This first collection of stories by a young writer is a stellar performance of expression and will. Pam Houston's stories are strong, powerful, and fun. She has been compared to Hemingway with her straightforward narrative style and depiction of the outdoors.

Reading her stories is like a breath of fresh mountain air, or riding across the prairie full gallop on a horse, or white water rafting down a perilous spring runoff swollen river. With twelve stories in all, she explores the perils of relationships with men and women, nature, and animals. Her titles, "Highwater", "What Shock Heard", "Symphony", and the like, all explore the complex cacophony of living in America in the nineties. Her sentences are tight and frank. She encapsulates bits of knowledge in one phrase.

Throughout "How to Talk to a Hunter" she masterfully uses fragments to compose a narrative. She uses the course of a relationship portrayed through talks with a best female friend, talks with a best male friend, and talks with herself. Houston uses the interpolative device hailing the reader with the "you" statement. Particularly in the mistakes we all have made and we should have learned from. The narrator reminds herself of things, for instance: "This is what you learned in college: A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the conditions of desiring", or "This is what you learned in graduate school: In every assumption is contained the possibility of its opposite." The men are often clever in their own way and described as such. Here "the hunter will talk about spring in Hawaii, summer in Alaska. The man who says he was always better at math will form the sentences so carefully it will be impossible to tell if you are included in these plans." This same man who claims "he's not so good with words will manage to say eight things about his friend without using a gender-determining pronoun." Houston portrays men who are loveable, yet perhaps not dependable, wild and strong, men who the reader can sympathise with and understand why the narrator is in love with them. She involves her women in the same way.

Her heroines are smart, but sometimes use poor judgement. In "Selway" the narrator is conceding to run a rapid stream with her boyfriend Jack, even through the river has claimed a young life the day before and was up another few feet. She says to herself, and the readers, "I stuck my foot in the water and it went numb in about ten seconds. I've been to four years of college and I should know better, but I lose it when he calls me baby." These heroines, brassy and daring, encompass the new woman, the Nike "Just Do It" group.

During "Jackson is Only One of My Dogs", the heroine remarks that she has broken five major bones in her body. She states that she did drink enough milk as a child, she denies that she has brittle bones or that her boyfriend was the reason. She just reckons that the accidents are a result of her life-style. She believes it is "the sports I push myself into, whitewater rafting and stadium show jumping and backcountry skiing, the kinds of good times broken bones are made of." She tells the reader that "the only list that's longer than the things I've done is the list of things I've yet to do: kayak, hang glide, parachute", and she means to do them all.

In "Blizzard Under Blue Sky", which perhaps is the most poetic and dazzling, the young woman is diagnosed as clinically depressed. She claims it was a result of "work that wasn't getting done, bills that weren't getting paid, and a man I'd given my heart to weekending in the desert with his ex." Instead of drugs and psychotherapy she turns to nature to heal her wounds, to "fix her machine." She takes off with her two dogs and spends the night in a snow cave, she pushes herself to her limits on the cross country skis, she talks to her dogs, and in the end, she finds what she is looking for, Joy.

Each of the short stories in this book found a common link in my life. I am recently divorced from my last "Cowboy Weakness", and her hunting stories really hit home for me. My ex is both a cowboy and a redneck! I also found that Pam knows how to communicate her stories in a way that actually involves the reader, and gives them a sense of participation in it. Definetly a must have book for the library of any lady that has found herself in love with the "Cowboy" type of man!

This book contains 20 essays of travels in the wilderness written by some of the best outdoors writers of today (including Tim Cahill of Outdoor Magazine who has written a number of excellent books of his own). At the end of each essay is a section of notes for how to get to the places described, what you will need, what to check out while you are there, and other kinds of information you can use to make the trip yourself. The essays are well written and very entertaining for armchair travelers and actual adventurers alike. It is definitely the next best thing to being there.

I grew up with my Grandmother, Harriet Backus, telling stories about her life in the mining camps. She always wanted to see her stories in print, and finally wrote them down and published the book. History professors have used this personal narrative as a source for their work,and one told me everything he checked in the book proved to be historically accurate; we knew Grandma had a perfect memory! My mother, Harriet, is in the book, and there is a picture of her as a little girl. She is here with me at Thanksgiving, 1998, and I was able to show her this advertisement for her mother's book on the internet. She was thrilled! She's 89 and remembers some of the stories. The book still sells well, especially in Telluride and Leadville. I'd welcome questions or comments via the internet.

...

My grandmother, Harriet Fish Backus, wrote Tomboy Bride. My mother was born in 1909 in Telluride, after her mother came down to the "town" from the Tomboy Gold mine, 2000 feet above Telluride, to give birth to her first child. There are several photos of my mom as a young girl in the book. She typed several early editions of the book on a manual typewriter before it was published. Harriet Fish Backus was a remarkable woman and the afterword that appears in the new version of this book tells about her life after the book. It is still an inspiring story and our family enjoys hearing from interested readers from all over the world.

I am writing this review with my mother, Harriet Walton, who is the daughter of Harriet Fish Backus, author of Tomboy Bride. Harriet was born in 1909 in Telluride, after her mother came down to the "town" from the Tomboy Gold mine, 2000 feet above Telluride, to give birth to her first child. There are several photos of Harriet as a young girl in the book. She typed several early editions of the book for her mother before it was published, on an old manual typewriter. Harriet Fish Backus, was a remarkable woman and the afterword that appears in the new version of this book tells about her life after the book. It is still an inspiring story and our family enjoys hearing from interested readers from all over the world. You can e-mail us at soccerrgw@aol.com

Although I can understand why this book is so popular, as it is well written, I found it depressing and somewhat disappointing. This book came highly recommended to me and promised to be an insightful and witty commentary about relationships between men and women. Each of the stories were well written and a smooth and interesting read, but I found that they were all very similar in tone and character. The women, I found, were portrayed universally as outdoorsy and physically strong, but emotionally wishy- washy and victimized. It just seemed to me to be a typical portrayal of women's weaknesses, but that is what the title says...

My friends recommended this book to me, and I was really prepared to LOVE it. But, as much fun as it is to read these stories over a weekend, by Sunday night, I found myself disappointed with the whole sort of flat/one sided depiction of relationships. Yes, I can relate to the line, "I've always had this thing for cowboys, maybe because I was born in New Jersey. But a real cowboy is hard to find these days, even in the West." And as someone who grew up in Connecticut and moved West, I agree that there's a truth to the concept of a western type of guy that you don't find on the East coast. I thought this book would be about that difference. But after about 4 stories, all these men start to sound the same-- and no different from the wrong men anywhere. Charming, evasive, manipulative, self-centered. So it turns out Houston isn't writing about cowboys--guys who are truly passionate about the outdoor life and adventure. This book, it turns out, is about the wrong guy, over and over! And I find that boring.

Also-- I don't know, maybe it's the guys Pam Houston knows.... but in my experience, many "bad boys" have a sensitive, decent side to them... which comes through in a pinch. The guys in these stories, are just totally stereotypical immature womanizers through and through, and that doesn't really ring true to me. I also found myself getting impatient with the narrator, who seems very similar in each story. Initially, she seems independent and gutsy, but soon you notice that her complete energy and thought is taken up with "the care and feeding of the man." And in many stories, she is a victim. Does she really love adventure, or is she just trying to keep up with these men and be what they want her to be?

The stories are really well written and the premise intriguing, but don't think this book offers an accurate depiction of either cowboys or the women who are attracted to them. It's really about a woman who needs to figure out why she wants to hang around men who are not trustworthy or respectful of her.

A book of short stories by a woman in her late twenties who is now getting a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. Born in New Jersey, Ms. Houston loves the West. She has worked as a river and hunting guide. She writes about her relation ships with nature and the men, and women, she finds out there. These stories are literary and insightful. I encourage you to read them. Ms. Houston writes with a startling self awareness. She is a smart, thoughtful woman who goes into the wilderness to think about love. To my way of thinking, she asks the right questions. Of this book, one reviewer said: "These are the stories that might have emerged had an intelligent woman followed Hemingway around." I am not sure Hemingway could have kept up. Colin Carroll

I read this book over twenty-five years ago in my mother's collection of books that she bought as a young adult. Of all my mother's books, this one remains a vivid impression. Val gains depths the reader would not expect from the first shallow impression. Her husband's alcoholism and moral weakness are hard subjects for the early-century audience that Bower handles with a verity not often encountered. Yet my deepest etched memory is the love between Val and the hard-working honest cowboy she shuns at the first; he is impressed by her bravery alone in the cabin and her willingness to work hard to make a home in a shack when she expected a solid house, he wants to help her, he watches her struggle and transform, he realizes her husband is not worthy of her and he wants her for himself. Eventually he loves her with the kind of love she needs. This I remember to this day. The unexpected knight who replaces the prince of soft gold; the princess who realizes the difference between glitter and iron. These archetypes B.M. Bower worked with long before "archetypes" became a catch-word. She was writing good stories, better than good stories, and she deserves to remain in print based on this book alone. (Although the later Flying U book about the young man who goes to the rodeo to prove he's as much of a hero as his "wild west" father and uncles were is also as good).

If you came here looking for something erotic, look elsewhere. Amazingly, Veronique Vial takes an inherently sexy idea and manages to neuter it. And I don't think it shows undue prurient interest on my part to have expected something sexy from these photographs of (sometimes) gorgeous men going about their morning business. We get them looking tired, cranky, disheveled and ponderous, but not sexy. We get them making coffee and brushing their teeth and eating their eggs, but damnit, we don't get them sexy. We even get some of them still in bed and awaking from sleep, but ... well, you guessed it. (True--one of Dial's subjects greeted her at the door nude and with a full erection; the ensuing shot of him in bed -- presumably still aroused -- with a comforter covering his excitement is one of this book's tackiest, most gratuitous entries. The photographer thinks it's "funny now.")

So even if I'm a victim of my own salacious expectations, a better title for this book would have been "Fully Clothed Men Eating Their Breakfast With Wet Hair" or "Middle-Aged and Old Men in Their Bathrobes and Boxers Jonesing for Coffee." A celebration of the male body this is not. One gets the sense that the subjects -- young and older -- would have been willing to play, willing to expose more of themselves both spiritually and corporeally, but that there was an overall failure of nerve on the photographer's part. One gets the sense that she is the prude, not her subjects. And that prudishness or reserve or de-eroticization is all that comes through in the finished work. It's like you're looking for something that should be there and just isn't.

The book is more reminiscent of a Life magazine photo essay than anything by Bruce Weber -- and that's a major deficit for this subject matter. Maybe a male photographer -- straight or gay -- would have been more up to the task. That these women -- who had access to Brendan Fraser and Edward Burns with their guards down -- could so botch the job is a real shame.

Editorially, the book's a disaster. Pam Houston, who wrote the Introduction, gives a me-centric account of her own involvement in the project -- as if anyone cares. Whoever wrote the text accompanying the photos expresses awe when anyone -- including Frenchmen! -- speak to her in "perfect French." The subjects are described one too many times as being "warm." Unknown artists or movie producers or even gardeners are barely identified along with famous movie stars and aged potentates like Bill Blass and Robert Altman.

All in all, a technically accomplished waste that I myself probably won't even flip through again. Do I sound bitter? I am. I feel cheated.

I bought this book looking for more of the wisdom I had found in other Pam Houston novels, accompanied with pictures. Instead, I found a wonderfully pretty book of black and white photos of men, with a little narritive to accompany them. The men in these pictures are mostly people who I haven't heard of: not-yet-famous actors, designers, etc. The few "famous" men are indeed charming in their morning faces. The photographs are well done and very candid. However...

I wanted words. I wanted text. In this book I enjoyed very much what amounted to a short story by Houston and the dialogue between Houston and Vial. I also enjoyed the asides by Vial in describing the situations in which she phographed some of the men. It was typical Houston storytelling and candid thoughts by Vial.

In short, this pictorial is a very good coffee table book. It is beautiful. However, if you are searching for another "Cowboys Are My Weakness" you should look to something by Melissa Banks or another Houston novel. The pictures are very good, but how long can you observe another disheveled man?

These are wonderful pictures taken by a French female photographer of famous men before 10 am in the morning. These are not just actors but men famous for other reasons as well. She doesn't date the pictures and I believe some of them are from quite a few years back but that is not a detraction. Some of the men are wide awake and already working but many are not. They are all informal, to say the least! I don't like the companion book, Women Before Ten A.M., nearly as well but a man might prefer that one. The binding on this large paperback hasn't held up well but, even knowing that, I would still get it for the contents.

It would be more of a disappointment to read Houston's second collection of stories and discover that it was just like the first -- though the first, "Cowboys are My Weakness" is so very good. It's been a few years, Houston is older, and it seems more introspective, less dreamy. I expected to snuggle down and devour this book as I did the first but, in fact, this book caused me to put it down several times, step away from it, let her words and images sink in. Lucy, the protagonist throughout the book, is lost, scared, scarred, and just a general mess. I ended up pulling for her sad dog more than Lucy or any other character. I wonder what Houston's got planned for number 3 but I hope it has a large dose of wild water, starry skies, rugged men, and strong women because I surely missed all those things this go around.

There are some things in life that come around at the right moment. Call it fate or luck, this book is one of those things. This is the first Pam Houston book that I've read, so I don't have "Cowboys..." to compare against. Held on it's own merits, I found "Waltzing..." to be a strong yet convincing collection of stories. Lucy O'Roarke is the imperfect heroine that reminds us that failure IS an option (over and over again), but learning from these many life experiences is the ultimate goal. Thanks, I needed that.

Pam Houston once again has spun a web of collected stories encircling the life of of our heroine; this time, it's Lucy, photographer, hunter of the perfect emotionally available man, realistic woman-with-issues that we can all identify with. Filled with rich metaphors and descriptive detail, this collection of related stories is fun to read and leaves the reader emotionally satisfied when he or she comes full circle by the end of the book. I highly recommend this book as great summer reading! Enjoy.

A rambling collection of essays that indeed reveal much about the author of her quirky books. Provides insight into who she is, why she would risk life and limb just to prove a point, how she defines 'home,' her relationships with men and dogs and trucks...
Goes down easy.

Pam Houston has a wise, kind voice and a great understanding of what makes people fall in love with the wild places that she explores and tests herself in. She's the kind of person you read about and wish for as a friend -- especially if you like big mountains, bold adventures and brave dogs. This is a great book for those knarla river guides out there, or just about any woman with a love of the outdoors who wants a little inspiration and insight into their own journeys.

I have read, re-read, and often recommended Pam Houston's book "Cowboys Are My Weakness," so it was with a shudder of anticipation that I found her newest book "A Little More About Me" on the table at my local bookseller. Sure, this book is about her (for those other reviewers who missed the point...). But the book manages to be about her, and also about me, and countless other women as well. Through the course of rich and vivid descriptions of her adventures - essays that so often read like long poems - I realized that (once again) Houston is holding a mirror up to womankind and challenging us to recognize the quirks and patterns that have driven us throughout history. Houston's attraction to danger, her need to please men who prove to be inconsequential, her celebration of female friendship and fascination with the inner workings of the opposite sex, and her desire to detail every meal cooked and eaten at trail's end all feel familiar to me. I loved "In the Company of Fishermen". It made me wish I could be there, fishing alongside them. I read it out loud to my three-year-old son, who remained mesmerized to the end. I was glad to be able to give him a great story about men who remain friends, about a brave woman, and to show him that fishermen can be poets, and the reverse as well. Outside her adventures, Houston's writing is sprinkled with references to so many of my favorite things - movies, books, songs, and foods - that it makes it hard NOT to take her writing personally. To the reader looking for a simple adventure tale: Houston's self-disclosure will make you uncomfortable, guaranteed. Even though I'm interested in what makes Houston tick, I found myself a little unnerved by her descriptions of her childhood. This took the form of the sort of discomfort one feels when a co-worker tells you more than you need to know about their home life. I was stunned her find her chapter detailing her weight and body issues, and yet by the end I was as delighted as I would be if Self magazine called me up tomorrow to tell me I had the ideal body type for the new millennium and asked me to share my diet and exercise secrets (unlikely). So much of this rang true and hit home like a very pointed arrow. Parts of this book made me sorry for Houston and the things she has experienced, but I never felt pity, just the sort of sorry understanding one has for a friend who pulled the short straw and still persevered. At the end I wished I could meet Houston, spend some time with her, maybe drink a little tequila and invite her to help me climb Shasta on my 40th birthday. But realistically, I'm looking for a simple, smooth, safe climb with a great view - no search parties involved. I look forward to more of Houston's writing and will seek out her essays in periodicals as well. She manages to take me away from my own life (differenly colored than hers, and not nearly as dangerous) and still, somehow, bring me home. This was a colorful, introspective (okay, say it - self-indulgent) read that I really enjoyed. However, I suspect it is the sort of book an author only gets away with once.

It's an obscure topic; I think Pam Houston my have just sent research she did for her doctoral thesis off to her publisher and said, "that's my next book." But I found some great writing in this collection and have used it to steer me toward some great writers. Pam Houston is passionate about writing and the outdoors. She's worked has a hunting guide, so her opinions carry weight. This is a collection of writers she found useful and I liked reading it. It's not however a first-class book. I got so annoyed with sloppy copy editing I began adding proofreader's marks in the margins. But if you have strong opinions on hunting you might learn something new from the collection. And if you are a complete Pam Houston addict, you'll want to add this to your collection.