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Rural
Route Bookstore's Gift-Giving Choices
and New Books and CDs Released in 2007 & 2008  Christmas Remembered
by Ben Logan Two
copies remaining;
no plans to reprint
As
one of my (Suzann Nelson) longtime favorite holiday books, I have
recommended this book to Rural Route customers for several years.
 Last
year I realized this endearing narrative, which combines the importance
of nature and the environment on family life, might soon be
out-of-print because it was getting hard to find. I bought up as
many
as I could! Well, it saddens me to tell you that what I had
feared has
happened. This uplifting book about the Christmas holidays in the
20's
and 30's in Southwestern Wisconsin and the impact of surroundings is no
longer available from distributors. I am glad I trusted my female
intuition and bought as many as I could find last year. At this point
we only have three left. Again, as I seem to be stating more and more
often, just like lutefisk suppers -- First Come, First
Served!
"To keep
Christmas safe from
careless change and the tarnish of forgetting, I must keep remembering
to remember." Award-winning
Author Ben Logan
CR - 1 Hardcover
$16.95  Christmas in Minnesota
Marilyn Ziebarth & Brian Horrigan, editors
Christmas in Minnesota
evokes memories of holidays past: a communal feast in the 1870s,
holiday pageants accompanied by stage-fright, forgiving and
reconnecting with
relatives, the
torture of writing the perfect annual
Christmas letter, to a drummer boy in the Civil War who lifts other
soldiers' spirits with a spontaneous holiday celebration. The
fifty
short stories are accompanied by vintage recipes, old
advertisements
and cartoons, and black and white photos including holiday
decorations of years gone by.Over
45 Minnesota authors, covering 150 years of the state's history,
demonstrate the spirit of Yuletide cheer in Minnesota — in good and in
tough times. This anthology, subtitled "a celebration in memories, stories, and
recipes of seasons past", was co-edited by Marilyn Ziebarth
(editor at at Historical Society Press) and Brian Horrigan (award-winning
author and developer of exhibits at the Minnesota Historical
Society).
Their titles and access to information strengthen the accuracy of this
treasured book.
Christmas in
Minnesota would
make a wonderful holiday gift for those with a Minnesota connection,
or for those who wish they had one.
CR - 2 Hardcover
$24.95
In
the last 100 years, Christmas was a warm and regenerative family
holiday for many Norwegian-Americans. It was celebrated with family
feasts of lutefisk, lefse, rømmegrøt,
fattigmann and fruktsuppe.
Trees in such homes were decorated with straw ornaments, flags,
and
heart-shaped baskets.To ensure good luck in the coming year, the hidden
nisser in the barn were fed porridge. However, as time
passed
and families move farther apart, many of these traditions are
being
lost, but not really forgotten.
For
those who want to recapture the Norwegian-American Christmases of the
past but can't remember some customs or recipes, this book by Kathleen
Stokker, professor of Norwegian at Luther College in Decorah, IA, is an
important tool to help pass on family traditions. Detailed with
historical facts and tracing the commercial emphases in both Norway and
America, and with accounts of ancient and modern Christmases,
photographs and recipes, Keeping Christmas reminds
Norwegians and Norwegian-Americans of their connections to each other,
but also explains how the celebrations in both countries differ.
Does
anyone else remember julebukking?
CR - 3
Paperback $19.95
 Six Feet Under: A
Graveyard Guide to Minnesota by Stew ThornleyIn the introduction, Thornley writes, “Cemetery
surfing has become an increasingly popular hobby... . People making
treks include genealogists tracing their roots, artists and writers
admiring the monuments and epitaphs, travelers looking to get off the
beaten path... . Visitors respond in different ways to what they
encounter, taking pictures, making rubbings, leaving offerings. . . ."
This
guidebook — splashed with interesting, enlightening and often unknown
factoids about the state's history — also contains a helpful appendix
with a county-by-county listing of Minnesota's cemeteries and their
specific locations and lists the 400 famous, infamous and just
plain
interesting Minnesotans whose graves were visited by
Thornley. The
author's interest in cemeteries is not new. He has also visited
the
grave of every member of Baseball’s Hall of Fame, a quest that took him
across the United States and to Cuba.
G - 03 Paperback $14.95 "And suddenly
in two tongues one song filled the night sky."
John
McCutcheon, nominated for six Grammy Awardss, has been called
"America's balladeer" and has been described as a cross between
either Pete Seeger and Mr. Rogers, or a mixture of Will Rogers and
Bruce Springsteen. In addition to kudos for his music, McCutcheon
has
won multiple Parent’s Choice and American Library Association
awards
for his writing, and numerous awards from educational groups for this
particular book — geared to all ages.
Along
with historically appropriate artistic illustrations (illustrated
in
beautiful, yet fittingly faded-appearing art by Henri Sørensen,
Danish
illustrator of many books), recipients of this book will receive the
best of two of McCutcheon's talents: his touching story about a
Christmas Eve truce instigated by the soldiers who were in mud-soaked
trenches 100 feet apart — a place called No Man's Land on the
battlefields of Belgium, and an accompanying CD reading of this
thought-provoking story that also features two of McCutcheon's songs.
The book also has the sheet music for his song, "Christmas in the
Trenches."
The narrator ends the
story with "...all
too soon the dawn reminded us it was time to get back to our own sides.
Back to the trenches. Back to the waiting."
According to the
New York Times Book Review, this book is "one of the 10 best books of the year".
A different sort of memoir that doesn't focus on the hard times,
Kalish teaches the reader what life was like as a rural, rigid
Methodist Iowan. She never feels sorry for herself although
circumstances of her childhood—including a banished father—were quite
bleak. Kalish loved her childhood, and one of her most-used
phrases
is "it was quite a romp".
Kalish
took the values of her youth right on to college, became a highly
respected professor, wrote this award-winning best seller, and has made
the rounds on network TV programs. Ted Kooser, former U.S. Poet
Laureate, compared this book to Hamlin Garland's "A Son of the Middle
Border". If you
lived
through The Great Depression, this small book packed with joy
will
awaken your soul. If you didn't live through the Depression, you will
glean some valuable history lessons.
Scandinavian-American
Folk Tales ... and Fish Stories -- by Dr. Kristoffer
Paulson Rural Route Bookstore is the only
distributor of this book in the United States.
 Blueberry Summers:
Growing Up at the Lake by Curtiss Anderson A "robust"
Norwegian-Lutheran family's summers at "The Lake" in the '30s and '40s
in Northern Minnesota.
Anderson,
a nationally recognized editor of many magazines, unknowingly
began his
prestigious career writing notes and letters on a hand-me-down
Underwood typewriter as a young boy. These saved letters are now
compiled into a coming-of-age memoir that brings the reader back
to his
summers at The Lake. The funny and warm stories recall
picking wild
blueberries, first romances, loving neighbors, his numerous dogs,
and porch chats with Dear Old Aunt Ingaborg, a heavily accented
relative from the Old Country.
"As
a 100% Norwegian-Lutheran who lives in Northern Minnesota, the
description of a "robust" family with this ethnic background rather
throws me. I have yet to meet such a family, and I am not exactly
young!" Suzann Nelson, owner
of this Web site.
MEM O2
Hardcover $19.95
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