That Time of Year

A Minnesota Life

By: Garrison Keillor

Narrated by: Garrison Keillor

Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted 40 years, 750 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renee Fleming and once sang two songs to the US Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who'd learned English from listening to the show. He wrote best-selling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation.

He says, "I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That's the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I'm heading for 80, and I still get up to write before dawn every day".

©2020 Garrison Keillor (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Superb!

Delightfully and honestly told. Many twists and turns never before shared. And read as only he can.

A story of a great and giving life.

Listening to Garrison Keillor read his memoir has brought me great joy. Thank you, Mr. Keillor.

garrison at his best.

loved the insight and honesty he shared. warm, welcoming and great. unique stories, explaining lake wobegon characters, deep faith and love for god and his family. just great

The sweet stories

Another fantastic work by Garrison Keeler interspersed with his typically humorous Lake Wo be gone stories, which really lightens up sometimes very sad life tale

Pleasantly Amazing

I didn't want it to end. Garrison Keillor is a master of the English language. Perhaps the greatest orator of all time.

Well Above Average

Honest, provocative, reflective, funny. At 78, Garrison's in top form when writing about the real Lake Wobegon boy. Hope he returns to the radio, as he once did, in encore fashion: with an annual farewell performance, now five years overdue. On Sirius XM, of course, as NPR is unlikely to to extricate its maddening corporate philosophy of correctness from doing what's actually right.

Anyway--it was terrific.

Brilliant, funny, moving.

Garrison Keillor’s soothing voice kept me going and spirited during my long weekly commute from Sacramento to Berkeley to take care of my 100 year-old mother. I believe I own every recording of every story he has ever told. What a joy to hear from and about the man behind these poignant and funny stories. Garrison Keillor is a national treasure.

A nice ramble through his life

A little rambling in places, but some parts spot on in revealing perspectives of life and death. Will probably listen to this one again. Tom Davis

Kudos

I have always been a huge fan of Prairie Home Companion and admired Garrison Keelers ability of story telling. It was interesting and enjoyable to hear about his life in his own words.

Addictively quirky, playfully alliterative, a soothing meandering.

Garrison’s voice, so familiar, takes us deeper into his inner journey as a writer, radio host comic, a lover of music. He evoked a chord in us we didn’t know needed strumming, his zigs and zags surprising him at every turn. His regrets, his losses, his obliviousness, pain him in a poignant reflection, but he carries on “a sad man in a happy life”, and finds thousands of silly ways to brighten our general malaise, always refusing to take himself seriously. He’s our odd, funny uncle with the corny jokes and sneakily moving stories, and music made for musing about it all. In the end you want to go back and listen to all the other stories he told us for the last 40 years, just to find his nuggets of silliness and wordplay, of wisdom and connection, so effortless as to seem random, but the river is flowing in a natural path, and we drift along beside him.