J. Ryan Stradal
Goodreads Author
Born
in Waconia, Minnesota, The United States
Website
Twitter
Member Since
September 2008
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/jryanstradal
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
48 editions
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published
2015
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The Lager Queen of Minnesota
12 editions
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published
2019
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Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
6 editions
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published
2023
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All About Lulu: A Novel
by
20 editions
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published
2008
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California Prose Directory 2014: New Writing from The Golden State
2 editions
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published
2014
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Critically Acclaimed
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Die Geheimnisse der Küche des Mittleren Westens (detebe)
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Related News
The United States of America is an awfully big place. Sensibly, we chopped it into states a long time ago. This simplifies...
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“After decades away from the Midwest, she’d forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic.”
― Kitchens of the Great Midwest
― Kitchens of the Great Midwest
“When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now.”
― Kitchens of the Great Midwest
― Kitchens of the Great Midwest
“When you see a man falling off a ladder above you, Edith believed, you don't envision your arms breaking. You just hold them out.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
Polls
Vote for one book for September 2015
The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing
by Mira JacobSpanning India in the 70s to New Mexico in the 80s to Seattle in the 90s, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing is a winning, irreverent debut novel about a family wrestling with its future and its past.
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
Jenny NordbergAn investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girl
in Afghanistan
in Afghanistan
American Wife
by Curtis SittenfeldIn Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.
Circling the Sun
by Paula McLainPaula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.
Eight Hundred Grapes
by Laura DaveGrowing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.
Lila
by Marilynne RobinsonLila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security.
The Book of Speculation
by Erika SwylerA sweeping and captivating debut novel about a young librarian who is sent a mysterious old book, inscribed with his grandmother's name. What is the book's connection to his family?
The Marriage of Opposites
by Alice HoffmanFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro; the Father of Impressionism.
The Year of Necessary Lies
by Kris RadishOne amazing year in a remarkable woman¹s life journey becomes the inspiration for generations when she takes a huge risk, follows her heart, embraces forbidden love, and unwittingly becomes the champion of a winged world that is on the brink of extinction.
Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life
by Tom RobbinsIn Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, weaving together stories of his unconventional life–from his Appalachian childhood to his globe-trotting adventures–told in his unique voice, which combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become, over the course of half a century, a poet interruptus, a soldier, a meteorologist, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counterculture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters
Any Human Heart
by William BoydLogan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome chronicling "my personal rollercoaster"--or rather, "not so much a rollercoaster", but a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child." From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef executive and his Uraguayan secretary, through his years at a Norfolk public school and Oxford, Mountstuart traces his haphazard development as a writer. Early and easy success is succeeded by a long half-century of mediocrity, disappointments and setbacks, both personal and professional, leading him to multiple failed marriages, internment, alcoholism and abject poverty.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
by J. Ryan StradalKitchens of the Great Midwest, about a young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate who becomes the iconic chef behind the country’s most coveted dinner reservation, is the summer’s most hotly-anticipated debut.
The Ambassador's Wife
by Jennifer SteilFrom a real-life ambassador's wife comes a harrowing novel about the kidnapping of an American woman in the Middle East and the heartbreaking choices she and her husband each must make in the hope of being reunited.
15 total votes
Topics Mentioning This Author
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2015: Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE POSTS) | 3267 | 590 | Nov 30, 2015 09:01PM | |
A Million More Pages: Holiday Shows - Karen Michele (S) | 3 | 8 | Dec 06, 2015 12:24PM | |
Aussie Readers: **Spring Reading Challenge - 1/9/15 - 30/11/15** | 577 | 202 | Dec 08, 2015 08:59PM | |
2024 Reading Chal...: Maiko's 2015 Reading Challenges Tracker | 36 | 209 | Dec 20, 2015 02:22AM | |
The Life of a Boo...: Maiko's Individual Reading Goals 2015 | 282 | 150 | Dec 29, 2015 12:51PM | |
2024 Reading Chal...: Maiko's Individual Reading Challenge 2015 (200) | 242 | 222 | Dec 29, 2015 01:25PM |
“Well, the vast majority of people don't steal to get ahead. A lot of people work their way up from nothing without stealing."
"I don't think a lot of people work their way up from nothing, ever. People like you want to believe it happens all the time. But it really doesn't.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
"I don't think a lot of people work their way up from nothing, ever. People like you want to believe it happens all the time. But it really doesn't.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
“Why? So you can still qualify for assistance? Your family is gaming the system?"
"No." Diana had always hated when people said this about her family. The bosses who made her dad list a payroll company as his employer, they gamed the system. The assholes who convinced her parents to take out both a second mortgage and a HELOC in 2006 gamed the system. The employers who would never give Edith enough hours for benefits gamed the system. But ask a lot of people, and they'd tell you it's people like her grandma who game the system. They'd tell you that an old woman who's worked hard every day of her life and still struggles to get by is a malignant vacuum for their personal tax dollars, and a blight on their lives as free Americans. "We're just trying to live.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
"No." Diana had always hated when people said this about her family. The bosses who made her dad list a payroll company as his employer, they gamed the system. The assholes who convinced her parents to take out both a second mortgage and a HELOC in 2006 gamed the system. The employers who would never give Edith enough hours for benefits gamed the system. But ask a lot of people, and they'd tell you it's people like her grandma who game the system. They'd tell you that an old woman who's worked hard every day of her life and still struggles to get by is a malignant vacuum for their personal tax dollars, and a blight on their lives as free Americans. "We're just trying to live.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
“Money allows people to survive their mistakes, she knew from having observed that phenomenon from a distance, and people like her were fucked.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
“When you see a man falling off a ladder above you, Edith believed, you don't envision your arms breaking. You just hold them out.”
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota
― The Lager Queen of Minnesota