Local Wonders

Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

By: Ted Kooser

Narrated by: Ted Kooser

Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska, an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention, including memories of his grandmother's cooking. And Kooser reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view.

What makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood.

This writer sees the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.

©2002 The University of Nebraska Press (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Ted Kooser's Local Wonders is the quietest magnificent book I've ever read." (Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall)
"Local Wonders should be read and reread. It is a treasure." ( Dallas Morning News)
"A series of sometimes sparkling, other times electrifying, and always engaging scenes that read like a poet's diary." ( Colorado Review)

A Remedy for Current Events

If you’re in need of a break from current events, I would highly recommend this book of essays. With every sentence carefully crafted, it contains so much depth of feeling for life’s pleasures, foibles and nostalgia. It holds the natural world in awe and family, friends and acquaintances past and present in fond love and respect. I need less news and more Kooser in my life. Think I’ll listen at least once a year.

Thank you, Mr. Kooser

Thank you for your hospitality of imagination, Mr. Kooser--and for the immediacy and human vulnerability your poetry brings to all earthly matter.

I live with two good dogs in the Ozark Mtn. National Forest. I'm a teacher and a poet who has "lost [her] donkey." :) I will treasure this book for a long time.