Category Archives: O Pioneers

Mini-Review: O Pioneers!

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One of the things I wanted to do when I got my Sony Reader was to read some of the classics that I had never gotten around to. The first one I chose was O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. I love this book. It tells the story of Swedish immigrants in the mid-western US in the nineteenth century. I enjoyed the story and the characters. What I really enjoyed was the realism and how things just seemed to happen– much like they do in real life. I went out and found the movie version with Jessica Lang et al and watched it afterwards. It was pretty good too. I highly recommend this book and you can download it for free here.

O Pioneers! – Movie vs. Book

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I watched the 1992 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie of O Pioneers. It was about as close to the book as a movie could possibly be. Jessica Lange was good as Alexandra, and interestingly enough, Heather Graham was very believable as a young Alexandra. David Strathairn is always great and was an excellent Carl, and while Anne Heche wasn’t my idea of Marie, she was passable. Reed Diamond, now playing in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (more about this excellent show in a later post) was Emil.

There were only one or two incidental scenes from the book that didn’t appear in the movie, and everything was very well done. I thought that it was a bit more obvious that Emil and Marie had sex in the movie (they had their clothes off) than in the book. If all book adaptations were this good then books might really be in trouble. Fortunately that is not the case.

Note: I have never claimed to be a good critic. As the saying goes, “I don’t know what’s good. I just know what I like.”

Royal Harlot

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Having finished and thoroughly enjoyed O Pioneers, I have decided to read Royal Harlot for my second Historical Novel Reading Challenge Book (see right sidebar). There have been plenty of great reviews of this book (here… here… here… and of course here), so I’m not going to try and do one even after I’m done reading. I just not that good of a reviewer, though I will let you know if I liked it.

The Steel Dragon: Trilogy or Continuing Series.

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Right now The Steel Dragon is in the slush pile at Baen books waiting to be read. It’s been there for four months and so I don’t expect to hear anything else for another five at least. When I wrote the book, I thought of it as one long novel (about 660,000 words). Once I was done, I decided it needed to be a trilogy and I began to think of it as my Lord of the Rings. In either form, it has a long and complete epilogue which tells what happens to all the characters for the rest of their lives.

When I finished writing, I really felt bad about not being able to write more about the world and the characters that I created, so I plotted out a story which goes between volumes two and three. Now after reading O Pioneers, I feel like even that is not enough and I want to write much more. I want to take off that epilogue and write out what happens to the characters in book form. I’m still thinking about this, so I don’t know what I’ll decide.

O Pioneers! & New Year’s Resolutions

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I’ve decided on my first book for the reading challenge (see the right column). It’s O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. I’ve always wanted to read a Cather book and never have. I just finished and now it’s right back to Team of Rivals. I enjoyed O Pioneers! very much. It really made me want to write. I recommend it to anyone.

Everyone will have posted their New Year’s Resolutions by now. But better late than never.

Personal Resolutions:
Try to eat better.
Specifically try to eat some fruit each day and a healthy after-school snack.
Cook real food more often.

Pass my Masters classes with As. I started them January 3rd.

Writing Resolutions:
Write each week.
Spend some time right after school writing and working on the previously mentioned classes.

Blogging Resolutions:
Post more excerpts.
Post daily.
Add more free pdf’s.