat or stand, / then the line moves / into the soup kitchen. / The meal is free. / It is warm inside / as they sit at tables, / swiping S.O.S. with / a flaky biscuit, / and blow before / sipping on their hot coffee. / During the meal / there is laughter, / a small prayer is answered. / They stay as long as they can / until they walk the streets / and sleep somewhere out of the rain.

I read the book but it wasn't the version i needed which was my fault. good book.

Great book for the class I am taking. Not sure I would have ever read it since I am not a cowboys and indian buff.

Being an enthusiastic amateur treasure hunter myself, in years past, I diligently read each and every volume of Mr. Terry's exhaustively researched works. Although I found some the information erroneous or far from exact - for instance many locations cited as "ghost towns" are FAR from being one - there are so many intriguing stories of legends, factual evidence & stories of past recoveries that any true TH'r will be enthralled. Treasure hunting is supposedly America's fastest growing hobby: it's uniquely enjoyable for the adventure, historical aspects & healthy outdoor recreation. And when you really find something decent...Boy Howdy!! Not as easy as it sounds, though. To be a professional TH'r, one has to have patience, applying oneself with the perseverance of a detective: because that's what it takes to be successful. Exhaustive research is the key: going where people gathered long ago (old picnic grounds & abandoned schoolyards, for instance) will be beneficial for coin shooters who are after more than modern coins....for me, finding modern coins was a complete waste of time & energy. Going for the gold? Go where it is KNOWN to be & be creative: the better your equipment - i.e. a decent detector which finds gold & common sense makes this a most fascinating hobby. For some, it's a life's career. Good luck!!

Found this to be a very interesting paperback book for anyone dreaming of treasure hunting/finds. But, I wish it was updated. I'm sure there are more interesting things about Florida. Not all of Fla. treasure finds are in the sea as this book notes. Worth reading.Open anywhere and begin reading.

It was great to read a book that actually came from the person that lived it; White Bull. He should have been as well known as Sitting Bull and many other warriors, because of his fierce attributes. He was a very brave leader of his people.

In the many books written about Native Americans Sioux that lived during the Great Sioux War as a hostile this is one of the best. A bit of a braggart, White Bull also is very revealing as far as what he was thinking at the time. E.i. There was an incident when his uncle, Sitting Bull, who decided to show the young braves how brave he was and asked who would like to walk out into the middle of a battlefield and sit down and have a smoke from his pipe with him. White Bull along with three other braves not wanting to look afraid volunteered. When they sat down in between the soldiers and their fellow Sioux with bullets zinging all around them, Sitting Bull put tobacco in his pipe, lit it, and took a long slow draw. When it got to White Bull he states "Except for Sitting Bull we smoked it as fast as we could." For those that wish an authentic flavor of what the Sioux thought during the Great Sioux War this book hits the spot.

Klosterman understands the universe, and why heavy metal had to exist to make it balanced and just.

Personally, Chuck is my top 3 favorite writer. I think he hit me hard with his styles and topics in all of his books. So if you're like me:

- Love Rock and/or Heavy Metal music*****this is very important for this book
- Enjoy reading about popular culture topics
- Love sarcastic and funny books
- is in the age range of 18-30 (I'm 24)
- Like to explore all kinds od writings and books
- is not one who tend to OVERTHINK AND OVERCRITISIZE books and writing styles
- is open minded

Then, this is probably your kind of writer too. Good luck and enjoy!

If you grew up enjoying hard rock and/or heavy metal of the 80's and early 90's, or are just a fan of that music, then you simply must read this book. It will bring back fond memories of your developing musical tastes and make you laugh out loud.

I bought this on the recommendation of Martin Popoff, and was terribly disappointed. If you want to read an insightful, entertaining, and fair review of heavy metal, this is most definitely NOT your book. Klosterman's "appreciation" of the form starts and ends with glam. He spends most of the book in postmodern smirky hipster mode, which means he continually trashes the music from a musical point of view, and chooses to battle for its "validity" in the more easily defended realm of "what it meant to me as a kid." As cultural studies, this is crap, and as a book about heavy metal it is an utter waste of time. He elevates glam (Poison, GNR, Cinderella, etc) and simultaneously slags Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica and the host of other metal bands which were the meat and potatoes of any real metalhead of the time. He has no appreciation for what most metal fans would actually grace with the term "heavy metal". As you will quickly be able to tell, this is masterfully well done, in that he affirms what most of the snobs have been saying all along about metal--all the 5 star reviews are from people who are...gasp...not metal fans--whilst and at the same time pretending to be a true fan. Hipster dreck at its worst. You are better off reading Ian Christe's "Sound of the Beast", or even Walser or Weinstein's books. Better yet, check out Sam Dunn's documentary "Metal-A Headbanger's Journey." Dunn and Christe are real fans of the music, and they don't spend all their time perpetuating all the stereotypes of the form.

While I think that this book is deservedly the black sheep of the Klosterman books, its still enjoyable. What this book lacks is any sense of flow... I never caught a real story or any purpose. It just seemed like a series of rants on liking metal (pop/ hair metal in particular) that were taped and then transcribed. Klosterman still has that really approachable style that's fun and thoguhtful.

While I'd like to laugh at him for liking crappy bands, Klosterman's experiences are similar to most any youth who feels a strong connection to music. I know that they're not unlike my feelings as a young teen becoming obsessed with hardcore records back then... though I had one up on Chuck 'cos I was living in Philly, and not rural North Dakota, back in the day.

Typical Klosterman; funny, absurd, and thoughtful... I suppose a lot of other readers are turned away by what they see as a lack of direction or movement in the book.

First off, let me say that I might have liked this book better if I had not read other books by this same author. The problem is that, to me, they all seem the same. I see plot elements reused from title to title, and within the story itself. Even if I hadn't read other books from this author, I would be hard pressed to give this a positive review. Like others here have mentioned, it jumps around so much, it almost makes you nauseated, and not just from character to character, the story is not even written with anything even vaguely resembling chronological order. It jumps back forth from decade to decade in an almost humorous manner. Also, you'll find yourself flipping to the family tree at the beginning of the book constantly in a likely futile attempt to figure out how all the seemingly random characters tie together.

In conclusion, the potential value of this story and the morals that it is meant to portray are largely lost in its random construction and nearly cliche plot elements.

Ordered used copy for a class I was taking. It arrived promptly in the condition advertised. Great read!

I never got this text! I ordered four books, this one has yet to be delivered to me. I have sent emails to the seller and have never gotten a response, same thing when I emailed Amazon. I did check this book out of the library to read for a class...it is an excellent Novel-I highly recommend it, just not from this seller.

Simply fantastic. It is a shame though, that she is not included in the canon of literary geniuses of American history. Her stories read beautifully and her artistic ability to paint a picture with words is amazing. Read all her books, they are all wonderful.

This book is a classic, a truly great book. It reads like interlaced short stories. Two Native American families: Kashpaws and Nanapush. Lazarres and Morrissey French blood mixed in. The characters are exquisitely drawn. The story is tragic, bewildering, full of hate, overarched with love. This book will make you anxious, scared, sad and guilty. You'll be rooting for these people. The writing is surreal, sorcery, naked truth, poetry. What a book!

Last Report falls in the category of books for me that I would term 'perfect.' The characters are richly drawn, the writing is deft and lyrical, and the storyline itself is an amazing journey. Erdrich has proven herself again and again as an accomplished writer. This is the book (imho) that puts her solidly in the 'literature' category. She explores many of her favorite issues of faith, spirituality, doubt, regret and redemption. This is a book that resonated deep in my mind (dare I say soul?) with scenes that have revisited me long after I finished reading it. Beautiful, disturbing, at times funny, haunting. In short, a perfect book.

This is the most marvelous story of a woman who felt she was needed as a man rather than as a man, so she became a Roman Catholic priest and missionary to a group of Ojibwehs (Native Americans) in northern Minnesota and North Dakota and in southern Manitoba. Curiously enough, most of the people she served knew she was a female who had a secret and compelling reason be their priest, and she was accepted by them as the priest she thought she had become.
Louise Erdich created a most unusual life with this book, one I will want to read several times.

Unbelievable story with very effective, if often disturbing, imagery. Very choppy. Quite dark.

I would only recommend this if you really had lots of time on your hands and nothing better to do.

I just picked this book up recently and was instantly drawn into the storyline. I could not stop reading it. I will not go on and on, I just want to say that I think it would make a fantastic movie - I think Louise is an excellent author (never read anything of hers before) and I was sad to see the book come to an end! Great reading! :-)

I found this book to be good but also slightly flawed.
I read it for a class (a University English class) and have been blown away by all the books so far but this one hasn't quite hit me the way some of the other novels I've read for the course did.
It started out great, I was really intrigued, but then sometime after page 100 I lost interest and just wanted the book to finish so I could write my paper and be done with it.
I really wish though that the book said somewhere on it that it is basically a part of a series. Until I came to the Amazon website and read a bunch of reviews I had no idea! Maybe reading more of her novels would have helped me get through the novel better in the first place!

I've enjoyed all of Klosterman's nonfiction books and listen to a fair number of audio books, so this CD version of his first novel is right up my alley. Unfolding from August 1983 to February 1984, the story is set in the small (and getting smaller) North Dakota town of Owl, where we tag along with three very different characters. There's Horace, the straight-talking, widowed old-timer with a dark secret and dark shame. There's Julia, the 20something high school teacher, who, as the new single female in town, has plenty of desperate single farmers to enable her binge drinking. And there's Mitch, the high school's third-string quarterback, who drifts along unable to summon much interest in the various pop-culture enthusiasms of his friends. But before we meet them, there is prologue about a deadly blizzard that struck the area in 1984, and that prologue hangs over these characters like a black cloud. Even as we get to know them (and other townies), it's with the near-certainty that by the end of the book, some of these folks will be dead.

There's no other overarching "story" or "plot" per se -- Klosterman is mainly interested in painting a picture of early '80s small town life via these three characters. And to his credit, he does a very good job of it, succumbing neither to cloying nostalgia nor condescending snarkiness. These are people Klosterman "gets," and gets well, both in terms of how they present themselves to the world and their inner lives. Horace is living out his old age one day at a time, with occasional regrets about how his life might have been different (this is a common theme among many of the characters). Julia gets drunk early and often, as she tries to make the most of her time in this tiny town, assuming that it's just the first stepping stone on her way to a big city job. And the Mitch is obsessed (as Klosterman often is) with authenticity -- what constitutes an authentic feeling, what doesn't, and why.

There are a whole host of supporting characters, such as teenage streetfighter extraordinaire Cubby Candy, high school jock extraordinaire Grendel, laconic buffalo rancher/romantic interest Vance, cruel bar owner Dog Lover, and high school English teacher/football coach/impregnator of students/ardent libertarian Coach Laidlaw. These (and others) allow Klosterman to embark on a whole host of tangents, which are sometimes much more interesting than the main characters. Above all, Klosterman is interested in the interior thoughts of his characters, and the book brims with these. (The epitome of these records an entire awkward conversation between Julia and Vance in a What She Said / What She Meant / What She Thought format.)

One can find plenty of minor things to quibble about with the book. For example, after having established that one of the constant topics of conversation among the townspeople is the weather, it strains credulity that Horacefails to know of the coming blizzard. Another example is the extent to which period slang has infiltrated small-town North Dakota in the pre-internet, pre-cable TV era of this book -- some of the teen slang just seemed off at times. And having established that the Dog Lover's bar is the worst of the town's eight, why does Julia (or anyone, really) do the bulk of her drinking there? However, none of these detract that much from the overall effect of the book. Basically, if you like Klosterman's writing, you'll probably like this. It's got his trademark deadpan humor, pop music references (such as a great little exchange about the "heaviness" of ZZ Top's guitars), lists (such as the 10 topic of conversations in a diner), and chunks of fun stuff (such as the running gag about who would win a theoretical street fight between Cubby and Grendel) or the etymology of nicknames of patrons at a given bar, topped off with a little North Dakora history (for funsies, look up Gordon Kahl).

Chuck Kosterman's 'Downtown Owl' is set in a small North Dakota town full of ordinary people during the early eighties. The main characters have never met: Mitch, the high school football player; Julia, the pot smoking teacher who feels stifled after moving there from a bigger city; and Horace, the coffee drinking widow.

The story gives us a look into the lives of these characters from September through February, when an unexpected event changes things forever.

Funny at times and emotional at others, this quirky story is sure to capture your attention.

good book, focuses on ordinary people and tells the story of their life in a small town.

I read the novel Downtown Owl when it first came out and found it to be a quick, entertaining read with surprisingly deep undertones. It's a story of intertwining lives in a small North Dakota town (Owl, North Dakota to be exact) told from several perspectives. What Klosterman does with this story is take what feels like several short stories about nothing and combine them to make one story about a big something. What is that something, though? Mostly, it seems like Klosterman is focusing on how we all perceive the world, what we think of as "normal", and how alike we all really are despite our perceived differences. But maybe that's not what it's about at all. Maybe it's just a bunch of random events that happen to a few fictional people in Owl, North Dakota. Either way, it's incredibly entertaining.

The audiobook takes the story a step further. The choice to employ different narrators for the various characters narrating in the book turns out to be a brilliant decision. This gives the audiobook the life and variance that the book itself effortlessly puts out. All three of the readers are superb with their deliveries and the execution of the story makes this the kind of audiobook that anyone going on a long trip should not hesitate to take with them. I'm usually a bit averse to audiobooks because I'd rather have control of the book and read it myself than have someone else read it to me, but this book all but begs to be read aloud. There is one chapter that doesn't quite fly in audiobook format (you'll know what I mean when you hear it), but the rest is perfect.

The only downside to this audiobook is that when it's over you'll wonder what you're going to listen to next.

As a side note, I'm not a rabid Chuck Klosterman fan and I actually haven't read any of his articles or other books. I just happened to pick this one up and love it.

I've really tried hard to get into this book on DC. It has been lodged in the car's CD player for over a week now. Every trip to town I force my self to dig a little deeper in hope of getting hooked. Looks like it isn't going to happen. The cast of characters range from school teachers intend on pickling their brains in the local bars of Owl, ND, every night of the week to old men arguing without resort to evidence. The only even semi-interesting character is Julia, a new arrival, has conversations with every man in town until she falls for Vance. Boring!

I love books on CD, but this one will be replaced by the Imus Ranch Record until I can get back to the library. I did get through all but the last CD, but all to no avail...