Landscape Of Ghosts

(Book by Bob Firth, Bill Holm)

Book by Bob Firth, Bill Holm

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0896581985/?tag=2022091-20

The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth: Minneota, Minnesota

(Although he agreed with other denizens of his hometown th...)

Although he agreed with other denizens of his hometown that the definition of failure was "to die in Minneota," when Bill Holm returned there 20 after leaving, he found himself strangely happy to be back in a place where he knew everyone. The Heart Can Be Filled Up Anywhere on Earth celebrates the connections between people that Americans both fear and desire, the connections that have sent us away from small towns to big cities.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571312099/?tag=2022091-20

The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland

( Bill Holm is one of a kind. A Minnesotan of Icelandic a...)

Bill Holm is one of a kind. A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, his travels have taken him all over the world, providing the material for a number of rich and memorable books. In The Windows of Brimnes, Holm travels to Brimnes, his fisherman’s cottage on the shore of a creek in northern Iceland. From there, he considers the fate of America — "my home, my citizenship, my burden" — in these provocative essays.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571313109/?tag=2022091-20

The Dead Get by with Everything: Poems

(Book by Holm, Bill)

Book by Holm, Bill

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915943557/?tag=2022091-20

Chocolate Chip Cookies for Your Enemies

(From the book: ".. This essay was written on request for ...)

From the book: ".. This essay was written on request for the Dale Warland singers 'Christmas Concert' in December, 1990, and delivered to the audience in St. Paul, Minnesota's Ordway Theater ... and again in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in December of 1991 for the South Dakota Friends of Old Time Music 'Acoustic Christmas'. After both readings, many in the audience asked for copies of the essay. Now, in 1993, here it is, slightly revised ... . . The artwork is by Franz Allbert Richter, my neighbor in Clarkfield, Minnesota, and a devoted preserver of the Scandinavian folk tradition in art. Merry Christmas from Minneota to wherever you find yourself on earth" - Bill Holm. Stocking-stuffer size book: 3-1/4" x 4". 54 pages.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963854909/?tag=2022091-20

The Dead Get by with Everything: Poems by Bill Holm (1991-03-01)

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Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays by Bill Holm (2000-08-14)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F9FU550/?tag=2022091-20

The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth

( Growing up, Bill Holm knew what failure was: “to die in...)

Growing up, Bill Holm knew what failure was: “to die in Minneota.” But after returning to his hometown (“a very small dot on an ocean of grass”) after 20 years’ absence, he wasn’t so sure. Finding pleasure in the customs and characters of small-town life, in The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth he writes with affection about the town elders, seen by those in the outside world as misfits and losers. “They taught me what to value, what to ignore, what to embrace, and what to resist.” In his trek through the heartland, Holm covers a satisfyingly wide emotional terrain, from scandalous affairs in the 1950s to his aunt’s touching attempts to transcend poverty with perfume and movie-star airs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157131251X/?tag=2022091-20

The Music of Failure (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage) by Bill Holm (2010-04-29)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K3IL9J4/?tag=2022091-20

The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland by Bill Holm (2008-11-01)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N6KSP1Y/?tag=2022091-20

Faces of Christmas Past CD

(The unabridged audiobook to Holm's exceptional holiday me...)

The unabridged audiobook to Holm's exceptional holiday memoir 'Faces of Christmas Past'. Holm's portrayals of his own successive Christmases and how they mark the passing of our lives hold the listener spellbound. Holm introduces the people, the rituals, the traditions, and the wonderful music that he has been a part of for all of his life. Mr. Holm's storytelling lends itself to audio perfectly. Because this is Holm's first unabridged audiobook, we've spiced it up with some extra holiday treats: a cookie recipe, a personal holiday greeting, and Bill Holm himself singing poems and playing piano renditions of the holiday compositions he mentions in the book! Total time: 1 CD, 65 mins. Published by EssayAudiocom.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002EKCTT4/?tag=2022091-20

Bill Holm: The Windows of Brimnes : An American in Iceland (Hardcover); 2007 Edition

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The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth by Bill Holm (2001-02-27)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K3HEG9U/?tag=2022091-20

Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary by Bill Holm (2001-09-09)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K3PL6QS/?tag=2022091-20

The Music of Failure (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

( “The ground bass is failure; America is the key signatu...)

“The ground bass is failure; America is the key signature; Pauline Bardal is the lyrical tune that sings at the center; Minneota, Minnesota, is the staff on which the tunes are written.” So begins the masterful title piece from Bill Holm’s first book of essays, The Music of Failure. This collection introduced to many the singular vision and voice of literary giant Bill Holm, a writer who had traveled well and widely but came back to his hometown of Minneota—the town of his immigrant Icelandic ancestors—as, in his words, “for all practical purposes a failure.”   What emerges from these pages, and from Holm’s cherished writings over the next two and a half decades, is anything but failure. From his ruminations on life in Minneota, family history, and the “horizontal grandeur” of the Midwestern prairie to a poetry-reading tour of Minnesota nursing homes and an account of a naked man eating lilacs out of his garden, The Music of Failure is a lyrical and surprising compilation that finds Holm mining the stories and places that captivated him and continue to enthrall his many readers.   This 25th anniversary edition includes poignant portraits of Holm and the history of The Music of Failure by Jim Heynen and David Pichaske, along with an essay Holm requested be added to this new edition, “Is Minnesota in America Yet?” With beautiful black-and-white photographs by Tom Guttormsson, The Music of Failure is Bill Holm at both his early and quintessential best, an inimitable and much-missed writer who illuminates our private and common lives through both our quiet victories and our sublime failures.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816670080/?tag=2022091-20

Faces of Christmas Past

(FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look ...)

FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look at the perils of Christmas, our own self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas Xerox), and the more unsettling fact that successive Christmases, more even than New Year’s, mark the passing of our life from childhood to death. "Old Christmas card photos show us how we’ve aged," says author Bill Holm, "reminding us that, though time may curve in Einstein’s physics, in our small life it is a straight line to white hair and bifocals." Holm also reminds us of the great consoling ritual of music, so rich and full of feeling at Christmas. Our best defense against age and death may be singing, he says, so we’d better open our mouths with courage and spirit to let the songs come.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890434027/?tag=2022091-20

Faces of Christmas Past by Bill Holm (1997-07-01)

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Playing the Black Piano: Poems

( Like Whitman's, Holm's poems celebrate the vitality of ...)

Like Whitman's, Holm's poems celebrate the vitality of life--whether found in music or food or people. Moving across the surface of contemporary America and the world, from Oregon forests to the deserts around Tuscon, from the endless marketing of phones to the experience of an MRI, Holm comments with humor, biting commentary, and ultimately affection on the waywardness of the human race. The book includes tributes to Art Tatum, Glenn Gould, and many classical composers, as well as poems of the moment--marking the falling of the Twin Towers or the death of Paul Wellstone. The first section of the book reflects Holm's long experience in China and Iceland (wonderful poems about perspective and distance). The second section reflects Holm's ongoing love affair with music wherever he finds it, from Bach to jazz, from China to Minnesota. Parts 3 and 4, Free Market Wind and The World is Enough, are engaged with the world as we know it--sometimes depressing in its vacuity, often absurd, sometimes heartbreaking, but ultimately a place we would much rather be than not to be at all. The last section of the book is a spirited elegy to the dying and death by AIDS of his close friend.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571314172/?tag=2022091-20

The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland by Bill Holm (2008-11-01)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FKT1I88/?tag=2022091-20

Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays

( Arranged by letter of the alphabet, with at least one e...)

Arranged by letter of the alphabet, with at least one entry per letter, these short pieces capture the variety of daily life in contemporary China. Writing about traditions that endure in rural areas as well as the bureaucratic absurdities an American teacher and traveler experiences in the 1980s, Holm covers such topics as dumpling making, bound feet, Chinglish, night soil, and banking. In a new afterword to the second edition, Holm reacts to recent changes. "Holm's view is entertaining, thought-provoking and touching. After reading his book, you won't look at the United States or China the same way." - Philadelphia Inquirer

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571312501/?tag=2022091-20

Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary

( Bill Holm, often called “the bard of the Midwest,” take...)

Bill Holm, often called “the bard of the Midwest,” takes readers on an excursion to islands both real and symbolic. He journeys to five physical islands: Iceland, Madagascar, Molokai, Isla Mujeres, and Mallard Island. And he travels to conceptual islands, including the Necessary Island of the Imagination, the whimsical Piano Island (located in a man-made lake under the atrium of an upscale hotel in the far interior of China), and the acute isolation of the Island of Pain. Writing with the mind-set of a 19th-century traveler for whom the journey is as important as the destination, Holm appeals to the traveler and the philosopher in everyone.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571312595/?tag=2022091-20