Read during Fall 2003

More stories and essays, some funny and some just sweetly enjoyable.

I'm a huge Keillor fan. His essays are insightful and jammed with an elegant, graceful humor, and his more creative efforts are at the very least interesting. At their best, they're mind expanding.

For example, in We Are Still Married, he forgoes the usual author's photo on the back sleeve, preferring to insert a short essay on the wonders of the book (short excerpt):

"Slow to hatch, as durable as a turtle, light and shapely as befits a descendant of the tree. Closed, the object d'book resembles a board. Open, its pale wings brush the fingertips, the spore of fresh ink and pulp excites the nose, the spines easily in the hand."

We Are Still Married is a delightful mix of essay, stories, letters and other creative snippets. It's my favorite Keillor work, but then, there are still a couple left to read.
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A collection of short stories about people in a small town. Some of the stories were fun, some of them made no sense to me. ( )

Extremely uneven. Some pieces are laugh-aloud funny, some are genuinely touching, and some are politically challenging. On the other hand, some pieces are just weird, some are weak in their execution, and some just fall flat when they are clearly intended to be funny. I accept that they can't all be gems, but here the semi-precious gems don't really justify the clumps of dirt. ( )

A collection of stories, poems and letters by Garrison Keillor, also with some news from Lake Wobegon. Some hits, a few misses. Worth the time to find which is which. ( )