Minnesota Books

From a true pioneer outdoorsman...I love Calvin's tales interspersed in his readings with some opinions tossed about about politics, economics, and the state of his future and now, our past...Just very well written from an original. His stories that he chats about in between are short and enjoyable. I love his work.

His works will be remembered for a long time...if you like some dry humor tossed into full character...this is the ticket.

Frank Mayer's book not only gives us a written enthnographic view of the frontier life but also a "photographic" view of life on the frontier in North America. His book is a fingerprint in time for a place that will never be seen again.

If you've read the essay on Gay Man's English in "Queerly Phrased" and you want to read more, then come here to the source. Mr. Leap contributed his essay on cooperative discourse to OUP for inclusion in that anthology, and the choice was most felicitous. Here, Mr. Leap further que(e)ries the subject and adds a great deal more depth and nuance. Highly recommended!

World Gone Beautiful is what good memoir is to me - a walk down a road not taken lead by an intensely honest and insightful soul. I loved learning about Linda Buturain's experience creating a community with three other couples/families on 80 acres along the wild Rum River in Minnesota. World Gone Beautiful spoke to my heart about living on the land gently and preserving whenever possible large expanses of natural space. This book is a window into a beautiful soul, an author willing to expose her vulnerabilities, passions, and joys. Thank you Linda Buturain for World Gone Beautiful.

In this book naturalist Paul Gruchow meditates on twelve sites among the many acquired over the past 25 years by the Minnesota Department of Natural resources "to provide sanctuary for rare plant and animal communities--in some cases the last representatives of their kind in Minnesota": the Prairie Coteau near Pipestone and the 3.6-billion-year-old rock near Granite Falls in southwestern Minnesota; Townshend Woods, Mound Prairie, and Kellogg-Weaver River Valley in southeastern Minnesota; Felton Prairie in the northwest; and Rush Lake Island, Ripley Esker, Black Lake Bog, Lost Lake Peatland, and Lutsen Woods in the forested northeastern part of the state. The essays are brief, perhaps 2,000 words, often accompanied by useful one-page field notes (Richel Burkey-Harris) and forty illustrative four-color photos from the Minnesota DNR magazine MINNESOTA CONSERVATION VOLUNTEER, where the essays first appeared. The book is a reduced coffee table size, short-side bound, printed on heavy coated stock, attractively designed (except for the irritatingly brittle semi-transparent dust jacket).(...)Gruchow has a prairie eye even when he's off of the prairie, and he focuses not just on sites, but on component parts of sites (in this respect his prose is much richer than the book's photographs) (...)In WORLDS WITHIN A WORLD, Gruchow's words have the upper hand: elegant, sometimes literary (Jim Wright's poem on a blue heron is quoted), always vivid and precise. This book won the 2000 Minnesota Book Award in the category of Nature and Minnesota, and the award was well deserved.

This is a collection of Flusser's writings which touches on the theme of the development of the new media, design and space, which can be read in the context of the philosophy of Heidegger, Deleuze and Levinas.

If there is an essential relationship between media and philosophy that is overlooked by many contemporary thinkers, artists and writers today, then this is an excellent text which provides essential insights.

The field of New Media Theory and Philosophy is fraught with innumerable pathways and traps. This book offers a safe passage out of labyrinth of thought, without jargon (Adorno) and confirms Flusser to be one of the most important and under-rated media thinker in this century.

SPOILERS.

This is the only O'Brien book I have read so far (though I hope to read "The Things They Carried" soon). And while I initially enjoyed the first half of the book, the second half was somewhat of a chore to get through.

For me, the constant hammering on John Wade's two possible motivations (dear old Dad and Vietnam) was numbing at first but then crossed the line into insulting.

The analogy (or is it metaphor - I *always* forget) of the Sorcerer/magician crap was both lame and laughable.

A number of the characters - for example Tony and Claude and Myra Shaw (the waitress) - hit me as being caricatures and stereotypes.

Also, especially towards the end of the book, the philosophical mumbo-jumbo got very old very quick ("Could the truth be so simple? So terrible?" or "The mathematics are always null; water swallows sky, which swallows earth"). C'mon!

Finally, Mr. O'Brien seems to have resorted to what I call the Dustin Hoffman School Of Writing. I like Dustin Hoffman. I think he's a very, very good actor. But there are a number of times when I see him in a film and he may as well be wearing a flashing neon sign that screams "LOOK AT ME! I'M ACTING!"

I feel the same way about Mr. O'Brien's writing. A lot of it is good. Very, very good. But there are whole passages where Mr. O'Brien seems to be wearing a flashing neon sign that screams "LOOK AT ME! I'M WRITING!"

Anywho, just one man's (me!) opinion.

Tim O'brien caught my attention in his book "the things they carried" and again did not disappoint me with "in the lake of the woods".. the complex, unique style of O'brien really gets the mind working and keeps the pages turning.

As always, Tim O'Brien's writing style is amazing, surprising. His structure is enjoyable to read, and re-read. I'll likely read this book again within the next few years just for the great description and prose.

However, as much as I enjoyed the style, it took me a few chapters to get into the story. Had I not previously read a couple of O'Brien's other books, I might not have granted it as much time as I did. Luckily, I did give the book a chance because as soon as the story picked up, I was into it.

O'Brien's veteran experiences provide a wonderful backbone for his characters and John Wade (the protagonists) is interesting and real. As an Iraq War veteran, I found a number of traits in the character that I could understand, and a couple I could relate too. At times I was surprised but the plot and I enjoyed where the winding trail led me.

In the Lake of the Woods is a good book and I'd recommend it to anybody wanting to understand the inner working of a PTSD mind.

I purchased this book for my college ENG class as a required text. At first I found some of the language offensive and didn't really like it, but as I continued reading the book was very intriguing and sucked me in. I ended up really liking the book and enjoyed reading it, even if it was required.

John Wade, Minnesota native and political up and comer has lost his bid for a Senate seat...lost it by a landslide. Now, while on a retreat from politics to the northern woods of Minnesota John has lost his beloved wife Kathleen.

In this brilliant 1994 novel by Tim O'Brien, we see the psychological layers that make up a man; everyone in this book is hiding secrets and no one is who they seem to be. O'Brien uses short, richly developed scenes to describe not only the horrors of war, but the ramifications of holding in secrets that are too dark to reveal. When Senate hopeful John Wade loses the election due to unearthed information linking him to the massacre at My Lai the spider web of deceit that he has woven begins to come apart. The problem is that Wade has become so adept at hiding his secrets that he loses his ability to recognize truth from fantasy...and here in lies the mystery that the reader shares in. We are shown facts, suppositions and viewpoints from multiple angles and are forced to deduce/intuit the truth within the words. We discover that perception and memory are dodgy things at best. This is a brilliantly chilling piece of writing that fully engages both sides of the brain. Like life, there are no pat answers here; no neat endings or perfect closures. This novel asks the reader to look deeply within ourselves to witness our own shadows and to realize that no matter how much we love another it is virtually impossible to fully know them and equally difficult to fully know ourselves.

If you're afraid of some frankly dark images; vivid descriptions of the My Lai massacre and the horror of war, then this may not be your book. But if you're not afraid to look (even within your mind's eye) at the darkness without and by doing so face the darkness within, then "In the Lake of the Woods" is a must read morality play that is ambiguously shaded in greys rather than the moral black and white that is so comforting to us as humans. This is a novel that is destined to be a classic.

This book is a true story and it says so in the authors note. This book is very sad, interesting, and violent. It is about a 16 year old boy who heard of a shooting war. His name was Charley. He wanted to enlist for the army but they said that you must be 18 to go and enlist for the army that would take place in the shooting war. Charley lies about his age and gets in without question. He gets training and fights in the army and in the battles he fought in he learns what it really is like to be in the army. He learned that you always think you're going to die. He learned that if someone is having a slow and painful death because of a wound they will want to shoot themselves. Charley learned a lot in the army and that is why this book is called soldiers heart. My favorite part is the whole book because it is so interesting and sad. I don't have a least favorite part. This book is good for people that like stories that can show them a lesson.

I definitely recommend this book to all readers. Gary Paulsen does a great job in showing how Charley feels that he will certainly die, and how he changes from a happy farmer to a man that will kill to stay alive. This was one of the greatest historical fiction books that I have ever read because of all the amazing events that actually took place. For example, Charley and another man use dead bodies to build a wall to stop a vicious wind. This book had a lot of surprises, like when Charley is hit and wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. I couldn't wait to turn the page because of all these horrendous and shocking surprises. Because this book is only 102 pages, it makes for an astonishing quick read.

As already stated, this is a fictionalized story of a young 15 year Minnesota boy who fought in the Civil War. Paulsen takes liberties in relating the short life of Charley Goddard. Goddard participated in many major battles of the Civil War such as Bull Run and Gettysburg. He shows the cost of war on the youths that fight it by relating the term soldier's heart. A soldier's heart becomes hardened by the experience of death in battle. He no longer fears death, viewing it as a way to meet the soldiers who proceeded him in death.

This is a story detailing the cruelity of battle. Battle hardens our soldiers and puts severe strains on their mentail peace. This should be remembered in terms of the cost are soldiers are now going through.

After reading it in class, this is what the MFMS's 8th grade Language Arts thought of the book:

"We liked the story because some parts of the story were really detailed and seems like you were actually there. Well, not really. It was easy to read because there was not so much hard words, which made it easier and better."
--Colleen and Jessica.

"I liked the story because it was extremely detailed with words to explain everything that happened. The bigger words make it a better book to understand more."
--Tom, Desirae, Juan

"I liked the book because it teach me about history. I think it was kind of hard to read, because all the big words. I think the big words make it hard to read and not one could understand it."
--Man, Diana, Giovanna

"We kinds liked the book because it talked about the war and we wanted to know about the war and the book helped a lot. The book was kind of hard to read, but easy to at the same time. It kind of had big words, but it was better to read the book that way. The book was very interesting. The book was good."
--Kara, Maria R., Maria Z., Angelica

In 1861 Charley is fifteen years old, living on a farm in Minnesota with his mother and little brother. Everyone has heard the rumor that there is to be a war, with those in the North fighting to stop the Southern rebels from doing damage to the country. No one is quite sure if the war is really going to happen, but Charley is determined to be a part of it if it is.

He convinces his mother that he can handle himself as a soldier and tells her the eleven dollars a month he'll be paid will help her out, and she agrees to let him go. He signs up, lying about his age so they will let him into the army, and begins his training.

At first things are horribly boring. The volunteer military spends much of its time sitting around, doing drills that don't use up their ammunition, and eating really bad food. Charley is considering deserting and simply going home, when finally his unit marches into battle.

Their first battle is a bloodbath--his unit tries to march across an open field while rebel soldiers shoot at them from above. Charley isn't sure what he thought a shooting war would be like, but it was certainly nothing like this. As the war continues and Charley is a part of more and more battles, he learns what war really is, and sees more than his share of the horror of it.

I liked that war wasn't glamorized at all in this book--the narrator spoke of the boredom between battles and the horror of the battles themselves. Nothing was made out to be fun about it. I also liked that Charley was so shocked and couldn't get over what he had seen. He was just a kid when he went into war and it wouldn't have been realistic for him to handle it well.

However, this book was a little too simplistic. It didn't give any of the nuances of Charley's thoughts and feelings, and didn't explore the feelings of anyone except this one main character. I would have liked a bit more depth.

As an avid reader of John Sandford's "Prey" novels I read through most of this book thinking "this is his best." The book revolves around Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis cop and Sandford's most famous protagonist, working with the FBI to catch Clara Rinker, a mysterious for-hire killer on a vengeance run.

What's really great about this book, on top of the great writing and storytelling ability of Sandford, is that Lucas Davenport is unleashed. Normally in the Prey novels Davenport is limited in action by his superiors in Minneapolis, by politicians and rules. In this book, because it takes place in a different town, we really see Davenport unleashed. There aren't rules to follow, actions are made "off the record" and it all adds to the excitement of this thriller.

Even better is the antagonist in this novel is a very sympathetic character whom the readrs can identify with. Normally Sandford's antagonists are so evil and one sided the reader can't help but hope for some horrible death at the end of the book. This time it's clearly different, Clara Rinker is an eye-for-an-eye killer with a sense of justice.

Thus, 99% of the novel is great. However, in the final pages of the book everything falls apart. I won't reveal the ending but it is abrupt and anti-climatic. A terrible disappointment for what could have been Sandford's best work.

This is the first John Sandford book I have read. The author provides his readers with a well written, action packed, suspenseful story. The Clara Rinker character was well developed. I really liked the twist at the end. I am looking forwarding to reading more of John Sandford's books.

This book was very exciting. Very real humor and realistic. I love the characters. Difinitely suggest this one!

I have read just about all of the 'prey' books and have enjoyed most of them. This is another that was entertaining. However, I feel that this series has long since hit a wall and that one book is pretty much like the last. 'Mortal Prey' takes a step in a new direction by setting up a likable villain in the guise of a female hit-person. This is a character who appeared in 'Certain Prey', Clara Rinker. Rinker has killed a lot of people in her time and Sandford sets her up not as a terrible person, but as someone I personally wouldn't mind having as a best friend or next door neighbor. In fact its hard not to root for her as Davenport tracks her down.

A few things that kind of made me not get overly ecstatic about this book; One is that I really was never at the edge of my seat here. This is supposed to be a suspenseful novel but it wasn't. It just sort of goes along and Davenport comes across clues with little effort. Two is that as I said before, Rinker is just way too likable, nice, and the girl-next-door type. Three, Sanford's formula is getting old. and Four,what the heck was Davenport doing in St Louis or all across North America solving this crime? It makes no sense to have a local cop traipse across the globe hunting down international crime figures and taking on the mob.

Unless you have reached this book in the series and want to continue onwards, I would suggest that you shy away from this. 'No Country for Old Men' by Cormac McCarthy or 'Mystic River' by Dennis Lehane are far superior.

I recently finished Mortal Prey and it was a great read from first page to last. Clara Rinker is a great character. Would make an exciting movie; how would Cathy Bates be as Clara??

I needed to listen to this since I had listened to Stripped, the book that follows this one.

It explained a lot that I did not understand. That is the problem with finding a new author and reading a later book.

It was a good read.

My first and last time reading anything by Brian Freeman. It started out pretty good, but then when he got to describing the lesbian Nancy Carver, his homophobia and hatred of lesbians came raging out in his completely unrealistic and stereotypical description of her. From there, the entire book went downhill. He painted every single other adult female as surrealistically beautiful with incredible bodies. Apparently he's never seen an actual female police officer: they don't fit his stereotype. His Hispanic police officer in Las Vegas sounded more like a pimp than a cop. And the ending just cracked me up. His own wife and her ex-husband?? Give me a break!

I thought this book was a wonderfully well-weaved tale of mystery, murder & mayhem.
I'm an avid reader of mystery novels and while I truly enjoy the settings, detective characters and so on - I have always prided myself on figuring out the "guilty party" early in a book.

Not so with this piece of entertainment.

At various stages along the way I had it "figured out" only to discover later that I full of beans and I learned what I wanted to know only when it's crafty author let me.
This masterpiece provided me with hours of entertainment and it was so infused with twists and turns that I constantly felt as if I were riding a rollercoaster of emotions and intrigue.

Be warned that it is an addictive page turner.
The dishes & laundry can and will wait. Time spent reading this one is time well spent. Period.

Let me get straight to the point. If you like crime fiction, especially the novels that really twist your mind in knots while you try to figure out what's going on, then you need to buy IMMORAL. If, like me, you read and enjoy the likes of Connelly, Gerritsen, Deaver, Coben, Slaughter, Connolly and Child you will not be disappointed by this relative newcomer to the genre. He's good. He's very good, in fact.

This novel actually represents the first in a series featuring Lieutenant Jonathan Stride, later to be joined by Las Vegas Police Detective Serena Dial. Stride is based in Duluth, north Minnesota, a town on the edge of Lake Superior that I had never heard of before, and presumably not many others know it either as it doesn't even have a Starbucks (shock, horror). The story revolves around the disappearance of a rebellious, sexy and in many ways mysterious teenage girl named Rachel, whose behaviour affected several people before she disappeared and whose personality continues to influence others - including Stride - years after she was last seen. The tale also involves the love life of forty-something Stride himself, initially a widower having lost his wife to cancer a year before the story begins. His bedroom exploits are a little too graphically detailed for my own personal tastes, but it's fair to say that his romantic asides are very relevant to the plot and are not merely bolted-on to please a certain sector of the readership. Most importantly though the central story of what happened to Rachel is very well told and I was kept guessing right to the end. More than guessing, actually - at times I felt like shouting at the page demanding to know what's going on! The only disappointment was finishing it, because I simply did not want it to end. It more than held my interest at all times, there is never a dull moment and there is a complete absence of gratuitous violence. Brian Freeman has written two follow-ups to this debut novel and I'm going to buy them both. Definitely a crime fiction writer who knows his way around the courtroom and one to watch out for in the future.

The action flowed continually. The dialouge was first rate. This author has got it.