Funny Stories From Mostly North Dakota Schools

Funny Stories From Mostly North Dakota Schools
Author: Kevin Kremer
Publisher: Kremer Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-09
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9781733349253

What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you in school-as a teacher or as a student? That is the question author, publisher, and retired teacher Kevin Kremer asked adult family, friends, and acquaintances-even some complete strangers. After several months of compiling these stories and writing some stories of his own, he had enough material for this book.Kremer is especially thankful for the extraordinary contributions from longtime North Dakota teachers Joni Magstadt and Duane Roth. They both contributed lots of funny content to the book! If you ever taught or went to school, I'm sure reading this book will make you laugh and remind you of some of your own funny school experiences!

Breakfast with Buddha

Breakfast with Buddha
Author: Roland Merullo
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1565126165

At the behest of his sister, Otto Ringling finds himself reluctantly accompanying her guru, an enigmatic Mongolian monk, on a trip through Middle America to their childhood home, introducing his passenger to some American "fun" along the way.

Downtown Owl

Downtown Owl
Author: Chuck Klosterman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2008-09-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1416580654

Now a major film! New York Times bestselling author and “one of America’s top cultural critics” (Entertainment Weekly) Chuck Klosterman’s debut novel brilliantly captures the charm and dread of small-town life. Somewhere in rural North Dakota, there is a fictional town called Owl. They don’t have cable. They don’t really have pop culture, but they do have grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. But that’s not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it’s perfect. Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. A history teacher, she gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer. Widower and local conversationalist Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. They all know each other completely, except that they’ve never met. But when a deadly blizzard—based on an actual storm that occurred in 1984—hits the area, their lives are derailed in unexpected and powerful ways. An unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where local mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing, Downtown Owl is “a satisfying character study and strikes a perfect balance between the funny and the profound” (Publishers Weekly).

Fargo Rock City

Fargo Rock City
Author: Chuck Klosterman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1471104508

The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. But he's got problems. For one, he's in the fifth grade. For another, he lives in rural North Dakota. Worst of all, his parents aren't exactly down with the long hairstyle which rocking requires. Luckily, his brother saves the day when he brings home a bit of manna from metal heaven, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, Motley Crue's seminal paean to hair-band excess. And so Klosterman's twisted odyssey begins, a journey spent worshipping at the heavy metal altar of Poison, Lita Ford and Guns N' Roses. In the hilarious, young-man-growing-up-with-a-soundtrack-tradition, FARGO ROCK CITY chronicles Klosterman's formative years through the lens of heavy metal, the irony-deficient genre that, for better or worse, dominated the pop charts throughout the 1980s. For readers of Dave Eggers, Lester Bangs, and Nick Hornby, Klosterman delivers all the goods: from his first dance (with a girl) and his eye-opening trip to Mandan with the debate team; to his list of 'essential' albums; and his thoughtful analysis of the similarities between Guns 'n' Roses' 'Lies' and the gospels of the New Testament.

Dakota Boy

Dakota Boy
Author: Robert Woutat
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2003-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0595284477

An account of a man's childhood in North Dakota's Red River Valley in the 1940's and early 1950's, depicting the haphazard, often comical, hit-and-miss process by which the child and adolescent tries to build an identity.

Go West, Young Man

Go West, Young Man
Author: B.J. Hollars
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2021-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496225902

B.J. Hollars and his young son strike out on a 2,500-mile road trip to retrace the Oregon Trail. Their mission: to rediscover America—and Americans—along the way.

Codename Zero

Codename Zero
Author: Chris Rylander
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0062120107

From Chris Rylander, author of the breakout hit Fourth Stall saga, comes an incredibly funny and clever mash-up of middle grade school story and spy adventure. There are places in the world where heroes are born. There are places where brave men and women fight a never-ending battle against evil in order to keep our country and all other countries safe. There are places where the fate of our planet is being decided, even at this very moment, the consequences of which will echo through history. None of these places is in North Dakota. Carson Fender, seventh grader and notorious prankster, knows this. He's lived in North Dakota for his entire life, going to the same boring school every day, the same boring movie theater every week, the same boring state fair every year. Nothing ever changes, and nothing ever happens. That is, until today. Because today a desperate man hands him a package with a dire set of instructions. And that package is going to lead Carson to discover that there's a secret government agency operating in his small, quiet North Dakota hometown. And that this agency needs his help.

The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves

The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves
Author: James Han Mattson
Publisher: Little A
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: FICTION
ISBN: 9781503942479

In raw, poignant alternating first-person narratives, interspersed with e-mails, gay chat-room exchanges, and other fragments of a youth laid bare in the age of social media, The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves unravels the mystery of a life in all its glory: despair and regret, humor and wonder, courage and connection. A heartbroken and humiliated Ricky Graves took the life of a classmate and himself. Five months later, the sleepy community is still in shock and mourning. Ricky's sister, Alyssa, returns to confront her shattered, withdrawn mother and her guilt over the brother she left adrift. Mark McVitry, the lone survivor of the deadly outburst sparked by his own cruelty, is tormented by visions of Ricky's vengeful spirit. Ricky's surrogate older brother, Corky Meeks, grapples with doubts about the fragile boy he tried to protect but may have doomed instead. And Jeremy Little, who inadvertently became Ricky's long-distance Internet crush despite never having met, seeks to atone for failing to hear his friend's cries for help. For those closest to the tormented killer, shock and grief have given way to soul searching, as they're forced to confront their broken dreams, buried desires, and missed opportunities. And in their shared search for meaning and redemption, Ricky's loved ones find a common purpose: learning to trust their feelings, fighting for real intimacy in a world grown selfish and insincere, and fearlessly embracing all that matters most...before it's gone from their lives.

Dare to Make History

Dare to Make History
Author: Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson
Publisher: Radius Book Group
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1635767288

Dare to Make History is the story of two courageous and talented women who weren’t willing to accept anything less than being treated as equals. On their journey to a gold medal in women’s ice hockey, they became role models for generations before and after them. Twins Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando started playing ice hockey with their four older brothers and their friends on a frozen pond next to their home in North Dakota. No girls hockey teams, no problem―they just played on boys teams. They went on to win six World Championships and played in three Olympics, winning two silver medals and ultimately a gold medal in South Korea in 2018 for the USA Women’s National Team. They did not allow roadblocks and discrimination deter them from taking on their governing body—USA Hockey—threatening to boycott the 2017 World Championships and jeopardizing their ability to compete in the 2018 Olympics unless their gender equity issues were addressed. The success of Monique, Jocelyne, and their team thrust them into the center of the struggle for gender equity, for women in hockey and in sports in general, as well as in society at large. In Dare to Make History, the Lamoureux twins chronicle their journey to the pinnacle of their sport, their efforts along with almost 150 other hockey players to start a new professional women’s hockey league, their training to come back and make another national team after giving birth, their tireless efforts to advance the interests of disadvantaged communities in closing the digital divide, and their ongoing contributions as role models championing the dreams of future generations of girls in sports, education, and the workplace. This is not a hockey book. It is not a girls book. It is a book about the importance of the fight for equity, particularly gender equity. It is the inspirational story of how two young women from a small town in North Dakota have dreamed big—had the courage to take on huge battles—and in the end how they have dared to make history.

Shelter

Shelter
Author: Jung Yun
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-03-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250075645

"Shelter is domestic drama at its best, a gripping narrative of secrets and revelations that seized me from beginning to end."—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author of The Sympathizer One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of the Year (Selected by Edan Lepucki) Now BuzzFeed's #1 Most Buzzed About Book of 2016 So Far Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can’t afford. For years, he and his wife, Gillian, have lived beyond their means. Now their debts and bad decisions are catching up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family’s future. A few miles away, his parents, Jin and Mae, live in the town’s most exclusive neighborhood, surrounded by the material comforts that Kyung desires for his wife and son. Growing up, they gave him every possible advantage—private tutors, expensive hobbies—but they never showed him kindness. Kyung can hardly bear to see them now, much less ask for their help. Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own, the dynamic suddenly changes, and he’s compelled to take them in. For the first time in years, the Chos find themselves living under the same roof. Tensions quickly mount as Kyung’s proximity to his parents forces old feelings of guilt and anger to the surface, along with a terrible and persistent question: how can he ever be a good husband, father, and son when he never knew affection as a child? As Shelter veers swiftly toward its startling conclusion, Jung Yun leads us through dark and violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope. Shelter is a masterfully crafted debut novel that asks what it means to provide for one's family and, in answer, delivers a story as riveting as it is profound.