Jim Heynen

The intro to this book, by Bill Holm of the Minnesota Historical Society was so over the top in its praise that it felt like it would be impossible to meet the hype. But it did get me eager to read Heynen's stories. The excitement didn't last. The stories were boring and bland. Very few characters even had names - which works for Kafka when he's tackling the bureaucracy of a system, but not so much when you're telling tales that should have some warmth and humor. Out of the 64 stories, there show more were maybe four or five that managed to even get a feeling that I wanted to smile when reading them. Even without the effusive praise at outset, I think I would have felt letdown. With it? I felt cheated. show less

As the authors state "there probably are still more books about very old cars, houses, paintings and even dishes than about very old people." To redress this oversight they interviewed and photographed 100 centenarians currently living in North America, although many were born overseas. The brief essays are well written, convey the essence of the interviewee's life, and contain many quotations from them. The portrait photography is excellent. The humor, mental agility, independence, show more opinions, and talents of these elders is surprising considering that most suffer from various infirmities of old age. A celebration of life and endurance. Recommended.
- Sondra Brunhumer, Western Michigan Univ. Libs., Kalamazoo show less

5 stars for the photographs and book design. Less enthusiastic about the accompanying text, which was written as a series of imaginative vignettes by a noted creative writer: an uneven-- and in places condescending --mixture of poetry, meditations, history, and fictional interpolations. Personally, while I found some of these vignettes did add to the photographs they are intended to complement, the overall effect, for me at least, was to detract from the excellent photographs, which could show more easily stand on their own, requiring at most some brief explanatory captions here-and-there. Where an explanatory note would actually shed some useful light on the photographs--what is a work train? what and where is Chanute Field--the annotator is silent, or else writing about what was going on everywhere else in the country--Japanese internment, the Alien Registration Act, etc. show less

All the angst of high school, teen romance, religion, farming. This one will stick in my mind for a long time