Lake Wobegon Days
- Mar 17, 2023
- 2 min read
★★★☆☆
I found this hardcover copy in a little antique shop while on vacation in Texas Hill Country. It wasn’t exactly on my reading list, but I was a fan of A Prairie Home Companion and, more specifically, a fan of the News from Lake Wobegon segment of the show, so I figured if I liked that, I’d like this.
Though it started slow—the first couple of chapters are devoted to an account of the founding of the town and its very earliest days, told in a dry, encyclopedic tone, that was as much a labor to read as it felt it must have been to write—Lake Wobegon Days quickly picked up the pace and the wry, self-deprecating humor for which Garrison Keillor is known was on full display.
The trouble with a book like this is that it’s not much more than a collection of anecdotes, and, as such, doesn’t carry much in the way of emotional heft. What little there is comes at the very end, and it hit me in a way that nearly bumped this up to four stars: “Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”
A tad folksy for some, but through that folkiness there’s a real truth there. I’m going to hold onto that, even if I’m unlikely to hold onto the book. I was glad to have read it, but it wasn’t quite the same without hearing Keillor’s breathy baritone coming over the airwaves.
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