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STAFF BLOG AREA VOICES BLOG Areavoices Digest #81 - Tatted Lace and more
Happy soon-to-be 4th of July everyone! When you're not out barbecuing or watching fireworks, be sure to check out some of our newest and hottest blogs on Areavoices, including a brand-new-to-our-plat...
Posted on 7/3/12 at 9:58 AM
Book Report: The choice is yours: Lovely poems, exploding tourism
University of Iowa Press has just re-issued a book of poetry by Philip Levine, winner both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, and who served for a year as United States Poet Laureate.
By Dave Wood, columnist , May 16, 2013
Book Report: Finding the funny in very grave matters
Humorists can make hay of the least likely subjects.
Like death.
Remember W. C. Fields?
By Dave Wood, columnist , April 26, 2013
Book Report: Stolen library book opened his eyes
“Who’s Yer Daddy?” edited by Jim Elledge and David Groff (University of Wisconsin Press, $26.95) is a fascinating look at writers and artists who inspired the work of gay writers and artists by the gay writers and artists themselves.
By Dave Wood, columnist , April 20, 2013
Book Report: Another word on former presidents; waxing poetic on the death of a fly
Three American presidents lead off this week’s roster of books: Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. You could fill libraries with what has already been written by these guys, but leave it to the scholars — they can always find a niche that’s unfilled.
By Dave Wood, columnist , April 11, 2013
Book Report: A new Scandinavian thriller takes the stage
I’m way behind in my coverage of the Scandinavian thriller surge in world publishing, not having even read a Stieg Larsson thriller, so I’ll try to make it up by reviewing a finely wrought thriller by first-time Swedish author Alexander Soderberg. It’s “The Andalucian Friend,” (Crown, $26), translated by Neil Smith.
By Dave Wood, columnist , April 04, 2013
Book Report: This, not your PBS version of London
“I wander thro’ each charter’d street
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
By Dave Wood, columnist , March 29, 2013
Book Report: Indiana, no, make that Wisconsin Jones
When I was a kid in a small Wisconsin grade school, one of my favorite subjects was Wisconsin history, taught to me by my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Lily Reich.
By Dave Wood, columnist , March 22, 2013
Book Report: Glowing endorsements for new poet
River Falls poet Thomas R. Smith writes that Kristin Laurel’s new book of poetry will “burn itself on your memory.”
By Dave Wood, columnist , March 14, 2013
Book Report: Area author’s round two a success
Not long ago I raved about a first novel written by a neighbor down the road in Lake Elmo, Minn. His name: Jim Trevis.
By Dave Wood, columnist , March 08, 2013
Book Report: Son carries on, expands war narrative
As the River Falls Reads program winds down and folks who have read and enjoyed Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, “The Killer Angels,” are looking for new reading material, I’m happy to report that although Shaara died in 1988, his family lives on in the person of his son, Jeff Shaara, who also writes about the Civil War and has completed his father’s trilogy with “Gods and Generals” and “The Last Full Measure.”
By Dave Wood, columnist , February 28, 2013
Book Report: The dirt: Even Puritans didn’t always come clean
I have ancestors who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century, so I’m always on the lookout for books, movies or plays about that fabled place.
By Dave Wood, columnist , February 25, 2013
Book Review: Diary entries sum up tales of rich and famous
“October 27, 1940, Sunday — Went to chapel all day as usual. Our big meeting next Sunday. Gwilym Rees will be preaching.
By Dave Wood, columnist , February 14, 2013
Book Reviews: Rehashing the infamous rabble-rousers
“Now that science has attained its youth and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: ‘Let us be friends.’ It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: ‘Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.’”
—Robert Ingersoll, 1885
By Dave Wood, columnist , February 07, 2013
Book Report: Going back keeps stories going
Sometimes an author doesn’t realize he’s got a good thing going and plunges on ahead when he might well have done better had he looked back.
By Dave Wood, columnist , February 01, 2013
Book Report: The rise and fall of empires
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The long and level sands stretch far away.
—Ozymandias by Percy Shelley
By Dave Wood, columnist , January 23, 2013
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