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My Family and Other Hazards: A Memoir
Author:
Melby, June
Biographee:
Melby, June
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Class:
Biography
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: GV987
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ISBN-13: 9780805098310
LCCN: 2013048857
Imprint: Henry Holt & Company
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Pub Date: 07/08/2014
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $25.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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300 pages ; 22 cm
H 8.47",
W 5.57",
D 1.12",
0.88 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Literature, American
Family Life
Biography, Individual
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BISAC Subjects: |
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional
HUMOR / Marriage & Family
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LC Subjects:
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural Heritage
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
HUMOR / Topic / Marriage & Family
Melby, June
Melby, June, Childhood and youth
Melby, June, Family
Miniature golf, Wisconsin, Waupaca
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| Annotations |
| Publisher Annotations | 03/28/2014 |
| When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In 'My Family and Other Hazards,' Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family's quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America's favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one's creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here-snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love. Melby's relationship with the course is love-hate from the beginning, given the summer's freedom it robs her of, but when her parents decide to sell the course years later, her panicked reaction surprises even her. Now an adult living in Hollywood, having flown the Midwest long ago, she flies back to the course to help run it before the sale goes through, wondering if she should try to stop it. As the clock ticks, she reflects on what the course meant to her both as a child and an adult, the simpler era that it represents, and the particular pains of losing your childhood home, even years after you've left it. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Booklist | 06/01/2014 |
| When June Melby was 10 years old, her parents bought a miniature golf course. Every summer after that, the family of five would trek from Iowa to their summer home (and the site of the course) in Wisconsin's Chain o' Lakes. As her parents prepare to sell the place after 30 years, Melby takes the reader on a tour of the lovingly handmade course, corny hazard by corny hazard, recounting their work amid the bittersweet pangs of bidding this longtime home farewell. After moving to California in search of fame and working for a time as a stand-up comedian, Melby recalls her childhood with gentle humor. This is a light and nostalgic read for those who want to travel back to bug-bitten summer days when nothing seemed more wondrous than a perfectly frothy puff of cotton candy after a hard-fought game of miniature golf. It is, after all, a whimsical game, and though the maintenance work may have been tedious and the demanding tourists tiresome, at the end of the day there was the humble satisfaction of a job well done. Thoreson, Bridget. 304p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 07/01/2014 |
| The story of a girl, her family and the miniature golf course they owned.Miniature golf--or "putt-putt," depending on where you're playing--is one of those activities that can be hard to pigeonhole. It's not quite a sport, per se, but it does have a professional association (the USPMGA, of course)--i.e., more than a game but not quite at the same level as bowling. Without a doubt, though, it is a family pastime, a place to take children on the weekend--until your family buys a miniature golf course, and then it's your job. At age 10, Melby found herself thrilled to hear her father ask if they'd like to buy Tom Thumb Miniature Golf in Waupaca, Wisconsin. As is the case with many such amusement places, it's one thing to visit them for a round of putt-putt; it's another thing entirely to be personally involved with the upkeep of the course, the management of the customers (who don't always recognize where the course ends and the owner's personal residence begins), and the birds with their nests and their offspring and their cavalier approach to waste management. Melby has written for National Lampoon and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, which is a good indicator of the approach she takes in this witty memoir. Starting with a dryly cautionary few pages advising readers to never go to Wisconsin, each chapter is dedicated to a hole on the course. As the family goes from stumbling new entrepreneurs, the former owner having left no useful instructions, to fairly successful small-business owners, Melby and her siblings grow up.The ending of the book--the kids grown, the parents' move to sell the course--leaves a wistful feeling, but like mini-golf itself, the story is a lot of fun and enjoyable to navigate. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 04/14/2014 |
| Hazards are the obstacles artfully placed on the 18 holes of a miniature golf course to challenge the players, and in her endearing memoir of her summers helping her parents run the Tom Thumb Miniature Golf in Wisconsin, former comedienne and first-time author Melby cleverly arranges her chapters according to the hazards on their own course. The Rocket, the Outhouse, the One with the Hill in the Middle, the Barrels: these form the enchanting themes of her summers since age 10, when her schoolteacher parents first bought the Tom Thumb and the family made their initial trek right after school closed from their home in Iowa to the chilly, lovely northern Bass Lake to refurbish, clean, and run the golf course for the summer tourists. It required constant toil from all the family members, including Melby and her two sisters, one older, one younger; yet the ceaseless work, involving scraping, painting, raking, and repairing of the motors that ran the hazards, was a true labor of love, since the parents undercharged, doted on the customers, and never seemed to make a profit. Yet after 30 years of making popcorn, sno-cones, and cotton candy, in July 2003, Melby's aging parents were ready to sell and move on, instigating an outpouring of tender, witty memories by Melby, now 40, having moved to Los Angeles and tried heroically to ply her craft as a stand-up comic. Melby showcases her corny, unaffected, Midwestern humor in this inspired work. (July). 304p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780805098310,dl.it[0].title
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