Reading gives life to your years

 My man, Mark Twain, once said that someone who can read but chooses not to has no advantage over an illiterate person. One can quibble over what constitutes "reading" - is it reading memes on your phone or Facebook? Since that wasn't an option back in Twain's day, I believe he was referring to reading novels, short stories, even newspapers and magazines. 

As the son of an English major, whose dad had a library filled with the classics and nonfiction shelves of John F. Kennedy assassination theories; and the grandson of a grandmother whose bookshelves I raided as a kid to get lost in Louis L'Amour westerns; I've consciously pushed reading onto my kids. Truth be known, J.K. Rowlings and Harry Potter did more for that effort than I ever could. But mission accomplished. Both daughters read a lot and my son is more particular and not as avid but does.

As such, I contribute to their habit whenever I can, as evidenced by the books I give them every Christmas - particularly curated for the their interests. This year's gifts:

For Katie - The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp

Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror for those with knowledge of this infamous all-women’s concentration camp, better known since it became the setting of Martha Hall Kelly’s bestselling novel, Lilac Girls. Particularly shocking were the medical experiments performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80 percent of its inmates were political prisoners, among them a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance.

Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazis in occupied France, these women joined forces to defy their German captors and keep one another alive. The sisterhood’s members, amid unimaginable terror and brutality, subverted Germany’s war effort by refusing to do assigned work. They risked death for any infraction, but that did not stop them from defying their SS tormentors at every turn—even staging a satirical musical revue about the horrors of the camp.

After the war, when many in France wanted to focus only on the future, the women from Ravensbrück refused to allow their achievements, needs, and sacrifices to be erased. They banded together once more, first to support one another in healing their bodies and minds and then to continue their crusade for freedom and justice—an effort that would have repercussions for their country and the world into the twenty-first century.

For Rylee - A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away?

Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves.

What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves.

Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

For daughter-in-law Kayla - All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Sarah Harman

In this biting, satirical take on the domestic thriller, a failed pop star turned private school parent must clear her son’s name when his bully goes missing. Luckily, she’s just made a new friend—a lawyer who just happens to harbor dreams of private investigating. And her upstairs neighbor is a cop, although not a very useful one. Between the three of them, she’s sure she can track down the little shit precious angel child before her son’s reputation is forever tarnished. If you like quirky characters, scrappy fighters, and a high dose of hijinks, this is your cup of tea!

For Luke - The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for Every Hunter and Angler

When Steven Rinella hears from fans of his MeatEater show and podcast, it’s often requests for more recipes. One of the most respected and beloved hunters in America, Rinella is also an accomplished wild game cook, and he offers recipes here that range from his takes on favorite staples to more surprising and exotic meals.

• Big Game: Techniques and strategies for butchering and cooking all big game, from whitetail deer to moose, wild hogs, and black bear, and recipes for everything from shanks to tongue.

• Small Game: How to prepare appetizers and main courses using common small game species such as squirrels and rabbits as well as lesser-known culinary treats like muskrat and beaver.

• Waterfowl: How to make the most of available waterfowl, ranging from favorites like mallards and wood ducks to more challenging birds, such as wild geese and diving ducks.

• Upland Birds: A wide variety of butchering methods for all upland birds, plus recipes, including Thanksgiving wild turkey, grilled grouse, and a fresh take on jalapeño poppers made with mourning dove.

• Freshwater Fish: Best practices for cleaning and cooking virtually all varieties of freshwater fish, including trout, bass, catfish, walleye, suckers, northern pike, eels, carp, and salmon.

• Saltwater Fish: Handling methods and recipes for common and not-so-common species of saltwater fish encountered by anglers everywhere, from Maine to the Bahamas, and from Southern California to northern British Columbia.

• Everything else: How to prepare great meals from wild clams, crabs, crayfish, mussels, snapping turtles, bullfrogs, and even sea cucumbers and alligators.  

Whether you’re cooking outdoors or in the kitchen, at the campfire or on the grill, The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook is an indispensable guide for both novices and expert chefs.

For son-in-law Stetson - The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football

Winning isn’t a science. It’s an art. And it can be learned.

No one embodies winning more than Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach of all time. Over the past fifty years, Belichick has been a man of notoriously few words, believing that a coach should keep a low profile. After he left the Patriots in 2024, he briefly became a coach without a team. He spent that year writing down the principles he learned from his father, Navy football, and from his forty-nine-year coaching career.

Belichick’s philosophy goes far beyond football. He presents a whole-year, whole-life, whole-mindset approach to greatness that encompasses preparation, motivation, confidence, and leadership. The principles in this book are adaptable to wherever you work. No matter where you are on the ladder, they will help you think like a leader in anticipation of being one.

Drawing on decades of studying the greats of the game, handling colorful personalities and egos, and playing for the highest stakes in sports, Belichick shares memorable examples and practical takeaways from his lived experience. Winning is not about being perfect—it’s about growth. And you will improve only as much as you recognize where you’re weak. Belichick owns up to mistakes like deciding to go for it on 4th and 13 in the 2008 Super Bowl. Then he breaks down how to learn from your mistakes like a leader does—an approach that sustained him throughout his early career challenges and ultimately brought him to the top of the sport.

Belichick’s principles might surprise you at times. At other times, they might seem strangely obvious. (His rule for how to win football games? Score the most points.) Football is about strategy, human nature, and business. Your vision of success might involve breaking into a new, competitive market in your industry; seeing solid returns on a portfolio that you’ve carefully prepared; inspiring your students to earn the highest scores in the district; or raising up trainees to take over your job someday. Whatever the situation, your performance is up to you.

Practical, authoritative, and bursting with unforgettable inside stories, The Art of Winning is an indispensable guide to success from the greatest coach in NFL history.

Merry Christmas!

 It's that time of year for the annual Haugen Holiday parole status updates.

All things considered, this was one of our better years. We added one to the family, have another warming in the oven, and now have all the kids back in the 605, actually in the same county, within 20 minutes of each other. It's almost like high school again with kids coming in and out and lunches here and there and it's great, especially since they aren't asking for money as much.

Luke and Kayla moved back this spring. He's still writing parking tickets; spent many of his weekends chasing antelope and deer with his bow and arrows; and found time to knock up his wife. They are due with their first rugrat in March and this will be our third grand-daughter to spoil. Kayla got a job at Monument Health doing stuff I don't understand with cancer research, but fortunately she does. Big dog Klaus has a few more months of being #1 in their house and enjoys his visits to grandpa and grandma's to visit Finn.

Rylee and Stetson returned to the area this summer after she gave birth to Maye Marie. The little slobber monster is healthy and raring to go to keep up with her sister Josie Jayne, who is a three-year-old human tornado and apple of my eye. Rylee took a teaching job with Children's Home Society of the Black Hills; and Stetson with the Monument Health cardio center or something or other.

Katie and Kwinn are still doing their thing. Katie manages West River stuff for our current congressman and next governor Dusty Johnson; and Kwinn travels around the country from Utah to Idaho helping companies find precious minerals to keep your iPhones and electric cars running. They are remodeling their home in the Hills and try to keep up with their golden retriever Gilmore.

Nancy is still assisting the back-cracker and stays busy teaching Sunday school and on a board called Church Response, which helps the homeless in Rapid City. When not entertaining her grands, helping little old ladies cross the street and nursing abandoned kittens, she drinks a lot of Windsor and gambles excessively. (Don't want you thinking she's too good for me.)

Not a darn thing new with me. I might be a tad grumpier than last year but, jeesh, have you been around people lately? The Twins and Vikings sucked, my garden was nothing special, and the guys at poker have been picking on me, so can you blame me?

Finn's been living his best life. Lots of walks and jogs and ball chasing. He especially loves his visits from Klaus and Gilmore. Rumor has it he may be getting a brother sometime soon, as the boss lady is weakening from the basset hound puppy pictures I've been inundating her with (never end a sentence with a preposition).

Mom is still doing well at assisted living in Milbank. She had a slight scare, but no damage was done, when she took a spill when one of the wheels came off her walker during a race down the hall with Mildred Magilicutty. Worst of all is I lost 20 bucks on her. Check your equipment, Mom!

So there you have it. Hope all is well with you and your families. Have a Merry Christmas and may 2026 fill your dreams like Sydney Sweeney does her blue jeans.

Bookstores are back, baby!

 This guy, Ted Gioia, wins the prize for highest ratio of vowels-to-consonants in a last name, and also has a pretty good website: The Honest Broker.

Recently he wrote about The Surprising Return of the Bookstore and thanked the CEO of Barnes & Noble for leading the way with some outside-the-box(store) thinking.

And another ...

 Psycho-thrillers!

A good psychological thriller often feels like a sit-com set-up taken utterly seriously, where the circular paths of interior logic quickly lead to insidious derangement. They can also, like horror, provide a perfect vector for vengeance and schadenfreude, in which hypocrisy and small-mindedness always earn their comeuppance. And psychological thrillers can also be about exploring the enormous capacity of humans to surprise, in ways both awesome and terrible. Like the depth of human experience, the selections below hold multitudes, and you can see the breadth of the genre through the diversity of this single snapshot.

Another list - a deep one

 Here are 10 books I probably won't read but should if I wanted to get smarter. 

From Freud to Fellini and Catholicism to Islam, it has it all.

#1 is: Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America

See what I mean?

Best of 2025 lists beginning

 CrimeReads has their list of the best Crime Fiction, Mysteries and Thrillers.

The Glen Campbell coincidence

 It's a goofy thing but I like when goofy things happen.

I was reading a Glen Campbell autobiography the other night while watching baseball. The game finished so I flipped the station over to one of those music channels - classic country. I like a little background noise.

As luck would have it later in the evening, I was in the reading zone and finished the book, looked up at the TV and lo' and behold there was ol' Glen crooning away. Could've been anyone but had to be Glen. 

The book was okay. 

I especially enjoyed the insight into his relationship with Tanya Tucker and his recollections of filming True Grit with John Wayne.

Time to ban the "banned book" boondoggle

 One thing that won't go away is the banned book trope, also known as local schools deciding what is appropriate for its students.

Just three states are responsible for 80 percent of known school book bans.

If nothing else, concentrate on the three states most responsible. Stop trying to make this a national crisis just so you can sell more books.

I banned books all the time in my house. There's some stuff I wanted my 13-year-old son to read and some stuff I didn't. If he wanted to read Penthouse magazine, I wasn't going to leave it on the dining room table for him. It was banned. Make him steal one from the local drug store like a real underage horndog.

Again, repeat after me, if you can buy a book at your local bookstore, it's not a banned book! Or the people doing the banning are really bad at banning things.

Excuse my whining

 Much of my summer has been spent in the dentist chair. So that's given me time to think.

Think about all that money floating out the window so I can painlessly chew a steak. I don't begrudge paying my dentist for that privilege. She's great. I do begrudge paying my insurance company so much to cover so little of it.

Knowing I was going to be going under the pliers this year, I bumped up to the premium dental plan, outside of my regular health plan, which pays zero. Even that only results in 30 percent for this, 50 percent for that. At a couple thousand bucks for a root canal, and a couple more for some crowns, that adds up.

What I don't get, is when was it decided that teeth (and eyes, for that matter) were not going to be body parts covered by your basic Blue Cross Blue Shield plan? It'd be like somebody waking up some day and saying, "You know what, we're not going to cover elbows anymore."

It's not like they don't go in or around the mouth for other stuff. Sore throats, check; ear aches, check; glossitis of the tongue (look it up), check; busted lips, check.

But a sore tooth?  Oh, my, we're going to have to send you to a dentist who won't have an opening for two months, just live with it, buddy; and when she does we'll only pay thirty percent; and you'll like it! That's not a part of the body we'll cover.

Yet you will cover everything in all my other orifices though, right? Sure. Just not your mouth. Too dirty.

You covered my colonoscopy. Yes, we like butts, we cannot lie.

A list of the reading lists

 This writer did something pretty smart and curated 28 "best books of the fall" lists and broke them down into which books were named on the most lists. 

There were 466 books, with 95 books included on three or more. The most-often named book appeared on 15 of the lists and can be found here.

Still chasing the elusive butterfly

 Many things I enjoy as an adult, I didn't pay attention to as a kid, like: sunsets, landscapes, good food and string bikinis. But one thing I remember always intriguing me from youth to now was butterflies.

We chased them with little nets, put them in jars or coffee cans. Watched caterpillars turn into butterflies. Studied them in grade school classrooms. I still have an affinity for them. I'm not an expert by any means, but as a gardener I know they are good. So I've done what I can to attract them to my little plot in the West River countryside - particularly monarchs.

From the maps I've seen we are on the outer western edge of their migration pattern. Much like our airport, we're not O'Hare, we're Rapid City Regional. Occasionally see one, but I haven't for several years.

I try to plant native flowers and have even gone so far as to actually plant milkweeds, the bane of my existence as a youth when myself and friends would walk soybean field after soybean field chopping down those dastardly weeds. Now Roundup does that work. It's done the job too well and milkweeds, which monarchs love, are not as plentiful.

But lo and behold, last week my granddaughter and I spotted a monarch butterfly flitting around my garden. I was a little embarrassed at how excited I was to see one. Then I started checking out my milkweeds a little closer and there were the striped little caterpillars I'd been trying to cultivate for years.

They've arrived, finally, and I hope they know they have a place to call home and will return. I've chopped my last milkweed and will keep the birdbath full of fresh water. 

A joyful moment for sure that is much appreciated these days.

Grumpy old man remarks about TIME list

 TIME magazine has an article detailing 24 books you'll want to add to your fall reading list. It might better be called "24 books you don't want to add to your fall reading list", but that's just me judging a book by its cover. It's mostly chick-lit and some niche stuff.

The yawn-inducing list includes Patti Smith's FOURTH autobiography. Maybe she's just living a lot longer than she thought, but I'm thinking by the fourth autobiography you're starting to get into "and for lunch I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" territory. You need to really be somebody, or apparently really think you are, to write four books about your life. 

She's a 78-year-old former punk rocker from the seventies whose biggest hit, I use the term loosely, reached number 13. If she can do four autobiographies, then Carl Douglas is certainly worth five. Who is Carl, you ask? Only the Jamaican writer and performer of one of the best-selling songs of all time - Kung Fu Fighting in 1974. 

The only book on the list that really caught my eye was by Salmon Rushdie, a collection of five stories - three novellas and two shorter tales. But I probably wouldn't get to it until the fall of 2065, good Lord willing.

The Gemini book looks interesting if you're into space travel and such. I'm not.

TIME snobs snub their noses at mystery and crime writers with books coming out this Fall, like: Dan Brown, John Grisham, Walter Mosley, David Baldacci, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, C.J. Box, Don Winslow and my latest obsession, Ian Rankin. 

With all those possibilities I think I'll just wait for Patti Smith's fifth autobiography. I hear hip replacements are exciting reads.

Been a while, eh?

 A lot of life has been lived the past few months; fortunately, a few books were read too. Let me hit ya with the highlights.

-- Stephen Hunter's Front Sight -- You should know Hunter from the Bob Lee Swagger series and movie, Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg. His books are excellent.

Front Sight is a series of semi-connected novellas that feature three generations of Swaggers solving murders: Grandfather, Charles; father, Earl; and son, Bob Lee. They are bloody, not for the feint of heart and titled: City of Meat, Johnny Tuesday; and Five Dolls for the Gut Hook. 

I really like novellas, 150-200 pages each, because they fit my attention span and not just because most of what I've published are novellas. They get to the point, not a lot of fluff, and tell an interesting story relatively quickly.

Amazonians give it a 4.6 of 5 rating. The Haugenometer lands at an 8+ of 10.

-- I also ran across a new author (to me), Scottish writer Ian Rankin. I can't recall how I stumbled across him and his series of 25 novels that feature Inspector Rebus, but it coincidentally happened after I visited Edinburgh, Scotland, in March. That's where Rankin lives. 

I started the series from the beginning, have read the first three and have the fourth on my TBR pile. I really enjoy them but we'll see how it goes if I make it through all 25.

The books I read were: Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, and Tooth and Nail. I ranked them all in the 7-8 range, otherwise I wouldn't be continuing.

-- Oddly, and unfortunately, one clunker I read came from my fave author, Dean Koontz. Going Home in the Dark. I struggled to finish it but did. Probably would've quit but just couldn't do it to ol' Dean. After reading 80 or so of his novels, I felt I owed it to him.

The themes were similar for him - the supernatural, good vs. evil - but the new thing that threw me off was throughout the book he'd talk to the reader. Trying to be funny but seldom was. Koontz has a monthly email newsletter that is very clever and funny and it seemed like he tried to incorporate that into this book. It didn't work for me.

And apparently not for many others either as it garnered only a 3.8 of 5 from Amazon readers. I gave it a 5.

Other books I finished included:

-- Transgressions, which featured two novellas, Keller's Adjustment by Lawrence Block, and Forever by Jeffery Deaver.

-- The Crash by Freida McFadden.

-- Lethal Prey by John Sandford

-- A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald.

My chair, my pillow, my wife - til death do us part

 In its usual stroke of cleverness and whimsy the U.S. government has an agency named the General Accounting Office. Generally speaking, it’s an office that accounts for stuff.

Every year or so a very nice lady comes to our office and counts stuff. She’s very thorough. So far she’s kept us on the straight and narrow and nobody has absconded with any of the 30-year-old file cabinets or desks or the fax machine, which I imagine would be very valuable on the black market.

On her most recent visit she poked her head in my office and read the serial numbers on the back of various stuff and checked them off her list and said to me: “Would you like a new chair?”

I said: “No, thanks. I like my chair.”

She persisted: “Really, we could get you a new chair.”

“Thanks, but I really like it.”

“But it has duct tape wrapped around the arms and you have a pillow on the seat.”

It occurred to me I might have committed a federal crime by bringing duct tape from home and wrapping the arms of the chair because it was cracked and the stuffing was coming through. But, I thought, the government wouldn’t be that stupid would it?

I explained: “It took me years to get a chair I liked, that fit my skinny butt and doesn’t hurt my back. It’s perfect.”

“Okay, fine,” she rolled her eyes, “but here’s my card if you ever want one.”

I lost her card, but I still have my chair.

See, when I find something I like I keep it. Like the pillow on my bed.

I think I’ve written about it before, but my wife keeps threatening to throw it away. Sure, she puts a new pillow case on it every week or so, and I will grant her that the pillow may be an actual government threat due to its toxicity. 

It’s yellow from drool and snot and sweat. It’s actually damp, all the time. I put it out on the deck one super hot, windy summer day last summer to dry it out, and it didn’t. I think it actually seeded the clouds and we got some rain that night.

But, now it’s starting to leak stuffing. Its days are numbered. I keep stuffing the stuffing back into the pillow and fold the pillow case over the end at night so the stuffing doesn’t come out all over the bed and encourage my wife’s anti-pillow attitude.

I’ve come to accept that soon I’ll have to relent and I’ll have to replace it.

But it’s like I told my wife of 37 years, you should be happy that when I find something I like a lot, I keep it around. I don’t trade it in for a younger model. That’s bought me some time.

And the lady from GAO just sent our office an email announcing her retirement. My chair dodged that bullet. We outlasted her.

I don’t think the same will be said for my pillow.