Rating: 
Summary: Who proof-read the MS?
Review: I LOVE TONY HILLERMAN! AND I LOVE HIS BOOKS...ALL OF THEM! I know the following might sound trite, but I was astonished at the number of mistakes in this book! They appear to be the kind of error that a spell-checker doesn't pick up..."there" for "their" and the like. I had the feeling that the MS had never been proofed by a live person, and Mr. Hillerman should get after his editor. I found the errors very distracting. That said, I found the accounts of the war experiences and, especially, the adoptions, totally engrossing. I will share this book with other Hillerman fans of my acquaintance (and they are many). And I'll keep on reading his books as long as Mr. Hillerman continues to write them.
Rating: 
Summary: Gotta Love Tony
Review: I started reading Tony Hillerman books for my 11th grade English extra credit and I couldn't put them down! I recieved this book as a Christmas present and couldn't put it down! If you enjoy Tony Hillerman's books then you'll love his memoir. Its open, frank and honest about what it took before he became the author we know and love. After reading this I became determined to read any of his books I hadn't read yet. Also if you are familiar with his books you get little inside stories as to what it took him to get some of them published.
Rating:
Summary: The Life and Times of a Good 'ol Boy
Review: I was interested in this book because Hillerman is an accomplished writer, and I thought I would learn some about the craft. I learned much more about life and history and enjoyed all of it. Hillerman comes across as the salt of the earth, a young boy from rural Oklahoma who was truly without guile. He describes growing up in a small town and then being drafted and shipped off to war.I especially enjoyed his telling of his time as an infantryman during WWII. I have read WWII accounts by officers like Patton but never by a grunt. It was a new and enlightening perspective that I appreciated. It is always interesting to see/read how successful people become a success in their chosen fields, and Hillerman's account is interesting. In it he shares much history of the southwest. He does not share about writing his novels until he is well into his memoir. This is the story of his life and not just about writing. He eventually does share how he made the leap from journalist and college professor to novelist. This is a lighthearted tale of the life of a truly American writer. It requires patience and rewards it with an honest, entertaining story.
Rating:
Summary: The Life and Times of a Good 'ol Boy
Review: I was interested in this book because Hillerman is an accomplished writer, and I thought I would learn some about the craft. I learned much more about life and history and enjoyed all of it. Hillerman comes across as the salt of the earth, a young boy from rural Oklahoma who was truly without guile. He describes growing up in a small town and then being drafted and shipped off to war. I especially enjoyed his telling of his time as an infantryman during WWII. I have read WWII accounts by officers like Patton but never by a grunt. It was a new and enlightening perspective that I appreciated. It is always interesting to see/read how successful people become a success in their chosen fields, and Hillerman's account is interesting. In it he shares much history of the southwest. He does not share about writing his novels until he is well into his memoir. This is the story of his life and not just about writing. He eventually does share how he made the leap from journalist and college professor to novelist. This is a lighthearted tale of the life of a truly American writer. It requires patience and rewards it with an honest, entertaining story.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed? Not at all!
Review: I've enjoyed reading many of Tony Hillerman's mysteries which are more about understanding bits of pieces of Native American culture in the high mountain country of New Mexico and the interactions of individuals, a nice contrast to the fast-paced, urban-setting mysteries rife with sex, violence, and foul-mouthed bad guys of many mystery authors. His memoir will delight his many fans because the picture it paints is one of an unassuming person who grew up in the poverty of the Great Depression, did more than his share as an infantry grunt in WWII, and relates his post-war life with his beloved wife, Marie, with warmth and modesty. The book is plain and simply written and Hillerman's self-effacing demeanor sets it apart from the memoirs of other authors and artists who see the world only through the prism of their own egos. Hillerman does not reflect deeply on What It All Means, but merely relates in matter-of-fact fashion a journey through life. His infantry tour describing the conditions in the bitter winter of 1944-45 concludes that Army Intelligence was seldom correct, the West Pointers directing the war were often but dimly aware of what was really needed, e.g., winter garb for what turned out to be the snowiest winter in Western Europe in 40 years, and that confusion and ignorance were constant companions. His "grunt" experiences are comparable to those described in more detail, and with much more reflection, by Raymond Gantler in his fine book,"Roll Me Over" written soon after WWII, of similar situations and experiences. Hillerman's post-war experiences of university life, journalism, and, finally, his quest to be a novelist make up the final third of the memoir. Particularly interesting for budding novelists, and particularly those who have read his novels, are how incidents, individuals, and other miscellaneous happenings provide grist for what happens to Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in their adventures. In sum, Hillerman's account of his life is an honest, often moving account of an unassuming man who has realized his ambitions and cares to share a bit of this with others. A hard-to-put down book.
Rating:
Summary: A must for fans of Hillerman
Review: Those who love Tony Hillerman's books will reap rich rewards from plodding through the first few somewhat less interesting chapters. Stick with it; once Tony gets into the Army and WWII you will be whipping through those pages! Tony gives an intimate view of wartime experiences of a kind I have not read or heard from other veterans. There's no macho bravado here, just the cold hard facts with a little humor mixed in. And when you reach the history of Tony's writing career you won't want the book to end. This memoir gently and modestly gives an insight into the character of one of the best loved mystery writers in America.
Rating:
Summary: A must for fans of Hillerman
Review: Those who love Tony Hillerman's books will reap rich rewards from plodding through the first few somewhat less interesting chapters. Stick with it; once Tony gets into the Army and WWII you will be whipping through those pages! Tony gives an intimate view of wartime experiences of a kind I have not read or heard from other veterans. There's no macho bravado here, just the cold hard facts with a little humor mixed in. And when you reach the history of Tony's writing career you won't want the book to end. This memoir gently and modestly gives an insight into the character of one of the best loved mystery writers in America.
Rating: 
Summary: Ultimately Disappointing
Review: Tony Hillerman grew up in poverty during the Depression in rural Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, but as he himself points out, "when you're a kid you don't know you're deprived unless you see someone who isn't. That didn't happen around Sacred Heart." Apparently, growing up in Sacred Heart was relatively uninspiring, for the only thing Hillerman ever wrote based on his hometown was "the introduction to a scholarly book about one- and two-room schools in the Great Plains States." But it was there that he played war games with his boyhood friends, not realizing that the stage would soon be set for his participation in the real thing: the Second World War. In the meantime, he discovered books - literally - stacks of boxes of them in a storeroom at his local church. The books were left behind when the Benedictines relocated their school and Hillerman offered to list and organize them for the pastor, while borrowing many of them for reading. And when he had depleted that treasure trove, he moved on to books requested by mail from the state library. Describing leaving home for the first time to attend college, Hillerman says, "I was skinny, clumsy, slow of foot....had the sort of ears that made Ross Perot a favorite of cartoonists, a large and bony nose, and a tendency to do stupid things to minimize the risk of being considered a sissy by my peers." After one semester, he decided the academic life wasn't for him - a decision he would reconsider later in life; first using the GI Bill to study journalism at the University of Oklahoma, then attending the University of New Mexico at the age of 38 for graduate studies. In between, he worked for 15 years as a crime reporter, with the crimes he witnessed later providing sparks for his mystery novels. His Second World War experiences take up the bulk of this memoir, which is an honest one at that. As part of the army induction process, Hillerman details how he was called into a room for questioning by a captain. A naïve country boy at the time, he wasn't quite sure what the captain was getting at: "'Do you like boys?' the captain asked. I said sure, a lot of them. 'Do you like girls?'" When he was able to answer the captain's question about whether he had a girlfriend sufficiently, the interrogation ended. Whooping it up at a bar and grill before shipping out, Hillerman started with a Singapore Sling. By the end of the evening, the waiter was advising him the waffle he'd poured syrup on and was trying to cut with a knife and fork was a photograph in the menu. Landing in Marseilles, and soon embarking on his first mission, Hillerman says, "we were not yet experienced enough to have been as scared as we should have been." He should've been plenty scared. According to war historian Steven Ambroise, combat infantry is "the most extreme experience a human can endure." Hillerman adds to this, "It's something that transcends even politics." He had a near-death experience after stumbling onto an antipersonnel mine, complete with a "most vivid memory of....warmth, comfort, an incredible sense of peacefulness....[and] God, welcoming me." He returned to the States after the war and the fatigue caused by working as a chainman on a surveying crew helped him overcome "overpowering nausea," while "the dreams that came were simpler ones," compared to the horrific nightmares he had been experiencing since the war. Shortly thereafter, he was hired to deliver oil field equipment to an oil well on a Navajo reservation. While doing so, he witnessed an Enemy Way ceremony commissioned for a couple of Navajo boys returning from the war, "to cure them of the evil influences they've encountered, being involved with so much death, and to restore them to harmony with their people." Renamed The Blessing Way at an editor's insistence, his memory of the event would form what he considered to be the best section of his first novel by the same name. Hillerman is humble and modest when it comes to not taking credit for his accomplishments - among them, raising six children - but it is this very thing that would seem to be his downfall. He's the first to admit he learned to maintain emotional distance during the war, and while this quality may have served him well as a crime journalist and mystery writer, it fails us here in his memoir. The stories are good enough, but they lack emotion. Hillerman seems to have enjoyed the good experiences in his life, and he notes the unpleasant ones - but it's impossible to tell whether he loved or hated them. The result is a flat recitation of events and situations in a life without feeling. As memoirs go, Seldom Disappointed is ultimately disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Autobiography with feeling
Review: Tony Hillerman tells a touching story of a great writer from Brokaw's "greatest generation" and his rise to literary success and acclaim. His views of small town Oklahoma during the depression are sensitive and yet lively. His recounting of the struggles of a foot soldier in World War II are moving, especially to a fellow veteran of a different era. The true story is a window into the soul of a man who could create Jim Chee, and more importantly, Joe Leaphorn.
Rating:
Summary: SKIP TO THE GOOD PARTS
Review: Tony Hillerman writes a better novel than he does a memoir. Here, he starts at the beginning. Seldom Disappointed is a fond look back at a life he has obviously enjoyed. The early reminiscences were probably of more interest to Hillerman than they were to me, but I enjoyed the reflections on his career. He got lots of practice writing as a journalist, then went back college and did a a big study of literature. His rise as a novelist was quick, a "No," from his agent, before he sent a blind query off to a publisher--she read it, recommended a better last chapter and bought it. This was The Blessing Way which was soon nominated for best first novel by the Mystery Writers of America. And away he went.
| 
