Unheralded

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — Laura Ingalls Wilder

When I spotted that the Bismarck Tribune was looking for someone to review “Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder” (Nancy Tystad Loupal, editor, South Dakota State Historical Press, 2017), I immediately contacted the editor. Our home library has an entire shelf of books by and about Wilder, the famous prairie writer, and I’ve read them all, more than once. I still …


Unheralded

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — Hemingway Lives

The latest issue of the New Yorker, dated July 3, includes one of the best essays about Ernest Hemingway I have ever read: “A New Man: Ernest Hemingway — revised and revisited,” written by Adam Gopnik. It is in part of a review of the new biography, Mary V. Dearborn’s 735-page “Ernest Hemingway.” That one is on my book shelf …


RON SCHALOW: Enjoy This Excerpt From Ron’s Book: ‘Perfect Whack Jobs’

Forward: Over 8 million people in the United States have suicidal thoughts —  also known as suicidal ideation — at least once in any given year. For a large subsection of this group, the thoughts never go away, mainly due to chronic depression or bipolar disease. This describes most of the characters in “Perfect Whack Jobs,” a dark comic novel. …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — A Grieving Son Named Scott And An Unlikely Turning Point

By the mid-1980s, my friend and co-author, Patrick O’Malley, had started to suspect that the stages of grief were a harmful fallacy. But as a grieving father himself, and a therapist who worked with the bereaved, what would take their place? An excerpt from our new book, “Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss.” The …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — Giant Of The Senate

I’ve never been much for writing book reviews. Mainly because I don’t know how to write book reviews. Call this one an appreciation. (If you feel you have to call it anything at all.) I noticed a lot of interest in “Al Franken: Giant of the Senate” on Facebook and elsewhere. So, here we go. The new memoir follows Sen. Al Franken’s …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — One Of My Favorite Desert Mystics, Ed Abbey

It had long been my intention, should I ever get to Tucson again, to visit the Special Collections Library on the University of Arizona campus. This past April, I spent a perfectly blissful week in the southern Arizona city, with good friends, and had a few days for solo exploring. One day I took a Lyft cab to the campus …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — ‘Looking For The Stranger’

A nice thing about being retired is having more time to read. I’ve just completed two books, one of which I read for first time in college: “The Stranger,” or as it is titled in French, “L’Étranger,” by Albert Camus, published in 1942. My copy is a new translation in “American English” by Mathew Ward. Set in Algeria, the novel …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — Happy Birthday, Nancy Drew!

Happy 85th birthday, Nancy Drew! My mother owned all of the Nancy Drew books. Her parents starting purchasing these for her when she was a girl, and she continued to purchase the books for my sister, Sarah, and I. I whiled away many hours reading each and every one, curled up in some quiet corner in our farmhouse, and I …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — The Liberation Trilogy

A while ago, I read the 887-page third volume of historian Rick Atkinson’s liberation trilogy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945.” I highly recommend it to those interested in the history of World War II. Just last night, I finished the first volume, “An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — Cliff Notes And James Joyce

Facebook friends may recall my New Year’s Resolution to read the novels of the writer James Joyce. This past Sept. 24, I celebrated my birthday in his native Ireland. I’m about halfway through “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” regarded by aficionados as the necessary prelude to tackling ‘”Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake.” My longtime friend high school classmate, …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — The Hemingway Mystique

I knew nothing about Ernest Hemingway in the fall of 1961. He had recently committed suicide in Idaho at age 60. My freshman English class at the University of North Dakota was assigned to read his short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place.” Impressed with Hemingway’s writing, I dashed off a story in his “style” and submitted it to “Tyro,” the campus …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — Reading James Joyce

Winter in Minnesota is not my favorite season. But there IS one benefit to lousy weather. It provides time to a catch up on the reading you’ve deferred in order to enjoy being outdoors in the spring, summer and fall. My winter goal is to dip into the literature created by the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, 1882-1941. He …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — Rereading Hemingway

Call me old fashioned, but I have difficulty warming up to new novelists. But I’m trying — Dorette and I have signed up to the Hennepin County Library’s annual “Pen Pals” lecture program. On tap for this season: Anna Quindlen, Billy Collins, Lee Child, Elizabeth Strout and James McBride. I know nothing about any of them. Not that I don’t …

DAVE VORLAND: It Occurs To Me — Hemingway’s Art Lives On

It was in a freshman English class at the University of North Dakota in 1961 that I first encountered the writing of Ernest Hemingway, just a few weeks after he committed suicide at Ketchum, Idaho. The short story was “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” published in 1933. James Joyce regarded it as one of the best ever written. I was inspired …

TERRY DULLUM — The Dullum File: ‘Go Set A Watchman’

Like a couple of million other people who have preordered the “new” Harper Lee novel “Go Set A Watchman,” I’ve been eagerly awaiting the book’s publication date next week. A couple of million is no exaggeration, by the way. It is the biggest preorder ever for HarperCollins. It’s being hyped as the biggest publishing event in several years. “Go Set a …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — Meat And Read

Not only is Nick Offerman one of my favorite actors and television talk show guests. Now, it turns out he has become one of my favorite humorists. Some people are just good at everything. (Oh, how I hate people who are good at everything.) His latest book, “Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America’s Gutsiest Troublemakers,” is part of my …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — Summer Reading

My buddy Rose Brunsvold and I once agreed that for us going to prison wouldn’t be the worst thing.  At least we’d be able to catch up on our reading. In that regard, it seems to me that summer is the next best thing to prison, a good time to read. With the unofficial, official start of summer this weekend, …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — To Re-Read Or Not To Re-Read

It doesn’t happen very often, but I’m re-reading a novel I read years ago.  It’s not just any novel.  It’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s not for nothing that Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for it. Like much of the reading public, I’m looking forward to the publication of Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman in July.”  But July is …