Finding a Date for Homecoming

Tory Bauer Mysteries by Kathleen Taylor

In the long run, I don’t think the adult psyche is well served by being popular in high school. I suppose that sounds like sour grapes, since I was always on the outside looking in, but my belief in that basic truth comes from observation, not resentment. Most of us were born ordinary. . .

That line was probably not the first time I whooped out loud at a truth in the writing of Kathleen Taylor, but it was one of the first I recorded in a list that is still growing. I found it on p. 137 of the third in the series The Hotel South Dakota, which may have been the first Taylor I discovered. (I now own them all, and for a suitable ransom, am willing to loan them to friends.) And yes, I was a nerd in grade school and high school both; I got good grades and was on the debate squad and rarely dated. But those aren’t the only reasons I find these books full of humor and truth.

All six of Kathleen Taylor’s books narrated by Tory Bauer, resident of a small town in South Dakota, have an intriguing mystery at their heart. But they also overflow with truths about life in general, with zingers that highlight life in a small rural town. In 1969, Tory Bauer was a high school sophomore, and as is the case for most girls at that age, finding a date for homecoming was “a Life and Death issue.”

Here’s a quote from the first in the series:

Delphi, South Dakota is a dusty little prairie town, the kind people drive through on their way to bigger cities. But as Tory Bauer, middle-aged, widowed, overweight, cranky waitress might say, “Everything that happens in big towns, happens here too. We just don’t look as good naked.”

Tired of mysteries where the sleuth is clever and sophisticated, and none of the people resemble anyone you know? Read Kathleen Taylor.

In 1969, prevailing wisdom dictated that the way to deal with trauma and grief was to indulge in one good cry and never think about it again . . . . “put it out of your mind”. . . .  Amnesia was encouraged.

In my childhood, we were not surrounded by counselors and others paid to help us survive. One day not long after I was dropped as a “city kid” into a rural school when my mother married a rancher, I bloodied the nose of a lout who’d been pawing girls and socking boys his entire grade school career. I’d already fought the toughest girl on the playground to a draw, but drawing his blood solidified my place in the hierarchy. Tory Bauer would understand.

Kathleen Taylor also designs knitwear, has written five knitting books, one mainstream novel, and a paper doll coloring book. She is a spinner, wife, mother, and grandmother; and she lives in Redfield, South Dakota.

Hustle down to your local library and get her books, or buy them at your favorite bookstore– you are likely to want to reread them, and pass them on to friends. In order they are, Funeral Food, Sex and Salmonella, The Hotel South Dakota, Mourning Shift, Cold Front, and Foreign Body.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2021, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Book Remarks: Mystic Travelers by Gail Crane

With Mystic Travelers: Images from the Edge, the reader receives not only a book but an invitation to join these two Mystic travelers on adventures to the edge of the world we know through Facebook and their website.

When she married well-known South Dakota artist Jon Crane, Gail Crane was catapulted out of her previous existence and into an entirely different life. Geographically, socially, spiritually, Gail was transformed and began to trust and embrace the unknown. Gail writes in this book with a poetic vision, telling us of the history of that ongoing adventure; there is no end in sight.

For the 27 years of their marriage, this delightful couple have combined their talents. John paints brilliantly, and takes gorgeous photographs; Gail puts considerable energy into navigating the demands required by the business of supporting yourself by selling your art. Her account of their ongoing journey bursts with her personal vignettes and spiritual insights, and is beautifully illustrated by Jon’s  photographic artistry.

The back cover
features Cosme.

Read the book, then join the couple and Cosme, cat who adopted them, for exciting escapades in Mexico and the American West.

You will also see many photos that couldn’t fit into the book by going to the website, www.mystictravelers.us, or look for Jon Crane on Facebook.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2020, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Mystic Travelers: Images from the Edge
A Travelogue-Memoir by Gail Crane.

Hardbound: $29.95 plus tax and shipping.
ISBN print: 978-0-9915449-8-1;
ISBN e-book: 978-0-9915449-9-8.

Available from Gail Crane
PO Box 1100, Hill City, SD 57745
https://www.mystictravelers.us/gails-new-book.html

Announcing . . .

I’m pleased to announce a new book, coming soon!

Write Now, Here’s How is a distillation of years of experience as a writer, writing teacher, and writing retreat guide. In 40 chapters, I’ll tell you a great deal about the process of writing.

In Write Now, Here’s How, a dedicated and experienced writer leads you through forty entertaining essays that define six decades of writing challenges. You’ll feel as if you are conversing with author Linda M. Hasselstrom about how her challenging life on a working cattle ranch in the shortgrass prairie of Western South Dakota became material for seventeen books. Reading this book is like joining Hasselstrom in the quiet privacy of the retreat house, where dozens of writers have found their voices.

As I’ve entered my seventh decade, I’ve looked back at journals I kept for decades, at my own writing, and at letters and journals from my relatives and others. Much has changed. But no matter how much my life changed, I was writing.

I’ve worked as a journalist and a college professor. I’ve been divorced and widowed. I’ve settled down in several places for several reasons. As my life changed, however, I was always writing, and I rarely discard a draft. I never know what insight or information an early attempt at a particular piece of writing might contain that will be of value to me in later writing.

What is the most efficient way to monitor your valuable writing time? You’ll find answers here. How can you most efficiently organize your writing space-no matter how small? How can you fit serious writing into a life filled with work, family, and entertainment? Hasselstrom presents a variety of possibilities to help you choose a schedule that best suits you.

The purpose of this book is to pass information from my writing life on to other writers. Rereading what I wrote in past years has been useful for me, not only in matters of insight, but in matters of writing style. I can see things I would write differently today, but I have also discovered writing I consider good that has had few or no other readers.

My primary self-appointed job is writing for the purpose of helping people to appreciate the treasure this nation has in the grasslands of the Great Plains, and the ranchers who have preserved it for us, full of clean air, uncorrupted soil, and pure water.

And Hasselstrom doesn’t just explain; she demonstrates with examples from her own work how writers can begin to see the invisible. She gently leads you into meditations that will help you create a writing retreat in any busy week. With this perceptive woman, you will explore methods of defining the memoir that will become an important part of your writing.

One of my most useful writing tools has been my journal, and I believe strongly in the power of journaling to aid self-discovery. Write fiercely in your journal, I say, write recklessly. Do not let your inner editor slow you down. Do not channel that English teacher in high school who always found an error. Don’t think about spelling or grammar or how this will look in print. Emote. Stomp through the words. Fling handfuls of syllables in the air and let them land on your paper. Often the heat of the anger or the pain of the loss or the joy of the new love will inspire the perfectly correct words that will never emerge if you think “someone is going to read this.” Journals must be private; no one should read your journal any more than a stranger can pry open your brain and look inside. Your journal is your freedom, your inspiration, your guide, and ultimately your resource.

With Hasselstrom’s guidance, your writing will grow like a tulip, and bloom like wild pink roses along a dusty gravel road. Winston Churchill will teach you about persistence. Walking will become a vital part of your writing practice.

As you read her discussion about how much truth belongs in your nonfiction, you’ll feel as though you were sharing coffee at the retreat house table, or strolling a trail filled with opportunity.

Write Now, Here’s How will be published August 1st, but is available to pre-order on Amazon right now.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2020, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Write Now, Here’s How: Insights from Six Decades of Writing
by Linda M. Hasselstrom
Lame Johnny Press, August 1, 2020
Paperback, 312 pages, 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 978-0917624018
$19.95

Book Remarks: Healing the Divide

My comp copy of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection arrived yesterday, and I’ve gotten behind on the news (thank goodness!) because I keep picking it up to read another fine poem.

As Ted Kooser says in his Preface, “Unabashed enthusiasm is the glue that holds good anthologies together,” and this book overflows with enthusiasm, kindness, tenderness and beauty.

Here are the words of well-known poets like W. S. Merwin, William Stafford,  Naomi Shihab Nye and Jane Kenyon, but the book is also well-stocked with words from poets I’ve never heard of, and might never have encountered without this collection.

Ellery Akers in “The Word That is a Prayer,” reminds us of the power of “Please.” Connie Wanek shows us a Grandpa asking the sky “What’s next?” with a laugh. Carrie Shipers shows us a mother talking back to the monster under the bed. Molly Fisk celebrates “Winter Sun.”

But you need to get the book yourself, and find your own treasures within it. The world around us seems to be filled with hatred, greed, and antagonisms, and we must fight this idea in every way at our disposal, for our own health and survival.  One way to do it is to read this book, again and again and again. And please– buy it from your local bookstore, and help them stay in business during these difficult economic times.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2020, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection
Edited by James Crews
Green Writers Press, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-7327434-5-8
$19.95

My poem “Planting Peas” is included in this anthology. You can read more about this poem than you would think possible, on my website.

Roadside Wildflowers at Full Speed

I’ve spent my writing life extolling the virtues of the gorgeous grasslands of the Great Plains, which furnish a considerable amount of the air we breathe. They also furnish grazing for grassfed beef, and thus are important to all of us for a variety of reasons, most of which I’ve explained at length in nonfiction and poetry in 17 published books.

Now there’s a guide to the wildflowers of the region that is organized for the way most visitors to this neighborhood see the grasslands: at 70 miles an hour from a moving car.

A Field Guide to Roadside Wildflowers At Full Speed by Chris Helzer, the Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska, is offered as a free pdf download at his blog — link here.

Written as a parody to point out how silly it is for us to fail to appreciate the treasure we have in the grasslands, the book is proving immensely popular.

On his blog, The Prairie Ecologist, Helzer recently wrote:

I’m hoping maybe all this craziness will at least lead to a few more people thinking about prairies, if just for a moment or two. If I’d known what kind of reaction it was going to get, I might have spent more time trying to make the guide into a better ambassador for grasslands and their beauty. Silly me, I thought I was just going through a lot of work to make myself laugh.

Download the book, learn about wildflowers from your speeding car, and maybe you’ll be inspired to slow down and get to know our unique grassland ecosystem.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2020, Linda M. Hasselstrom

# # #

Book Remarks — Cowboy Life: the Letters of George Philip, by Cathie Draine

Cowboy Life: the Letters of George Philip, edited and with an introduction by Cathie Draine; afterword by Richard W. Slatta; illustrations by Mick B. Harrison. South Dakota State Historical Society Press, (Pierre, S.D.) 2007.

George Philip was a cowhand, and as my uncle Harold might have said, clearly a “helluva hand.” But he was also a lawyer whose writing is strikingly literate and well organized, making this book a rare treasure of Western lore. During the 1930s, Philip wrote to his grandchildren, explaining thoroughly and with sly humor the arduous labor required by a big ranch in western South Dakota as the century turned at the end of the open range era.

He records the facts clearly and with vivid details, and no romanticism at all, destroying fantasies that have shaped many perceptions of cowboys in literature and the movies. No, cowhands did not usually carry six-shooters, and most were lousy shots; and yes, most of them loved gambling, tobacco and alcohol.

Deftly, Philip shoots down every myth about cowboys, insisting on a realistic view of the work done. “Although it now seems to be part of the blood lust of the spectators in their demands on the performers at the rodeos,” he writes on August 16, 1940, “it was no part of a cowhand’s business to ride cattle of any sort.” Cattle are supposed to make money for their owner, and riding them wears off fat and makes them wild. Philip’s point about care for the cattle made, he proceeds to recall an occasion when a collection of wild range steers tossed on their ears cowboys who later became respectable citizens, all of whom he names.

Anyone who wants to write an authentic western novel should include this book as research material. The deceptively simple title really tells the story: you’ll find here everything you might want to know about the real life of a cowboy. Unnerving as it is, I’d be delighted to read a novel that includes Philip’s explanation of how to take care of a saddle sore, or boil.

Clearly, the cowhands he describes respected the dozens of horses that they rode in the course of their work, but “Some one had to be boss and it better not be the horse,” declares Philip. A cowhand’s horse was a tool, part of his working outfit and many of those he rode remained in his memory. Shorty, he says, “like some horses and most humans, had some unreasoning idiosyncrasies and was disposed to indulge them.” He mentions that Cub, “in addition to whirling, sunfishing, and all the other things that a broke horse like him should not do, began turning himself inside out twice each jump. At that my poise left, and so did I.” Of Dave, he says, “He never hurt me, and no other L-7 man ever rode him. It was small loss when he left.” And then there was Mouse, the horse that “threw me splashing into the edge of the stream.” You’ll especially appreciate the chapters on horses if you, like Cathie Draine and I, know the pleasure of a good horse’s nicker of greeting and the way they rub their velvet noses against you.

What he said to horses that were being uncooperative, Philip explains, “must be considered in the nature of a privileged communication, although it could hardly be said to be confidential, for anyone within four miles could have heard it if sulphur and brimstone did not affect his hearing.” Laughing, I remembered the first time I swore at a bunch of cattle that were giving me trouble on a winter’s day. When I caught up with my father, he mentioned quietly how well sound carried on the prairie.

Though a modest man, Philip was clearly proud of his prowess as a cowhand as he outlines the distinction between a cowhand and a ranch hand, making clear what cowhands did, and did not, do:

The cowhand was one hired to work on the roundups. . . and to do any work that related to the handling of cattle and horses. A ranch hand was one hired to work around the ranch. He would put up some hay, feed any poor cattle taken into the ranch, do whatever riding was needed. . . build and maintain a fence. . . and do any of the thousand and one things that might show up to be done around the ranch.

Again and again, Philip tells how cowhands were sent on horseback, perhaps with only a bedroll, maybe a slicker, and little or no food, into the rolling prairie to find a particular ranch or roundup. Without hesitation, these men found work on isolated ranches in mile after mile of grassland between the Cheyenne and White rivers, a landscape that is now Stanley and Lyman counties. He and men like him regularly rode from eastern Pennington County to the Missouri River, a distance of more than a hundred fifty miles.

Cathie Draine, who edited this book so brilliantly, is the granddaughter of the letters’ author, George Philip; her astonishing grandfather would be proud of her. A retired teacher and freelance writer, she often writes for the Rapid City Journal. She provided the staff of the South Dakota Historical Society Press with notes from her voluminous research that helped them create almost fifty pages of chapter notes that are among the most useful I’ve ever seen, defining terms, providing further resources, and furnishing explanations.

Here’s an example: Concluding her introduction, she notes that the Rapid City Daily Journal eulogized George Philip as “Scottish immigrant, western cowboy, forthright citizen, an eminent lawyer [and] a friend of man. . . . Whether on the range or in the court room or by the fireside, here was a man to tie to.” The phrase “a man to tie to,” explains the chapter note, was first uttered during World War I by Captain Charles E. Stanton at Lafayette’s gravesite in the cemetery at Picpus in Paris, France, on 4 July 1917.

An Appendix includes the plan for the 1901 spring roundup, including instructions for two months of gathering livestock for West River cowhands. No. 16, for example, reads “Box Elder Roundup. Will commence May 15th, at head of Box Elder, working down the creek to the mouth; thence up the Little Missouri to the Holben ranch, including Willow and Thompson creeks. Al. Taddiken, Foreman.”

One sure measure of a book’s usefulness as research material is always the index; many a fine book has been dishonored with a skimpy, inexact index. The 15-page index of Cowboy Life is detailed, and includes chapter and note information as well.

Richard W. Slatta, professor of history at North Carolina State University, provides a useful Afterword to the book. He is author of numerous books and articles on cowboys and the American West, including Cowboy: The Illustrated History, and Cowboys of America. He puts in perspective George Philip’s experience as a young cowhand during the nation’s last open-range cattle boom in the West River country of South Dakota by reviewing the history of ranching in Dakota Territory, with particular attention to the opening of Indian lands.

Mick B. Harrison, professional artist and painter, was raised on the South Dakota prairie and often illustrates western and prairie subjects using his own experiences as background. His lively pen and ink drawings add vividly to the experience of this book. The cowboys he portrays don’t look like movie stars, with nicely-shaped hats and leather vests, but like real cowhands, with shapeless chapeaus and rolled-up pants as they struggle to brand a bawling calf. He is a member of the Artists of the Black Hills and paints from his studio in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. MickHarrison.com

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2019, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

 

Book Remarks: Prairie Fires

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser. (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Co., 2017).

From the ironic epigraph to the 626^th page, this monumental work held my attention. I’d hoped to skim a few pages, since I’ve read all of Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” books and know a great deal about her. Caroline Fraser’s work provides not only a deep study of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but a fuller understanding of the entire prairie pioneer experience in details supported by 2,074 footnotes.

The ironic epigraph?

“The prairie burning form some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country,” said George Catlin.

Just as the destruction of a prairie is a beautiful sight to some, the book sweeps back and forth between the splendor of the prairie and its harshness, between Laura’s writing and the realities of the life she disguised.

Because Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books were so widely read, as well as the subject of a TV series, we may think we know her. But as Fraser says, “Her story, spanning ninety years, is broader, stranger, and darker than her books, containing whole chapters she could scarcely bear to examine.” Fraser shows us the pioneer woman and writer as part of a deeper history which includes the Homestead Act, the spread of railroads and the closing of the frontier.

Fraser notes that, “Across every inhabited continent, just as on the Great Plains, mass land clearing and wheat farming has led to significant drying, exhausting the soils and throwing fragile ecosystems out of whack. Combined with the market forces controlling distribution, human-caused climate change joined with natural weather patterns to wreak absolute havoc.”

During the 1930’s, the Great Plains were known as the Dust Bowl because of severe dust storms as a result of the foolish plowing of two and a half million acres of native grassland, destroying an ecosystem that had flourished for millennia. This horrendous phenomenon was no act of a god or freak natural accident. “It was one of the worst man-made ecological disasters of all time,” Fraser says. “Farmers had done this, and they had done it to themselves.” We’ve known for centuries that plowing native grassland is destructive, but then and now, plowing is misguidedly encouraged by the government.

 

Oddly, while discussing grassland destruction by farming in depth, Fraser never distinguishes between the tallgrass prairie where Laura’s families lived, and the shortgrass prairie farther west.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s farming families, memorialized in the Little House books, were part of what Fraser terms a “game of chance,” with the prairie as the casino. While the published version of Laura’s story has been popular in many cultures, Fraser tells us how she really lived. Laura wrote that “The commonplace, home work of women is the very foundation upon which every rests,” and her own writings reflected that view. Though she often acted courageously, and supported the education and independence of women, she was discouraging on the subject of woman suffrage.

I was surprised to learn in this book how thoroughly Laura’s daughter Rose dominated the creation of the Little House books. Rose’s dishonesty and distortion of the writer’s life were aided by a profit-seeking shyster. History conspired in helping make the books popular: the tales of rural steadfastness were a heart-warming antidote to the Vietnam era. The TV show inspired by the books was even more misleading and simplistic, but audiences loved them. Teachers in South Dakota even read the books in classrooms, ironically at the same time as we began to come to terms with our treatment of our Lakota population.

In spite of all that is wrong about the books, and in spite of the profiteering that warped the way they were published, they endure because they show us over and over Laura Ingalls Wilder’s belief in the value of honesty, endurance, and of making the best of what we have.

If I decide to keep one of the hundreds of books I buy a year, I write in the back the page on which I made that decision. I chose this book because Fraser quotes Wilder in a speech as saying, “All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth.” She acknowledged what every writer knows, and every reader should realize: that no matter how hard we may try, and how strenuously we may declare we have succeeded, we can never tell the whole truth.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2019, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

This book review was first published by Story Circle Network book reviews in September, 2018. See: http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/

Caroline Fraser’s website may be found here
https://prairiefiresbook.com/

The photo of her book with flowers was borrowed from her website.

Learn about American artist and author George Catlin (1796-1872)
https://www.georgecatlin.org/

Catlin’s painting, “Prairie Meadows Burning” (1832, Smithsonian American Art Museum), is used at the top of this blog.

Book Remarks: How to Cuss in Western

How to Cuss in Western (and other missives from the high desert).
Michael P. Branch. (Boulder: Roost Books, 2018)

Because I have always—well, since I was four years old—loved and respected my local library, I do not write in books unless I own them, and intend to keep them.

Therefore, when I own a book, the page on which I begin to underline or scribble comments becomes a gauge to my evaluation and respect.

I started underlining in How to Cuss in Western on page 2, where Michael P. Branch explained the system of “restrained communication” embodied by the way Westerners wave.

“You lift only your pointer finger off the wheel for a routine ‘howdy’ to a neighbor,” he notes. “. . . Under no circumstances do you ever allow your palm to leave the wheel, which would be a greeting so effusive and emotional—so perfectly hysterical—that anyone foolish enough to display such loss of self-control would never regain the respect of their neighbors.”

Laughing, I recalled that today I received a full-hand wave from a female resident of the neighborhood who is practically giddy with her desire to be my buddy. Yet in several years of residence here she has not grasped this simple rule, one of the most basic principles of country acceptance. By the time children learn to drive here—at age ten or so—they all know enough to keep their hands on the wheel while greeting friends. If one is truly enthusiastic about the friendship, one might nod an inch or two while raising the trigger finger, but that’s all that’s acceptable.

“Oh, you’re so lucky to live in the country,” coo some of the folks who read my books or know I’m a rancher.

And some of these folks buy little plots of land from my ranch neighbors whose kids have gone off to college and now live somewhere else, so the rancher is retiring and moving to town.

Some of these folks who move to the country build a monster mansion on top of a hill where they can see from the Black Hills to the Badlands. They may not realize how well the rest of us can see them. They get a couple of SUVs, and erect a shed to shelter the horse, or the goats, or a cow or two. Their dogs come to visit me and to chase the calves in my corral until I can draw a bead on them. Rather than ranting, I’d like to mention these things politely in the local store or church or Bingo parlor but that doesn’t work because they shop and worship in the larger town to the north.

So instead of ranting, maybe I’ll hand out copies of this book with a bookmark at “Shit Happens,” one of my favorite essays. Folks used to living in town are also used to systems that whisk their personal wastes away without much fuss. If you live in the country, you soon learn there is no away for any of your discarded trash.  Living in the country means someone in the family must be the Fecal Sludge Manager, and study Septic Tank 101, a lesson in rural living rarely mentioned in real estate brochures or ballads.

Profanity? Here are Branch’s comments on the dwindling ability of Americans to cuss effectively and colorfully: “If we cannot communicate through the use of profanity, I wondered, what the hell is left? Have we been reduced to sonnets and tweets?”

One essay, “Such Sweet Sorrow,” centers on a topic tackled by such writers as Aristophanes, Dante, Shakespeare, Twain, Joyce and Edward Abbey, a topic Branch suggests was first written about in 1900 B.C., and which still challenges writers. Branch’s approach is a writer’s challenge; The Urban Dictionary lists 261 synonyms for this topic, and Branch attempts to use all of them, from “breeches burners” to “wee fluffy.”

These aren’t perfect essays, in part because Mr. Branch is a real working writer; he writes to deadlines, so he doesn’t have the luxury enjoyed by some writers of tinkering with a piece until it satisfies every editorial quibble. He meets a deadline, and then goes back to cutting cords of wood to keep his family warm, teaching, helping raise his children, and walking a thousand miles a year; clearly he uses some of that time to think.

Besides humor, Branch provides information about a wide array of fascinating country topics, from the extinct American cheetah, to the reason ranchers’ fences are hazardous not only to pronghorn but to hawks and owls—a fact that was new to me. In one quick sentence, for example, he sums up the Bureau of Land Management’s horse problem in Nevada: “We do not have too many horses; we have too few lions.” He understands that the prairie as it should be is a wild place, despite the domestic animals and people who dwell here, and to be healthy, it must remain so.

As a graduate of the College of Fecal Sludge Management, I highly recommend that anyone contemplating a move to the country read this book.

Now excuse me; I have to go find another one of his books.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2019, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

At the website http://michaelbranchwriter.com/ you will find information about the author and his books, his upcoming public appearances, links to essays (some of which are chapters in his books), and a note about how to get podcasts of his essays which appeared in High Country News.

100 Great Books?

“100 Great Books” reads the headline, this time from PBS, one of my favorite institutions.

Of course I’m in favor of reading. Everyone should do it, constantly.

However, I generally try to avoid either reading or creating lists of “great books” or “best books” or whatever the latest terminology is.

My American Heritage Dictionary defines “great” this way:

adj. great·er, great·est

1.
a. Very large in size, extent, or intensity: a great pile of rubble; a great storm.
b. Of a larger size than other, similar forms: the great anteater.
c. Large in quantity or number: a great throng awaited us.
d. Extensive in time or distance: a great delay; a great way off.

2.
a. Remarkable or outstanding in magnitude, degree, or extent: a great crisis; great anticipation.
b. Of outstanding significance or importance: a great work of art.
c. Chief or principal: the great house on the estate.
d. Superior in quality or character; noble: a great man who dedicated himself to helping others.
e. Powerful; influential: one of the great nations of the West.
f. Eminent; distinguished: a great leader.

That’s enough of that, even though the dictionary goes on defining for several more lines. What a vague description– a pile of rubble! Are these the books that will live longest in the memory of readers? The most remarkable– for what reason? Are they superior in quality, and if so, how? Plot? Characterization? Truth?

Not only is “greatness” pretty difficult to describe, I distrust the lists for another reason. Might a lot of people be tempted to cheat?

What books, we might ask ourselves, will indicate what a brilliant person I am? What books will indicate my innate goodness? My love of nature? What books will convince (fill in the blank) [my pastor, my lover, my teacher, my book group] that I am worthy of their respect? That I am an intelligent and thoughtful person, worthy of great honor?

Besides the possibility that we think too highly of ourselves, consider how memory works. I recall lists containing the same titles of Great Books circulating when I was in high school, when I took them more seriously.

Did I read Crime and Punishment then? I’m not sure. Did I see the movie of The Da Vinci Code? Possibly; I know the story, but how do I know it? I suspect I read some books on the list and blotted out the memory because I disliked them and didn’t think they were among the 100 best. (Little Women?)

Perhaps a friend read it and told me about it so I think I read it. (The Color Purple?) Or someone I loathe read it and pronounced it the best book EVER, so I vowed never to read it. (Fifty Shades of Grey, The Clan of the Cave Bear, Siddhartha)

So: with all that preliminary, here are the ones I’m sure I read.

1984

a lot of Alex Cross mysteries

And Then There Were None

Another Country

Atlas Shrugged (in my Ayn Rand phase)

The Call of the Wild

Catch-22

Gone With the Wind (when my mother insisted, swooning over both book and movie)

The Grapes of Wrath (for a class)

Great Expectations (for a class)

The Great Gatsby (I have an MA in American Literature, and took a lot of English literature classes during my phase of thinking I might get a Ph.D., so I suspect I read more of the old classics than I am recalling)

Gulliver’s Travels

Invisible Man

Jane Eyre

The Little Prince (as a child)

Lonesome Dove (and Leaving Cheyenne, and that was the end of my McMurtry phase)

Moby-Dick

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Sun Also Rises (and everything else Hemingway wrote, during my Hemingway phase)

Pride and Prejudice (and several others before my Jane Austen phase ended)

To Kill a Mockingbird

Wuthering Heights

In 2011, I started writing down the titles of the books I read. Between January 1 and December 31 that year, I read 367 books. In 2012, I read only 345. Certainly they were not all great; but if I begin a book that doesn’t hold my interest, I stop reading and it doesn’t make the list. I don’t record those, and there are a fair number. I generally read mysteries for relaxation, so many of these books won’t make anyone’s list of “great books,” because those lists tend to be more general. Notice, though, that Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is on the list. Her books would be numerous on any Great Mysteries list. In 2013, I read 344 books, but only 261 in 2014, and 252 in 2015. I put a black spot on the page beside those books I don’t care for, and as I review the pages I see that several authors gained black spots. In 2016 and 2017 I was working hard on my own writing, so my totals were 118 books and 153, respectively, some of them repeats of particularly enthralling mysteries.

I do re-read books, particularly as I find it harder and harder to discover new writers whose work speaks to me. Some authors whose books I have read more than once include: Ngaio Marsh, Susan Witting Albert, Michael Innes, William Kent Krueger, Georgette Heyer, Louise Penny, Arthur Upfield, Jill Churchill, Ann B. Ross, Mollie Hardwick, Jacqueline Winspear, Aaron Elkins, Deborah Crombie, and Sue Grafton. Among the mystery writers those books I keep to re-read during long blizzards are Gwendoline Butler, Jo Bannister, John Creasey, P.D. James, Jane Langton, Lee Martin, Charlaine Harris, Sharyn McCrumb, Elizabeth Peters, Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes, Margery Allingham, Amanda Cross, and Elizabeth George.

A new discovery is Susan Elia MacNeal, who writes the Maggie Hope mysteries about World War II; in fact, I’ve been reading a lot about both world wars lately, both in mysteries and in nonfiction. And I’ve just found Sara Henry, whose work appeals to me because her main character is, as I was, a newspaper reporter.

 

But I digress, therefore I am a writer.

100 best books? My list would be entirely different and I’m not going to spend my good writing time creating it.  None of the books on the PBS list would appear, unless I was overcome by a desire to please the professors from whom I took English classes. Since they’re all likely dead, I can’t succumb.

Similarly, I would find it difficult to choose a “favorite” book from this list without some definition of terms–

Best plot? (almost any Alex Cross mystery)

Most elegant writing? (Probably Gone with the Wind)

Leanest, most succinct writing? (The Sun Also Rises)

Most educational? (Another Country, since I am not black)

Most enjoyable? (I don’t think I enjoyed any of the books on that list but the mysteries; the rest were read because someone expected me to, or was going to test me on them)

Now ask me what books I have always kept a copy of beside my desk since I discovered them.

Excluding essential writing reference books like The Chicago Manual of Style; The Elements of Style by Strunk and White; Roget’s Thesaurus; The Writer’s Legal Companion; How Does a Poem Mean by John Ciardi, and a good dictionary, they are as follows:

Silences, Tillie Olsen

The Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois League of Six Nations

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss

The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work”, Kathleen Norris

Beyond Engineering, Henry Petroski

To Engineer is Human, Henry Petroski

The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski

Writing to Learn, William Zinsser

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, Judith Barrington

Candy is Dandy: The Best of Ogden Nash

The Holy Bible

If you don’t have a good book to read, and no one with whom to have an intelligent conversation, and it’s snowing and you don’t want to go outside, you might want to make your own list.

 

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2018, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Click here to see the Great American Read list of 100 Great Books.

 

If I Were Going to the Festival of Books

The 2018 South Dakota Festival of Books will be held September 20 in Sioux Falls, and September 21-23 in Brookings.

I’m not able to go this year, but if I were going, I’d look for these presenters first.

I’d hope to speak to Lee Ann Roripaugh as she ends her four-year term as our poet laureate. A new laureate will be inaugurated at the 2019 Festival of Books in Deadwood. The SD Poetry Society invites anyone who would like to be considered for the position to submit a letter of application and resume between Nov. and Dec. 1, 2018. For complete details, visit the SDSPS website at www.sdstatepoetrysociety.com.

Learn about Lee Ann Roripaugh

 

Maybe I’d get a chance to listen to Thomas Patterson, whose Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism was the 2018 One Book South Dakota. The book is on my “to buy” list, because I agree with him that we need to return to a solid base of information in journalism, rather than following the despicable trend to “infotainment” that is warping citizens’ judgments. Newsrooms are shrinking at newspapers and broadcast station alike, which means fewer journalists are out digging for the truth. The speed at which information is conveyed has also increased; speed is the enemy of accurate news from varied objective sources.

Thomas E. Patterson’s website

 

I thought I would only skim Caroline Fraser’s monumental Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but instead I ended up reading carefully, and my admiration for the writer is immense. Rarely have I read a book with more footnotes, which means that when Fraser makes a statement, it’s likely not just her opinion but the result of careful research and deep digging into the life of this famous writer. Like many South Dakotans, I grew up with Laura’s stories, and while I’m somewhat surprised to know that she wasn’t being entirely truthful, I’m delighted to learn the truth behind her tales now.

Caroline Fraser’s “Prairie Fires” website

 

I’d definitely make it a point to exchange a few words with Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, one of South Dakota’s most astute thinkers and a dynamic voice for the citizens with whom she most identifies: the Lakota. Though English is not Elizabeth’s first language, she is more articulate in it than most of us. And I’m behind on reading her work; I haven’t yet gotten In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World. I will hope to remedy that lack soon, and I know I’ll learn something.

Read about Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

 

Because I won’t make it to Brookings for the Festival of Books, rather than speak with these writers, I will join them on the printed page.

 

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2018, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

You will find the schedule of events, a list of presenters, a map of Brookings with the venues marked, and more on the South Dakota Humanities website.

http://sdhumanities.org/festival-of-books/

If I were going to the Festival of Books I would have a hard time deciding which books to buy, what other events I would attend, and which presenters I would try to talk with– in addition to the four listed above.