a downtown dumpster . Equal parts touching & comedic, something for everyone. I learned that the novel is based on Sarah Stonich's set of interconnected short stories Vacationland and found a copy through my local library. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. I laughed, I cried, I was touched and I was given food for thought. And then there are the people... Stonich has introduced us to a cast of characters who evoke our humor and our annoyance and our patience and our grief... And underneath it all you just gotta love 'em. Stonich does a beautiful job weaving together the members of Vacationland into a story. Character and place-driven connected stories make up Vacationland, a book for anyone whose childhood love of a place has persisted through adulthood. All of them lending a bit more knowledge and understanding of the central character of this work... Naledi Lodge on a lake in northern Minnesota... a.k.a Vacationland. Visit her web site for reviews and info. Colorful, descriptive, evocative. I don't know how well you know my book purchasing and reading habits. It unfolds at a Hollywood hacienda . There are a lot of things I could say about this. Everything in the book revolves around Vaclav, the now old man who ran the place for a long time, and his granddaughter, Meg. Hodgman is fine with people being selfish, they simply need to acknowledge the fact that they are. He’s with a friend, the jazz musician Jonathan Coulton, who has a knack for this kind of thing. . Having grown up in Minnesota, and especially having grown up spending a couple weeks on the Iron Range near Ely every year at my family's cabin, this book made me weep at least a dozen times. A bonus for me was my shared opinion of much of Stonich's view of life in Minnesota. Hodgman is much more comfortable telling stories that abound with bald-faced lies. Just as I loved "These Granite Islands" and "The Ice Chorus", every page of "Vactionland" was quite simply wonderful. Ok, all you Minnesota readers: on your mark, get set, GO to your public library and get Stonich's book!! Back home, as news of the attack began filtering in, the families of these same men, neighbors in Fort Hood, Texas, feared the worst. May 29th 2018 That’s the mark of a good book and good writing. VACATIONLAND. Boohoo hoo I will write yet another review because this book deserves it. March 25th 2013 You're certainly not expected to know them. . The author brought me back to the northern Minnesota that I knew as a child of the 1960's. The author knows Northern Minnesota - a place that I know and love too! The firefight in Sadr City marked the beginning of the Iraqi insurgency, and Martha Raddatz has written perhaps the most riveting account of hand-to-hand combat to emerge from the war in Iraq. Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms, The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family, Same Kind of Different As Me Movie Edition: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together, The Areas of My Expertise: An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: Unabridged Selections, Cookies help us deliver our services. I so appreciated Ms. Stonich's delicious sense of humor (at times laughing out loud!) Stonich's main character Meg is developed through other peoples' perspectives. Having grown up in Minnesota, and especially having grown up spending a couple weeks on the Iron Range near Ely every year at my family's cabin, this book made me weep at least a dozen times. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. and her ability to deal with difficult topics with sensitivity and acumen. In this capacity, he has served as the Humor Editor for the New York Times Magazine, Occasional Flight vs. Invisibility Consultant on “This American Life,” Advice Columnist for McSweeney’s, Comic Book Reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and a Freelance Journalist specializing in Food, Non-Wine Alcohol, “Battlestar Galactica,” and most other subjects.