Minnesota Reads

There is something so delicious about scandalous lit from 1911. To wit: The beginning of Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dresier had me cackling like a fourteen-year-old boy. The Gerhardt’s are in the muck. Pa Gerhardt has been sick and unable to work. There are a handful of kids that need shoes and bacon. Mrs. Gerhardt [...]

On its surface, The Sweet Hereafter is a story about a disastrous bus crash and a town’s struggle as it tries to find a place for its own grief over the children who were killed. But it’s really more about the loss in a wider sense. Three of the four characters who narrate portions of [...]

What if God were a horny teenage boy whose libido causes natural disasters? That’s the premise behind Meg Rosoff’s There is No Dog. God, or Bob, falls in love with a beautiful human, and the more he tries to have sex with her the more his emotions mess with our weather. One day it’s torrential [...]

Janie takes her role as eldest daughter seriously in Forgotten Country, Catherine Chung’s debut novel about a family that comes to the United States out-running potential political persecution in their home country, Korea. Hannah, her younger sister, has a bit more moxie. When the family’s traditions start to weigh her down, she runs away to [...]

It’s the summer of 1983 and Carmen is a red-dressed bride, a little pregnant and reluctant to join her new husband Matt on the dance floor, where he is awkwardly performing a hat dance. Her brother Nick is in a loft at the hippie farm commune. He’s wearing a white wedding dress, his date Olivia [...]

Dwarves are the perpetual angry side-kick of the science fiction world that act as the muscle of the group or the keepers of the forge and are never really cast in anything more than supporting role. Markus Heitz changes all that with his book Dwarves which makes the main story about this group and takes [...]

The book Smut is my first taste of English author, Mr. Alan Bennett. Bennett’s short little two-story novella was absolutely delightful and delicious. Although the title implies a scandalous read, it was in fact, pretty tame for what I was expecting. Bennett addresses straight sex, gay sex, voyeurism, and extramartial sex along with a smidge [...]

It’s 1622. It’s 1902. It’s 2000 in Danielle Sosin’s debut novel The Long-Shining Waters the story of three women living on Lake Superior. Grey Rabbit lives with her two sons, husband, and mother-in-law in the winter of 1622 on the shore of Lake Superior and it’s been rough hunting and everyone is starving. Meanwhile, she’s [...]

If you want to see a Hunger Games-head combust, tell the fan that you read book one, dug it enough, but haven’t read any others in the series. Then back away slowly. There are going to be octaves involved. According to Emily Post, one is supposed to read the first book and then light the [...]

Democracy, spiral staircases, roasted-meat-filled pita bread with tzatziki sauce, and Homer. The Greeks are certainly not short on gifts provided to the world at large. But let’s focus our attention on last of the list, the “Blind Bard,” or “Father of Western Literature,” Homer. Bro wrote two books (The Iliad and The Odyssey) and is [...]

I was robbed by a British author. Not cool, Ali Smith. The masses were bleating favorably about the novel There But For The and frankly the premise seemed so intriguing: A man at a dinner party with a collection of strangers gets up, goes upstairs, and locks himself in a spare room — luckily one [...]

There were times in the midst of reading Arcadia by Lauren Groff where I thought to myself, “I would totally love to live in a commune.” But then I would close the cover of the book and remember that I’m an angry hermit. It’s not that Groff paints the commune as a halcyon of hippiedom, [...]

Joe R. Lansdale wrote my favorite short story in the Stories: All-New Tales collection, so when I saw a library display featuring a young adult novel by him, I didn’t even read the book jacket before I checked it out. When I was only ten pages into All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, I [...]

Eric Packer has a 48-room spread complete with a lap pool, shark tank, and screening room. His is one in the line of nondescript white limousines parked out in front of the building. The floor of his ride is made of imported marble. It has a bathroom and enough space for his daily rectal exam. [...]

Brian Selznick is so talented, it’s sickening. Seriously, could he make the rest of us feel even more inadequate? He can weave a great tale, but he can also draw beautifully. Thanks, Selznick, for making me feel like crap. But, yes, thank you for also making me love the stories you tell. I only read [...]