What Can Be Said about Brian Freeman

I mean the guy writes about the best state in the 50.  The state that gave us not only Judy (which would have been enough) and Prince, William Worrall Mayo, Jessica Lange also claimed Eddie Albert from age 1, John Sandford, Matt Goldman and Gary Paulsen have all written books set in Minnesota and I love them (the authors and their books). But there is just something...something that makes Brian Freeman's Johnathan Stride that just makes him my favorite Minnesotan (well...next to Judy, of course).   Thief River Falls was so excellent.  It is a stand-alone and just so well done.  Thanks, Mr. Freeman--- PLEASE PLEASE keep writing!  Thief River Falls is a real place! 

To be fair

allow me to post some links to the praise that History of Wolves has gotten from well respected sources.
The New York Times
NPR
Kirkus Reviews
As for me,
wow
that was terrible.
And I LOVE books set in Minnesota!
And this was set in Northern Minnesota!
And I love Northern Minnesota!  Though I am not sure if "n" should be a capital there or not.
And it even mentions Grand Rapids!
And you-know-who was born in Grand Rapids!
But wow.
The main character is such a jerk.  So unlikable that she is not even a good main character in the sense that being unlikable makes her real.  I mean, I know there are people out there like she, but wow.  What a self-centered jerk.  As a child and as an adult remembering her childhood.
Thing is, I hate writing a bad review of any book.  I acknowledge that this book is well written.  I acknowledge that the author, Emily Fridlund is a zillion times more talented than I.  But man, this book just wasn't for me.  I didn't understand it.  So maybe that is why!  I mean, this was for sure, literary fiction and I am not very literary.  I am not a bright bulb.  I readily admit that, so maybe I am just not smart enough to understand HOW.  I put those links on there so that you can see what folks FAR brighter than I had to say about HOW and I would love to hear your take on it.
I was really bothered by the depiction of the pedophile as a sympathetic character, even though I know he was probably a pedophile because someone molested him, and even though I know we are not to judge.  But man, anyone who hurts our children or our elderly, among the most vulnerable in our society...man, man, man...I just have a super hard time having a kind thought for them.  And that is on me.

Who? WHO?? WHOOO??

Tell me, who designed these covers?  The whole big bunch of Paulsen book covers that kept me from reading Hatchet and The River and would have kept me from reading The Crossing and most certainly The Cookcamp.  True, you should never judge a book by its cover.  So it's my fault.  But still!  Look at these covers?!  What?!  What?!
Anyway...The Cookcamp is the first in the Alida series, but the last one I read.  It doesn't really matter in which order you read them, but just read them.  They do seem to get better as they progress in the series, but all of them are wonderful.  The Boy is just a little boy and is sent to live with his grandmother as she works in Cookcamp, feeding men who are building a road in Northern Minnesota during WW2.  They describe themselves as "too old to be soldiers, but we can build roads."  I loved the prologue.  And I love the way The Boy looks at his grandma and the way she loves him.  And I loved the chipmunk scene and the Thimble Boy scene.  Although I do wonder what happened to the thimble itself.
Great, great book and great, great series.

My Grandmother, the Car

Of course there isn't much I am too young to remember, but My Mother the Car is one of them.  Yes, this was a real show.  I have heard of it, but never seen it.   Apparently, TV Guide said it is the second worst tv show of all time.   Regardless, I thought of it when I read Alida's Song by Paulsen.  Yes, I am on a Paulsen binge.  In The Car there is a very powerful scene in which Waylon gets very upset when he and Terry and Wayne visit a religious commune and find that the women and girls don't get to eat with the men and apparently must work most of the time, while men and boys can just hang back and be men and boys.  You can tell that Paulsen has a lot of respect for women.  Not just from this scene, but in all of his writing.  In Alida's Song, you find out why.  Alida's song is the second of the three books about the times that Paulsen spent with his grandmother as he was growing up.  This woman did the world a favor when she helped to form the great man that Paulsen has become.  Again, not just a book for kids or teens or tweens, but for all. 

Paulsen at His Best

Man.  Man.   This Paulsen guy.  He definitely isn't a teen writer, or a children' writer.  He is a writer.   A darn, darn, darn good one.  I don't know why more adults don't read him.  Maybe some do and I just don't know any of them.  But one thing is for sure, they should.  The Quilt is the last in a trilogy of about Alida, The Boy's grandmother, who took care of him when he was a young child, with a drunk mother who had moved to Chicago to work in a war factory while his dad was in WW2.  Alida is a lives in a small town in the Canadian border in Minnesota and speaks Norwegian and loves her grandson and all of life.  You can tell that Paulsen is the man he is today because of the influence of this amazing woman.

Grand Rapids

Another wonderful book set in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. One of the main characters is a girl named Wendy who wants to make it big in Nashville. Her dad thinks she is good, but not that good. Her father says, "Nobody in Nashville is gonna pay any attention to a little girl from Grand Rapids."
Now, maybe not Nashville, but Hollywood would.  Because they did.  As we all remember.
I love That F$$* Flowers.  It is impossible not to love him.  Rough Country was about a murder of a homosexual woman and most of the characters are homosexuals as well.
The whole book is full of suspense and, as usual, the ending is a shoot-out or fight-out, in this case.  And full of tension.
The book was awesome!

It's Not Butter...It's Parkour!

What We Saw at Night drew me in immediately.  It is set in Northern Minnesota, an area I know and love well, and filled with intrigue, I was turning the pages (virtually) quickly.  The book is the story of three teens with Xeroderma Pigmetosum, a rare genetic disorder that means they must live in darkness, because being in the sunlight is lethal.  At first it might not seem too bad to have to stay out of the light, but as you learn their stories, through the POV of high school senior, Allie, you come to understand what a troubling disorder it is.  The teens never think much about what they want to be when they grow up, who they will marry, where they will live, because odds are, they won't be living that long.   

One of the teens, a mysterious girl named Juliette, takes up the art of parkour, which is also featured in My Life as a Stuntboy, and the three friends spend their nights climbing buildings and bridges and practicing.  Then they witness what may or may not have been a murder.  And somehow Juliette is involved with the suspect.

The mystery is good, but the end kind of unravels for me.  I do blame it on myself, as I am not a patient reader and I thought it was a little drawn out.  Still I will buy this book for the library and recommend it because it is well written and deals with interesting and unique issues.