Vorab-RezensentenGarrison Keillor

Jokes are made for sharing, and everyone loves to laugh. This nonstop collection gathers the best jokes from the most recent Joke Show (Nov. 4, 2014) plus special joke segments from 2011 to the present, all recorded before live before doubled-over audiences in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and New York. Performers include show regulars Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Tom Keith and Richard Dworsky along with special guests. There’s music from the Guys All-Star Shoe Band, a bucketful of Halloween jokes, a musical tribute to bad jokes, a celebration of Jewish Jokes from New York radio legend Larry Josephson, Ole and Lena jokes, a Guy Noir sketch, Dusty and Lefty, and of course, even more jokes. So it’s everything fans want and expect: good jokes, good music, and a pretty darned good time. “Guaranteed to generate giggles, chortles, smiles and grins.”—BookPage “ … an absolute treat and fun for the whole family.”—The Serious Comedy Site

The best music, comedy, and stories from America’s favorite live radio show, celebrating 40 years of broadcasts. Since A Prairie Home Companion first went on the air, July 6, 1974, a steady stream of great musicians has crossed its stage—The Steele Sisters, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Peter Ostroushko, The Wailin’ Jennys, Robin and Linda Williams, Iris DeMent, Howard Levy—plus the radio detective Guy Noir, the cowboys Dusty and Lefty, the librarian Ruth Harrison, Duane and his mother, and the good people of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. An all-star roster of favorite performers joined to celebrate the anniversary on the lawn of Macalester College in St. Paul, a stone’s throw from the hall where the first broadcast was made. Some highlights from that show are presented here, interwoven with archival performances by Doc Watson, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Helen Schneyer, Chet Atkins, Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Soupy Schindler, and Tom Keith. The CD edition includes a memory-filled souvenir booklet.

short comic novel about a Hawaii-bound holiday traveler who ends up stranded in his North Dakota hometown during a blizzard. A wealthy and depressed man (thanks to the economy he-s not quite rich enough to expand his cache of paintings by Vincent Van Guy, the famed Dutch realist) bound for Christmas in the tropics is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota to visit an ailing aunt. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. The electricity goes out, and when it does, figures from his childhood appear, and historical figures too, for a festive candlelit holiday. In his reverie, our man reaches an epiphany worthy of the season-he hears the harkening angels sing, he is awed by the silence of the night (dead quiet: not even TV) and when he is finally rescued, leaves North Dakota resolved to simplify his life.

from the dust jacket: This anthology of 185 poems was selected by Keillor from those he has read on The Writer's Almanac on public radio--chosen as poems he might send to a friend whose life had gone skidding into the meridian, who had been struck by bad news--not poems about suffering, but poems that are bracing, as bold clear writing can be, under such resonant headings as "Such as It Is More or Less", "The Lust of Tenderness", and "Let It Spill".

"Home," in Keillor's fictional world, is Lake Wobegon (the "Gateway to Central Minnesota"), which the radio humorist introduced in print in Lake Wobegon Days. This collection of stories set in Lake Wobegon is taken from monologues performed on A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor's radio show; each one chronicles some kind of leave-taking or homecoming: trips to Minneapolis, high school graduations, attending the Minnesota State Fair, a waitress quitting her job at the Chatterbox Cafe, a boy joining the army, Father Emil retiring from Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, family members returning to Lake Wobegon for Christmas. In the last story, from Keillor's final show, the storyteller bids farewell to his beloved hometown. Keillor has a rare gift for celebrating and finding humor in commonplace events, and his affection for his characters and for small-town life shines through. These short narratives survive the transition from performance to print beautifully; they are spare, artfully crafted vignettes that will move readers as well as entertain them. Some tales are wildly hilarious, others gently poignantbut all are simply wonderful. 750,000 first printing; BOMC and QPBC main selections; first serial to the Atlantic. - Publishers Weekly