Keep reading your way through Lane County literature

Around the holidays, we put together a list of Lane County literature that included the heavy hitters: a Ken Kesey novel, a book about Steve Prefontaine’s life, a history of “Animal House.” When we asked if we had left off any favorites, you all did not disappoint! We’re updating our list to include your recommendations, too.

Like last time, this is a living list. If your favorite isn’t here, drop me a line at annie@lookoutlocal.com, and I’ll update the roundup in the coming weeks and include a shoutout to you. (We’re a little thin on fiction right now — anyone have any recommendations?)

Fiction

“Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey

I think the Lane County commissioners would excommunicate me if I didn’t include a book by Ken Kesey, our local patron saint of counterculture and Oregon literature. I’m picking up this book to start during my own stretch of time off this week. Kesey’s novel after “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Sometimes a Great Notion” is about the life of the Stampers, a family on the Oregon Coast whose livelihood revolves around logging, during a labor dispute. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard! No spoilers, please.

Available at Bookshop.

“iZombie” by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred

The short-lived television series changed its setting to Seattle, but the original comic series “iZombie” is set in Eugene. It features some very recognizable settings as backdrops for its story about a zombie gravedigger detective: intersections of downtown Eugene, the McDonald Theatre, the University of Oregon campus and a Victorian home that very much resembles the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House.

Available at ThriftBooks, either as the complete series omnibus, or start with issue 1.

Memoir

“Crying in H-Mart” by Michelle Zauner

This 2021 bestselling memoir from indie rock musician Michelle Zauner isn’t strictly about her band Japanese Breakfast or her life in music; it’s about her relationship with her mother, Chongmi, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2014, and her own relationship with her Korean-American identity. Zauner was born in South Korea but raised in Eugene; the WOW Hall was an early performing spot for her after she started learning guitar, inspired by Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, an experience she recounts in the book. (My colleague Lillian Schrock-Clevenger mentioned she read this book in our staff’s music listening roundup, because she spent this year listening to a lot of Japanese Breakfast.)

Available at Bookshop.

“Echoes From the Set” by Katherine Wilson

I interviewed Katherine Wilson about her memories of director Rob Reiner during the filming of “Stand By Me,” but that’s just one chapter in her lengthy history in Oregon film. Wilson worked on “National Lampoon’s Animal House”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and dozens of other Oregon film productions — taken together, her memoir isn’t just an outline of one woman’s career, but a history of film and filmmakers in Oregon.

Available at Bookshop.

“Eugeneana: Memoir of an Oregon Hometown” by A. Lynn Ash

Walking down Blair Boulevard, with its historic commercial buildings and strong sense of identity, you can almost squint and think you’re in midcentury Oregon. But A. Lynn Ash actually remembers it, an upbringing she recounts in her memoir “Eugeneana,” a first-person history of her early life in a post-World War II Whiteaker neighborhood.

Available at Biblio, eBay, AbeBooks and Amazon.

Nominated by the author, A. Lynn Ash.

“Chiseled: A Memoir of Identity, Duplicity, and Divine Wine” by Danuta Pfeiffer

Danuta Pfeiffer doesn’t have the typical background one might expect for a vineyard owner: She’s a former broadcast journalist who co-hosted “The 700 Club” with televangelist Pat Robertson. As Robertson used the show to bolster his political profile with dreams of being president of the United States, Pfeiffer was “caught in the crosshairs of politics and religion,” a path that ultimately ended with her moving to Oregon and falling in love with her husband, whom she runs the vineyard with.

Available via Bookshop, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. 

Nominated by Thia Bell.

Nonfiction

“Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays” by Barry Lopez

I could recommend any number of books from Lopez, a National Book Award-winning, renowned naturalist writer who lived for decades in the McKenzie River valley, where the Holiday Farm Fire ravaged much of his property months before his death in 2020. But this collection of essays, published posthumously in 2022, is an ode to paying attention to the natural world around us, that picked up more urgency in Lopez’s later years.

Available at Powell’s Books, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.

Nominated by Whitney Donielson. (Note: Donielson is married to Lookout Eugene-Springfield opinion editor Elon Glucklich.)

“Fat, Drunk, and Stupid” by Matty Simmons

OK, did you really just want to know more about “Animal House”? No worries. This 2012 history of the film, its production and what happened when the rowdy National Lampoon crew rolled into 1970s Eugene is your guide. Author Matty Simmons would know: he was a producer of “Animal House” and the founder and CEO of National Lampoon.

Available at Bookshop.

“The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine” by Brendan O’Meara

You may think you’ve read all about Steve Prefontaine’s legendary running career and its untimely end as the 50th anniversary of his death came earlier this year. But this book, written by Brendan O’Meara and released earlier this year, is a new piece of narrative journalism that came from O’Meara’s more than 150 original interviews with Prefontaine’s family, friends, teammates, and competitors, trying to unpack Prefontaine’s 24 years of life to understand how he became so prolific in his short career.

Available at Bookshop.

“Fruit of the Sixties” by Suzi Prozanski

This history of the founding years of the Oregon Country Fair (followed by Prozanski’s sequel, “Brigadoon of the Sixties,” focused specifically on the “revelry and kerfuffles” of the festival) is a tour of the personalities and driving forces behind its earliest days; one Goodreads reviewer said it “goes beyond the usual cliches about hippies,” as I’m sure many fairgoers would appreciate.

Available at Prozanki’s website.

Nominated by Thia Bell.

“Small Sacrifices” by Ann Rule

OK, maybe a true crime pick isn’t the most serene read for you to pick up — but this book, by legendary Pacific Northwest crime writer Ann Rule (“The Stranger Beside Me”), is a flashback to when the country had its eyes on Lane County for the trial of Diane Downs, a young mother accused of killing one of her three children and injuring the other two. Downs, now 70, was denied parole earlier in December. 

Available at Bookshop.

Books by Joseph Blakely

Oregon history author and Saturday Market regular Joseph Blakely has plenty of books on different characters and sagas in state history, and many are set in Lane County. 

Baseball fan? There’s “Eugene’s Civic Stadium: From Muddy Football Games to Professional Baseball,” his chronicle of the city’s signature historic stadium before it burned down in 2015. The book is included in the library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Or you can check out “The Bellfountain Giant Killers,” about a 1937 high school baseball team that became champions despite being the smallest team in the tournament (though the team was based in Benton County, it’s close enough to Lane that the inclusion stands here). 

Coastal visit aficionado? There’s “Lifting Oregon Out of the Mud: Building the Oregon Coast Highway” and its sequel, “Building Oregon’s Coast Highway 1936-1966: Straightening Curves and Uncorking Bottlenecks” about the development of the region.

Books by Blakely are available for sale through AbeBooks, ThriftBooks and Amazon.

Nominated by the author, Joseph Blakely. 

“The Story of Eugene,” by Lucia W. Moore, Nina W. McCornack and Gladys W. McCready

Originally published in 1949, this history of Eugene’s settlement and early development opens with a sweet author’s note ending with a touching paragraph that speaks to why we read history at all:

“If our story sketches Eugene’s past for the people of its present, if it brings the builders of that past to life for those who will build for the future, we are glad. They must be present, those people out of the past, for no man builds through a hundred years and is completely gone.” 

Builders of Eugene’s future, is this one on your list?

Available for sale at the Lane County History Museum. 

Nominated by Alice Parman.