Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives Series)

Rating:
Summary: Memory lane
Review: As a native of Seward County (Seward High School, 1984) Mr. Kooser has provided me with a wonderful trip down memory lane. But even if I was not, I would still have enjoyed the book immensely. Mr. Kooser weaves together some of the everyday tasks of living in rural Nebraska into a basket full of life. The book is a wonderful escape from the life I now live (city life, frustrating job), back to the life I remember and plan to return to. It is very easy to read, with the individual stories flying past as I turned the pages. I must admit I was disappointed when I finished it - only because I didn't want to leave the place where Mr. Kooser had invited me. I wish it had been 10 times as long. A wonderful book !

Rating:
Summary: Memory lane
Review: As a native of Seward County (Seward High School, 1984) Mr. Kooser has provided me with a wonderful trip down memory lane. But even if I was not, I would still have enjoyed the book immensely. Mr. Kooser weaves together some of the everyday tasks of living in rural Nebraska into a basket full of life. The book is a wonderful escape from the life I now live (city life, frustrating job), back to the life I remember and plan to return to. It is very easy to read, with the individual stories flying past as I turned the pages. I must admit I was disappointed when I finished it - only because I didn't want to leave the place where Mr. Kooser had invited me. I wish it had been 10 times as long. A wonderful book !

Rating:
Summary: "Over and over again."
Review: I am not the sort of person who revisits books. I tend to move on to things that are new since there is so much out there calling to be read. But with Koozer's "Local Wonders" I have had to make an exception. I have read certain sections of it 3 times already and find them as compelling each time. This collection of four seasonal essays contains so many examples of wonderful writing that I am amazed that this book has not received more attention than it has. I was raised in New England, but I " know" many of the people and situations that Koozer is so eloquently writing about. This is a book to be read and your leisure because it is very much like spending time with an old and wise friend. I cannot recommend it enough.

Rating:
Summary: A Book to Live With
Review: Ted Kooser, our new Poet Laureate (Weather Central, Delights & Shadows) has given us a quietly beautiful book of ordinary life in the Midwest. Local Wonders us set in Seward, Nebraska amidst the Bohemian alps with flashbacks to his youth in Ames, Iowa. Kooser's rich images and colloquial metaphors, place it for us: "Nebraska isn't flat but slightly tilted, like a long church-basement table with the legs on one end not perfectly snapped in place, not quite enough of a slant for the tuna-and-potato-chip casserole to slide off into the Missouri River."
It is a book that helps you see, hear, and appreciate the life that surrounds you. And it does so with a light humor that borders on a caress. Not the irony of Mark Twain or the self-mockery of Garrison Keillor, but more of the smile of a family story teller. It all comes in an easy prose that reaches into poetry yet is full of the local and colloquial.
"The Bohemians say, `The cat makes sure whose chin it may lick,' . . . As my neighbors would say, `Sheltered by a wall, even an old man becomes courageous.'"


Rating:
Summary: nonfiction at its best
Review: When so much of best-selling nonfiction today is so sensationalistic, Ted Kooser's memoir is refreshingly down-to-earth. It is moving, nostalgic, and as beautifully written as his poetry. Although it is entirely set in Nebraska and Iowa, it is a book I would recommend for readers from anywhere in the country.

Rating:
Summary: So This is Nebraska
Review: You feel like that. Like a Nebraskan. Ted Kooser puts you there. Like stepping out of the stark house in Edward Hopper's, "High Noon" with great acres waiting outside and wind whistling. Or eyeing a line of thunderstorms sweeping across fields of wheat like in John Rogers Cox's "Grey and Gold". His apt metaphors and great imagery paint clear pictures. He chooses words for his prose with poetic care. He frames these anecdotes like an artist, easily shifting from the simple to the sublime, from way back when to this morning on a walk. He focuses on the importance of small things. His stories exude a great warmth of spirit and bear repeated reading. I wish he was an uncle of mine. I'd follow his directions and visit, like a neighbor.

Rating:
Summary: So This is Nebraska
Review: You feel like that. Like a Nebraskan. Ted Kooser puts you there. Like stepping out of the stark house in Edward Hopper's, "High Noon" with great acres waiting outside and wind whistling. Or eyeing a line of thunderstorms sweeping across fields of wheat like in John Rogers Cox's "Grey and Gold". His apt metaphors and great imagery paint clear pictures. He chooses words for his prose with poetic care. He frames these anecdotes like an artist, easily shifting from the simple to the sublime, from way back when to this morning on a walk. He focuses on the importance of small things. His stories exude a great warmth of spirit and bear repeated reading. I wish he was an uncle of mine. I'd follow his directions and visit, like a neighbor.

Rating:
Summary: So This is Nebraska
Review: You feel like that. Like a Nebraskan. Ted Kooser puts you there. Like stepping out of the stark house in Edward Hopper's, "High Noon" with great acres waiting outside and wind whistling. Or eyeing a line of thunderstorms sweeping across fields of wheat like in John Rogers Cox's "Grey and Gold". His apt metaphors and great imagery paint clear pictures. He chooses words for his prose with poetic care. He frames these anecdotes like an artist, easily shifting from the simple to the sublime, from way back when to this morning on a walk. He focuses on the importance of small things. His stories exude a great warmth of spirit and bear repeated reading. I wish he was an uncle of mine. I'd follow his directions and visit, like a neighbor.