Lake Wobegon U.S.A.
Written by Garrison Keillor
Narrated by Garrison Keillor
4/5
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About this audiobook
Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor, born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942, is an essayist, columnist, blogger, and writer of sonnets, songs, and limericks, whose novel Pontoon the New York Times said was “a tough-minded book . . . full of wistfulness and futility yet somehow spangled with hope”—no easy matter, especially the spangling. Garrison Keillor wrote and hosted the radio show A Prairie Home Companion for more than forty years, all thanks to kind aunts and good teachers and a very high threshold of boredom. In his retirement, he’s written a memoir and a novel. He and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, live in Minneapolis and New York.
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Reviews for Lake Wobegon U.S.A.
17 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This fictional memoir reads exactly like a Prairie Home Companion episode -- without proper the comedic timing or delivery.It comes across as a rambling narrative of the fictional minutia comprising countless lives. Still, Keillor makes interesting observations into human nature and interaction.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book gave a bit of a background on how Keillor started on Lake Wobegon, and history of this fictional town. This is not something that you can put down in the middle of a chapter, you really need to finish the chapter before moving on to something else. Overall, it was a fun read if you have listened to the radio show.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have been a fan of "A Prairie Home Companion" and the News from Lake Wobegon for many years and finally got around to picking up the first of Garrison Kiellor's Lake Wobegon novels. With each story, I could hear Garrison telling the stories just as he does on the radio. Most of the names and places were familiar to me as a long time listener to the radio show, but the stories felt fresh and new. It made me long for a simpler, quieter way of life not wrapped up in the big city and all of the trappings of technology and celebrity obsesion. These are stories about small town life and values that mattered to the people living those lives. Television was taboo and the radio was a place to hear stories and music appropriate for all ages. Books were important and served as a glimpse at how the other half lived, and made the reader value the world in which they were living. They are quaint and folksy at times, but that is what is to be expected in Keillor's stories. I plan to keep reading the Lake Wobegon books and listening to the radio show if only to be a part of that simpler life for a time. Related books that I have liked: All of the Jan Karon Mitford series and her new series on Father Tim. Also the Irish Country Doctor books by Patrick Taylor.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keillor plumbs the shallows and depths of small-town life. One moment he pokes fun at the fatuous nature of Lake Wobegon's people, and the next he finds great truths in their simple life. The book reminded me of growing up in my hometown - a place I still love, yet loved to leave.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I would always recommend Garrison Keillor's novels as audiobooks. Known for his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, reading the book in text would remove his warm voice from the story. It would be like reading Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays instead of seeing the play. Keillor's story is magical and it begs the listener to slow down and not be in such a hurry in life. Even those that have left Lake Wobegon feel listless and rootless until they return.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keillor is better on the air or on audiobook, but this collection of essay is still unmistakably in the spirit and feel of Lake Wobegon, and in many places you can hear Keillor's voice narrating it. He may not be quite as warm and funny on the page as on the air, but even on paper, he's still warmer and funnier than anyone has a right to be.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I came to the work of Garrison Keiller through my good friend and literary guru Bruce Gillespie in Australia, who raved over "A Prairie Home Companion" having heard syndicated radio broadcasts of it over there. I'm so pleased to have the opportunity to read Keillor's work - even if his voice is better known in the UK as the uncredited voiceover artist for a series of tv adverts from Honda...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a book-length "news From lake Woebegon" segment, for good or ill. I still enjoy Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" radio show now mostly because I get to hear Pat Donohue: Keillor has worn out his welcome with me. I think this book is actually my Mom's, lent to me (she's over him, too) and not yet read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A friend of mine saw I was reading this book and expressed surprise; she didn't think this would be something I'd like. "So you think a big city gal like me can't appreciate small town charm?" "Yup," she answered. I'd love to prove her wrong, because I'm perverse that way and hate to admit she knows me that well--but... well. I gather it helps if you've listened to Garrison Keilor narrating The Prairie Home Companion on radio--I have not. More than a few reviewers, even the complementary ones, have called this book "rambling"--and is it ever. It has no real narrative focus from what I can tell from the 50 or so pages I could make myself read. It seems more loosely connected stories and history of fictional, Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, U.S.A, a small town not far from the twin cities. In the opening chapter, "Home" it shifts without warning from a super-omniscient to first person and back, from present to past tense and back. There seems to be a narrator, because we hear about "when grandmother died" and "in 1958 when six of us boys" and how he had "turned 16" but it just didn't gel for me. I soon lost patience with the folksy voice and boy did I hate the frequent footnotes--by the time you got through them you've completely lost the thread of the main narrative. And though I tried this because it was listed on "The Ultimate Reading List," I didn't find this funny. I not only didn't laugh out loud, I didn't crack a smile. I could see this was literate and lyrical and got an idea why some might be charmed, but I was irritated and bored out of my mind. Humor is such a personal thing. Just not for me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wry nostaglic view of Midwestern life. Brings back both nostalgia and cynicism to me in a pleasant combination. I keep reading it in the author's distinctive 'radio' voice.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A rambling, warm-hearted and humorous account of the life and times of a small heartland town and the people living therein. Partly the history of a town you cannot drive through (but would like to), partly a sketch of people you can never meet (but would like to), all shaggy dog story, from an expert of convincing descriptive human minutiae.