Page 16 - Ivan Doig News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, May 26, 2021. On this date in 1864, in the brief and fraught respite between the gruesome battles at Spotsylvania Courthouse and Cold Harbor, Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation making Montana a U.S. territory. Statehood would come 25 years earlier. In the ensuing decades, Montana has stamped itself as a special place in our national consciousness, celebrated in songs, novels, and movies as “the last best place,” a Lincoln-esque description coined in 1983 by naturalist Douglas H. Chadwick. I’ve been to Montana many times, fished its rivers and streams, ...

The Whistling Season, Reviewed by Madeline, 11 May 18, 2021 This is a great book for kids who love words! I cling to every new word I hear, so as the main protagonist’s character developed, I saw lots of similarities between us. The story itself is about an intelligent boy named Paul Milliron who lives in Montana in the early 1900’s. His mom has recently passed away leaving his father Oliver struggling to take care of three growing boys, the house, and the farm. After reading a cleverly written newspaper ad, Oliver hires a housekeeper from Minneapolis. Not too long after, in a cloud of my...

True West Magazine The life and times of the legendary Western writer and the legacy of Lonesome Dove. “Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in town.” Those were the first words I ever read written by Larry McMurtry, who died March 25 at age 84. They certainly weren’t the last. Texas author Larry McMurtry had a remarkable writing career that spanned six decades. He wrote fiction, nonfiction, memoir, television and film and was the rare writer to earn both a Pulitzer (Lonesome Dove) and an Oscar (Brokeback Mountain). Photo by Diana Walker, 1978, True West Archives In...

Woodburn: A flood of books for beach (or tundra) reading Woody Woodburn, Columnist As a Southern Californian through and through, I love sunshine on my face and a sea breeze in my lungs and sand between my toes, yet on Christmas Eve I will be an honorary Icelander celebrating Jolabokaflod. Pronounced yo-la-bok-a-flot, Jolabokaflod translates to “Yule Book Flood” and is the tradition where books are exchanged as gifts on Dec. 24. Everyone spends the rest of the night curled up by fireplaces, drinking hot chocolate and reading. It’s no small wonder 93% of Icelanders annu...

New York Trilogy in three separate volumes, Laurie Colwin’s Happy All the Time, Barry Hannah’s Ray, Robb Forman Dew’s Dale Loves Sophie to Death (which won a National Book Award), Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Grace Paley’s Later the Same Day, Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story (another NBA winner), Frederick Barthelme’s Moon Deluxe, Frank Conroy’s Midair, Pete Dexter’s You Bright and Risen Angels, Ivan Doig’s English Creek, and Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. As is so often the case, editorial passion conquered timid conventional wisdom, and li...