Customer Reviews

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

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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.

Poet (and now Poet Laureate) Ted Kooser wrote this collection of prose pieces while in his early sixties, all of them appreciations of his daily life and memories of family going back to his boyhood in Ames, Iowa. Living today in a farmhouse near little Gardner, Nebraska, not far from Lincoln, he first describes the rolling terrain of the land and its Czech and Bohemian settlers, whose descendants continue to provide a cultural identity to the region. The essays are sprinkled with Czech and Bohemian proverbs, reflecting the wry common-sense wisdom of the Old World that informs his point of view.

Not all of them essays, some are short prose poems, spun out usually in one or two long sentences that reach a breathless climax that is, well, breathtaking. Reading his work, you are struck by his sincerity and the intensity of his awareness. While a man of strong opinions, they are rarely expressed directly and only seldom ironically, as when he describes the willful spraying of herbicides in road ditches by two county workers who have no sense of the risks to their health and the environment.

Identified on the book jacket as a retired insurance executive, Kooser embodies a kind of risk aversion that celebrates what is steady, dependable, and unthreatening in his world. There are rarely shadows, and when they do appear it is with a surprise that is shocking, as when a woman tells of an elderly aunt whose family was murdered by a farm hand when she was a teenager. Even his bout with cancer is told with a kind of emotional reserve and matter-of-factness that belies the anxiety he experienced over a six-month period of recovery.

Kooser is clearly abreast of the modern world, but everywhere in his writing, there's a lightness of touch - a gentleness - that harks back to a quieter time in our social history. His touching memories of his father are a tender evocation of post-war America that would easily stand beside illustrations by Normal Rockwell. E. B. White's wonderful essays on rural living in "One Man's Meat" also come to mind. Like White's, his vision is informed by humor, but rarely at the expense of other people (unless you take exception to his characterization of Republicans as "smug"). Even pheasant and coyote hunters with their arsenals and SUVs are seen as earnest and only incidentally comical.

Thanks to the University of Nebraska Press for bringing this fine book to print. Each page is a pleasure.

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.

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 !

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.

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.'"

A wonderful book of concise snapshots of rural living. I loved to read each sentence slowly and get the gems packed into each lovingly crafted sentence. So many books these days are too repetitive and include superfulous information that doesn't add to the scene. Every word and sentence is worth reading here though! To me a mix of "The old man and the sea" combined with Willa Cather. Read it like you are eating a rich dessert; you don't need to eat it all in one setting or in large gulping bites. Treasure the book in comfortable places.

This book is easily the best I have read in years, in terms of the sheer ability to write and pass along interesting and intelligent thoughts. Admittedly, I identify with Mr. Kooser's purchase of a place in the country, and his clear enjoyment of the quiet, contemplative life, but the writing alone is worth the purchase for anyone. I actually thought it was a book of poems when I bought it but, no, it is even better. It is a poet writing a series of brief observations clearly, interestingly, and with great care. Thank you, Ted.

Order for the book was fulfilled in a satisfactory timely manner. The content of the book was interesting, at times very, very touching and sometimes though not often, a bit of a stretch (fanciful). But I liked it. It is a book about the author's personal day to day observations and impressions gained from living in that particular part of Nebraska and it included occasional glimpses of his family and boyhood in Iowa. The author is someone I would like to be neighbors with----he's obviously a great guy with a warmth and sense of humor that places him well above most of the slobs who inhabit this earth (including myself). Is this review long enough? Can I stop now?

I recently reread this book with my memoir class, and again it was a joy. I love how it is organized by season, and how you can just pick it up and read a short reflection. It will sharpen your eye for your own life if you're willing to settle in and pay attention. I perused the winter section this time and was enchanted by Kooser's short-lived sharing his reading hour with a bothersome beetle, which soon enough dies and leaves his reading nook oddly quiet. Many of the animals and equipment on Kooser's Nebraska farmstead come to life in this book - his tractor, for instance, is a force to be reckoned with. It will start even without an engine heater in subzero temperatures. This prose reflects Kooser the poet - concise and brilliantly observant of the everyday.