“The library is a thriving institution in Lake Wobegon,” drawls Garrison Keillor.
“Grace is an ambitious librarian. She stocks the auto-repair manuals, DVDs and murder mysteries, things librarians are often forced to do, but she’s always pushing history, poetry and serious fiction, with some success.”
Keillor should know – he invented Lake Wobegon. And now the man behind “A Prairie Home Companion” is trying something new: cabaret. Every Sunday in December, he’ll set up at Feinstein’s as “Man in Tux with Red Shoes and Piano.”
“I’ll be singing romantic songs to people who are in a romantic mood,” Minnesota’s No. 1 raconteur tells The Post’s Barbara Hoffman. “I’ve had more romance than most people, so I should be doing this.”
We’ll have to take his word for it. In the meantime, here’s what’s on his bookshelf:
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes
I came across this odd, odd book by Julian Barnes – not the easiest fiction writer – but it’s a sort of memoir. It’s indescribable, really, but it was a book I liked so much that I was reluctant to read too much of it at one time. If you read it yourself and thought about me, not that you should, you’d think, “How did this book ever intrigue that guy from Minnesota, Mr. Small Town, Minnesota?” There you are. There’s the magic of it.
The Two Kinds of Decay
by Sarah Manguso
She’s a young writer I met briefly at an awards ceremony when I handed her her award. Then I picked up her book, a memoir of her illness. She’s had one of those odd syndromes that was very difficult to diagnose and made her life miserable, but it’s not a weepy memoir and she’s all fine and better now. But it was interesting for its style . . . She’s also a poet, a very gifted poet.
The English Major
by Jim Harrison
He’s famous for “Legends of the Fall,” but this is entirely different. It has a very dry, comic voice that you don’t find elsewhere. [Harrison] is my age, mid to late 60s – for a writer his age to cut a whole new swath is just inspiring beyond words to me.
Chicago
by Studs Terkel
Studs was a great talker and the best of his books pick up his own voice. He wrote the book on Chicago pretty late in his life. I think it’s like writing a book on your own mother – you hesitate to do it for fear of not doing it justic