Minnesota Reads

In the year 2006, I road tripped to Boise, Idaho, to aid in relocating my sister-in-law. To aid me in making this journey, I borrowed two books on compact disc: Nicholas Sparks’ The Wedding and Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. I practically cut off my ears during The Wedding (it was one of several book club [...]

Before I get started, I just wanted to remind you all that Amy Bloom’s gonna be reading from her latest novel Away at Magers & Quinn on Tuesday, November 11th. You should check it out of if you can. In other local readings, The Loft’s got a full slate on Saturday, November 8th (that’d be [...]

Only that shit was bananas. Seriously, she’s too a big a name to try and shove her reading between the art books and the escalators at the Barnes & Noble in Edina. I’m trying not to be too pouty, because Amy Bloom is coming to Magers & Quinn in November and I’m pretty sure her [...]

I often like to call Sarah Vowell the Gen X Doris Kearns Goodwin or Stephen Ambrose. She’s a historian for our time, and unlike the Goodwin and Ambrose books I had to study in college, Vowell generally writes really witty and engaging books about our country. Vowell is insightful and skeptical and above all else, [...]

Yowza! Largehearted Boy found a site that’s made a Flannery O’Connor lecture and reading available. Now, you can listen to O’Connor read A Good Man is Hard to Find. I am downloading it now, and my heart is going pitter pat with anticipation of listening to her reading. Sweet! Rolling Stone has posted an excerpt [...]

A few weeks ago over at How Was The Show, the musicgeeks were getting all hopped up about all the great music coming to Minnesota in October, I mean Rocktober. I was just updating the Minnesota Reads calendar and noticed that booknerds can have just as much fun in Rocktober as their musicgeek brethren. Here [...]

The Strib’s new Book Editor Laurie Hertzel introduces herself to readers. The Internet Writing Journal complies a list of the the best author blogs. {via} This week’s New Yorker features “Awake” a story by Tobias Wolff that I haven’t read yet, however I did make the mistake of reading the Joshua Ferris one from last [...]