Mitchell, W. O.

Average customer rating:

"Maybe God was in the bathroom and couldn't come to the door."
It's not a fast read
A wonderful story about life
boring boring boring
the classic

Who Has Seen the Wind
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

When W.O. Mitchell died in 1998 he was described as “Canada's best-loved writer.” Every commentator agreed that his best – and his best-loved – book was Who Has Seen the Wind. Since it was first published in 1947, this book has sold almost a million copies in Canada.

As we enter the world of four-year-old Brian O’Connal, his father the druggist, his Uncle Sean, his mother, and his formidable Scotch grandmother (“she belshes…a lot”), it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary book. As we watch Brian grow up, the prairie and its surprising inhabitants like the Ben and Saint Sammy – and the rich variety of small-town characters – become unforgettable. This book will be a delightful surprise for all those who are aware of it, but have never quite got around to reading it, till now.

Customer Reviews:

"Maybe God was in the bathroom and couldn't come to the door.".......2006-06-02

Brian Sean MacMurray O'Connal comes to his own conclusons when, at age four, he goes to the local church alone and no one answers his knock. After meeting the minister later, however, he thinks he hears the voice of God--"My name is R. W. God, BVD." Brian's search for answers to life's biggest questions takes him through ages four, six, eight, and ten in this 1947 novel set during the Depression on the plains of Saskatchewan. Focusing on the O'Connal family, and especially Brian--their friends, acquaintances, life crises, and search for harmony in nature--the novel glorifies small town life and the local residents' closeness to the soil.

Here Brian expresses the normal curiosity of young children his age as he tries to understand the life cycle of nature--why the baby pigeon died after he plucked it from its nest, how two-headed calves can develop, why his puppy died and what to do afterward, and how to deal with the sudden death of his father and the more predictable death of his grandmother. Each of these major events in his life brings him closer to understanding the ebb and flow of life, further emphasized by the author's choice of repeating imagery and symbols from nature--goshawks, meadowlarks, grass and flowers, an owl, the movement of poplar trees, and, of course, the wind. Biblical imagery permeates the novel, and the poetic language and style--filled with alliteration, internal rhymes, and onomatopoeia--create a lyrical celebration of life on the prairie.

Contrasting characters further illustrate the themes. The two Bens--Old and Young--and St. Sammy, a not-so-crazy man who lives in a piano box and has his own theology, prefer their free, unfettered life on the prairie. These contrast with characters like Miss MacDonald, Brian's cruelly insensitive first grade teacher who is dedicated to crushing the free spirits of her young charges. Other characters see their lives as falling somewhere between unrestricted freedom and social responsibility.

A book full of sweetness and nostalgia for childhood and its discoveries, Who Has Seen the Wind is beautifully constructed, resonant with life's themes conveyed in heady poetic language. It is so saccharine in its depiction of the sweetness of childhood and so removed from present day life, however, that it is difficult to imagine this book appealing to today's young pre-teens and teens. Their issues regarding life and death and their big questions about the value of life are far more complicated than life as seen in this period piece. n Mary Whipple

It's not a fast read.......2006-03-08

There are books you can blast through, action packed where the story is all on the surface. Tom Clancy, for example. I love a read like that.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a book that will reward you on a quick read, this isn't it. Nor for that matter, are any other of W.O. Mitchell's works (with the possible exception of Jake and the Kid). This is a book that is better on the second reading than the first, and on the tenth than the eighth. Slow down and wallow in it. Soak up the images and let the alliteration create the sounds for you, and when you do, you will be transported into the world about which Mitchell writes. I grew up a couple of dozen miles from the town which he identifies as Crocus, and know real people with the surnames he uses in this book. When I slow down and spend time with Mitchell, it resonates - and evokes with remarkable accuracy the world I grew up in thirty years later. There is no excitement here, but if you have patience, the insight you gain can generate its own profound excitement.

A wonderful story about life.......2005-11-17

I was required to read this book as a rambunctious 15 year old. I hated the fact I was forced to read it, but loved the story as I had grown up on the prairies. Mitchell captures life on the prairie and the mind of an inquisitive boy like no other.

boring boring boring.......2004-10-20

This is one of the most boring books i have ever read. There is no story. Nothing happens. Each sentence in this book is a long, drawn out, boring attempt to be profoundly creative. Do yourself a favour and just poke youself in the eye with a stick instead of reading this....

the classic.......2003-09-23

I've read this about three times now, maybe more. What keeps taking me back is something like rain to the earth. These are indeed stories that are 'close to the earth' -- the human spirit, in all its simplicity, yet all its complexity. I read to a group of senior citizens and they often ask for more of this book. The stories read great aloud and I recommend it for anyone who enjoys an author who writes about the everyday, with a very deep insight into the human condition. Don't pass this one up.

Average customer rating:

The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

At last, a book about curling, the noble sport that every winter turns otherwise sane Canadian men and women into broom-waving fanatics. Given the chance, any one of them would actively consider selling their soul to the devil for a chance to win the national championship known as “the Brier.”

That’s the offer made to Willie MacCrimmon in this hilarious story by W.O. Mitchell. The time is the not-too-distant past, and the place is Shelby, Alberta, a small town in the foothills. Willie, a widower, is the town’s shoe-maker, but like a good Scot he lives to curl; curling in fact is “his only active religion.” He and his rink are so expert that he attracts the attention of the Devil himself, who comes to Shelby and makes him an offer hard to resist. The Devil (a keen curler–and how they keep good ice in hell is fully explained) promises Willie that he’ll win the Brier–if on his death Willie will undertake to come and curl in hell for him in the Celestial Brier.

Willie makes the Faustian deal – but with the proviso that he will save his soul if he and his Shelby rink can beat the Devil’s rink in a challenge match. And so Willie and his friends – with the help of the Reverend Pringle – take on the Devil’s crew of Judas, Macbeth and Guy Fawkes in the most crucial curling match of all time, a matter of after-life and death.

It's a fine, old-fashioned funny story, as you’d expect from W.O. Mitchell. You might even call it a sweeping saga.

Average customer rating:

The Vanishing Point
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

W.O. Mitchell worked for many years on this book, polishing what was to be his big, serious, and very controversial novel about white-native relations. The book is set in the Paradise Reserve in the Alberta foothills – but the Reserve is far from perfect. Carlyle Sinclair, a widower who comes to teach in the one-room schoolhouse, is full of optimism, but he is frustrated in and out of the classroom by the passivity of the people he is determined to help. When Victoria, his prize pupil, goes missing in the backstreets of the city, he goes in search of her, and of the truth about his own life.

THE NATURE OF CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS AS PRESENTED IN TELEVISION TALK SHOW TITLES.: An article from: Communication Studies

Average customer rating:

THE NATURE OF CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS AS PRESENTED IN TELEVISION TALK SHOW TITLES.: An article from: Communication Studies
Sandi W. Smith , Monique M. Mitchell , James Ah Yun , Amy Janan Johnson , Victoria O. Orrego , and Bradley S. Greenberg
Manufacturer: Central States Communication Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Communication Studies, published by Central States Communication Association on September 22, 1999. The length of the article is 7084 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Citation Details
Title: THE NATURE OF CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS AS PRESENTED IN TELEVISION TALK SHOW TITLES.
Author: Sandi W. Smith
Publication: Communication Studies (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1999
Publisher: Central States Communication Association
Volume: 50 Issue: 3 Page: 175 Distributed by Thomson Gale

Average customer rating:

A casual read

How I Spent My Summer
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: Seal Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: 0770422152
Release Date: 1982-11-01

Book Description

When How I Spent My Summer Holidays was first published in 1981 a Western reviewer wrote: “If Who Has Seen the Wind told the story of a young boy’s coming to terms with death, How I Spent My Summer Holidays tells of a young man’s attempt to come to terms with his own sexuality and that of the world around him.”

The twelve-year-old young man is Hugh, and in small-town Saskatchewan it is the hot summer of 1924. When Hugh and his friends dig a secret cave out on the Prairie, they soon find it occupied by an escaped patient from the mental hospital. Defying the adult world, the boys become involved with a former war hero and current rum-runner, King Motherwell, in sheltering and feeding the runaway. When passions aroused by sex explode into murder, Hugh leaves his boyhood behind him for ever.

Customer Reviews:

A casual read.......2000-06-23

A book about a young boys transition to adolecence. Deals with all of the normal questions that arise as one goes through pubity. Wonderfully written with great description of the characters and there setting which revloves around the the summer holidays. An easy read for anyone a pre-teen and older.

Dramatic W.O. Mitchell: Back to Beulah, the Black Bonspiel of Wullie Maccrimmon, the Kite

Average customer rating:

Dramatic W.O. Mitchell: Back to Beulah, the Black Bonspiel of Wullie Maccrimmon, the Kite
W. O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: Gage Distribution Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

Should have been a short story

Roses Are Difficult Here
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books

General | Graphic Novels | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This is a novel of small-town life. The town where roses are difficult is Shelby, in the Alberta foothills, and the time is the 1950s. Matt Stanley, the editor of the local paper, relishes the range of people he meets, from Willie MacCrimmon, the local shoemaker and demon curler, to the oldest resident, Daddy Sherry, all the way to the disreputable Rory Napoleon and his wife, Mame, who once conceived at the top of a ferris wheel “because there was nothing else to do.” But when a sociologist arrives to study the town, Matt takes her under his wing, which produces unexpected results. From scenes of high comedy (as when Santa comes to Shelby, or when Rory Napoleon’s goats invade the town) to gentle sadness, this 1990 novel shows W.O Mitchell at his traditional best.

Customer Reviews:

Should have been a short story.......2001-07-09

This book is set in 1950s Alberta in a small town called Shelby. A sociologist arrives to research rural life and turns the little town upside down, starting with the weekly newspaper and its owner. It is basically a comedy so things end up better than when they started; but there isn't a lot of meat on this bone. Too much local color dialect is thrown in for show, and that takes away from the story. If I had been his editor I would have encouraged him to trim this 300 page book way, way, way down to a longish short story. It is full of quirky characters and is a fun read. The best of the characters (and the reason why this book gets 3 stars from me) is the town's garbage collector, Rory Napoleon. He falls off the wagon in a big way and it is incredibly funny. I took this book with me on vacation and I would recommend it to others who are going away and want a light read.

Average customer rating:

Roses Are Difficult Here
W. O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: Doubleday Canada, Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000HT9JWO

Average customer rating:

A puzzling book...

W.O. Mitchell Country
W.O. Mitchell
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Photo Essays | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Pictorial | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Canada | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0771061064
Release Date: 1999-11-06

Book Description

When W.O. Mitchell died in February 1998, Canadians all across the country mourned the death of a much-loved writer. But it was in the West that his loss was felt most keenly. For he was one of them, a Westerner, a man who had grown up in Weyburn, gone to University in Winnipeg and then spent most of his life in High River and in Calgary. His writing – in Who Has Seen The Wind, Jake and the Kid, The Vanishing Point, How I Spent My Summer Holidays, and many other books – brought their part of the world alive on the page, so that millions of readers seemed to breathe fresh Western air as they turned the pages of his works.

His family – represented by his son Orm and daughter-in-law Barbara – were pleased by the idea of an illustrated book that would show W.O. Mitchell country, provided that it included prairie and foothills and mountains. This book carefully gives full weight to both parts of what we affectionately call W.O. Mitchell country. And from the outset the Mitchells knew that the excerpts of W.O.’s landscape writing that they would select deserved to be matched by superb photographs produced by an artist of equal skill and sensitivity.

Enter Courtney Milne, the justly famed photographer of landscapes around the world but especially of his beloved prairies. Prairie boy and long-time admirer of W.O.’s work, he jumped at the chance to produce this book. With the help of the Mitchell family he tracked down sites that W.O. had known and written about. In addition he combed through his vast treasure store of photographs, to try to find the single image that perfectly matched a chosen piece of W.O.’s prose.

In the end, from over 18,000 photographs – over 18,000! – he and the group assembling this book chose the best 200, none of them published before. The result is a magical blend of text and pictures that is greater than the sum of its parts. This classic volume sets a new standard for illuminating a writer’s words and bringing alive “the poetry of earth and sky.” Open the book. Read it. You will see.

Customer Reviews:

A puzzling book..........2006-06-17

W.O. Mitchell is considered one of Canada's best 20th century authors, especially when it came to creating a sense of place with his prairie and mountain-centred novels, but my prime interest in this coffee table volume was Courtney Milne's photographs. He's a bit of an unsung hero in Canada, with an innovative vision and willingness to experiment.

All that said, every time I look at W.O. Mitchell Country, I come away puzzled and disappointed. There are pages of bland, unattractive compositions of sloughs (check out the ho-hum double spread on pages 98-99), foothills, plants and rivers. Far too many were shot in the ugly, harsh light of mid-day, the colours seems strangely washed out and a graduated density filter was desperately needed to darken washed-out skies. But this is Milne; was he doing this on purpose?

Also, his experiments with camera movement during exposures rarely worked. For every fascinating attempt -- such as his double exposure on poplars near Saskatoon, Sask. (page 204), there's a washed out mess like shimmery sunlight reflected on river near Saskatoon (page 15).

Was Milne trying to push the boundaries of what coffee table book buyers are willing to consider? Or did he just throw a lot of stuff together and call it a W.O. Mitchell tribute book?

Whatever the impetus, the result is a book I have a lot of trouble appreciating, because I have to leaf through so much stuff I don't enjoy before finding commendable pictures.

If you want to buy this book, try ordering it through the Amazon.ca website.

Average customer rating:

Shepherds After My Own Heart
J.D., O.D. Emery, Robert W. McIntyre, and Virgil A. Mitchell Abbott
Manufacturer: Wesley Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OGY7VS

Authors:

Authors

Authors