The excellent, new biography “The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney,” by Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Birnes, got me thinking about an interview I did with the film legend some years ago. My experience with the 5-foot, 3-inch screen star was not at all a pleasant one, so if you like and admire Mickey Rooney it might be …
My husband is rolling in dough. Oh, not the cash kind, but something nearly as good ― at least when he takes it, fragrant and golden, out of the oven. Yes, Russ is a dough nut ― yeasty bread dough. Ever since he fell in love at a Moor head Community Education class half a dozen years ago, he’s been …
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 …
Last March, I wrote here about my friends Harley and Peggy Stahlecker, from my hometown of Crookston, Minn. Both had lost older brothers in World War II. Another brother of Harley’s, Milton Stahlecker, survived combat in the Pacific but came back a changed man. When we talked this spring, neither Peggy or Harley had yet read my new novel, “Every …
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 …
For some, writing is a passion. For professionals, it’s a job. When you invest your entire career in churning out words, your Muse devolves rather quickly from an inspiration into a math problem. Eventually, you come to take what you’ve written entirely for granted. It’s all about the kind of output that a dismissive BBC documentary on the digital age recently …
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, …
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 …