Another engaging collection of essays on small town Wisconsin life.

This book took me a while to get into but once I did I was glad that I didn't give up on it. I liked reading about the farming part of his life but I especially liked his family. The blended families that he grew up in as well as are raising now reminded me a lot of my own and it was nice to see someone with a stepdaughter and foster siblings who didn't dwell on the fact that they were such.

A little bit of everything, this book held my attention from cover to cover. Perry's a wonderful writer; Coop made a quick fan out of me.

This book was reviewed by my sister Rebecca so I knew I should take a look. Michael Perry has a wonderful turn of phrase and sense of humor and a Wisconsin childhood very similar to my own. So much so, that I was picturing all my own locations as he described the daily events of his life on the farm. The memories of church, farming and a large family with foster children were spot on. It had frequent lol parts, at least for me, and I look forward to reading his other books.

This book is a blending of the author's present day experiences with raising a family and some "light" farming mingled with his memories of childhood. The past and the present are nicely juxtaposed and Michael Perry can definitely write.
This book is more storytelling than a how-to manual on farming, but it is very well done.

Michael Perry has a way of taking whatever's going on in his life and relating it to another, smaller event in such a way that you can understand what he's talking about without him going overboard in pointing it out.
For example, in Truck: a Love Story he talks a great deal about rebuilding an old International, but the real story is more about his impending marriage to his new wife, his brother's upcoming marriage, and the ways in which rebuilding a rusty old truck are similar to a guy who's maybe a little rusty himself trying to build a love life.
In Coop, he talks a lot about raising pigs and chickens, but more than anything it's a reflection on the life one lives while raising a family and how one's upbringing looks different when you're thinking back on it instead of living it in the moment.
There are three things I always love about Perry's books:
1. He has a very easy style. This is not to be confused for a book that's a quick read because it's all plot and dialogue. There's a lot in there, and Perry uses his writerly skills to bring the magic to the reader, making it seem like everything just happened when in reality it must take a tremendous amount of work to get these sorts of stories down on paper and have them read so easily.
2. He's self-deprecating. I know that might not sound like a big deal, but if you read a lot of memoirs, it really is. It's a tough skill to master in life, tougher in writing. Actually, that might be true of almost everything. It's tough to master a skill like small talk in real life, but it's even harder to make it palatable in writing.
3. He never gets too pointed about the over-arching metaphor. Even though it's clearly there, he never has to point it out, and I think you could enjoy the books without even considering them that way.
Coop, though not my favorite of his simply because it talks a great deal about two subjects that aren't really my thing, religion and family, still shows off his aw shucks skill as a writer. It's good for the world to have writers like him around, and maybe he said it best as he described the grief of farmers filing past a casket one afternoon:

...you see these sunburned old dogs approach my brother and break down weepingas they take his hand or wrap him in their bearish arms, and maybe they are wearing big belt buckles or unmodish jeans or have their sparce hair Brylcreemed in the style of a 60's trucker, but it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart. At times like this I am grateful I was not raised to be sleek.

Yet again Perry pens an inspiring memoir; however, I'm not sure that my husband appreciates my newfound sentiment to raise chickens, not to mention it might be difficult in the city. Perry has this amazing ability to take the mundane details of life and make you look at it in an entirely different, and sometimes quite funny, light. Many times I found myself stifling a giggle as I read a particular passage. I think my husband was glad that I finished this one.

I love Michael Perry's writing. He has that perfect combination of observation, insight, and humor and can make you laugh and cry in a matter of a few sentences. His Population 485 is a book I've re-read many times. This book focusing on family life on a new farm is just as compelling and lovely.

I enjoyed his recollections of building a life on the farm. His stories of his immediate family and his extended family really rang true. Loved the story of popcorn Sundays.

A lot of things that don't normally make me tear up have been causing some flow lately, so who knows what's happening there, but this book jerked some tears in several places. In the back, someone calls Perry a memoirist. I guess. This book is partly about his childhood, interspersed with his first year living on a farm in Wisconsin with his wife, stepdaughter and new baby girl. And two pigs and many chickens. I like the honest way Perry describes rural life and the people he knows. It's good to read about someone who finds he meets a lot of good people he likes. I think if you are the kind of person who is looking to meet good people you like, you will, in fact, meet those kind of people. At the end, I also wanted to move to a farm, but that happens every other month of so, anyway.