BY: ABE
Nah, oba, I heard from Pete at the coffee shop above the gas station that there’s yet another Miriam Toews book yet. What’s it called? A Blitz that is Not Dutch? Something like that. Don’t know where Pete finds out about such things. Seems a little suspicious to me, but I’ve always had my doubts about Pete. Didn’t get baptized until he was 20-something. Smokes cigarettes and everything.
Anyway, so Pete told me this Toews woman in Toronto is writing about us Mannanites again. Even mentions Schteinback. So he says, anyway. Jauma lied! How many books does one mejal even need to write yet? Sure, she doesn’t have as many as Franklin W. Dixon, but at least those were wholesome. Whatever happened to those Harder Boys, anyway? Now that was some good reading. Solving mysteries and what not. Or better yet Danny Orlis. He solved mysteries and won souls yet, too!
I can’t figure it out about those Mannanite writers, always trying to make us look bad. Just lies on top of lies. I don’t know how they do it, but even when they’re telling the truth it’s full of lies.
Pete says it’s actually a pretty good book. Nah, jung, a good Miriam Toews book? It doesn’t give such. Besides, you can’t trust a man like that. A “book reader,” we call them. The more educated, the more mixed up. Pete even went to that Bible school on the edge of town. Only 25 minutes to the city the sign says. That’s 25 minutes too close if you ask me.
Well that’s Pete for you. All he knows is books. He doesn’t know a thing about catching chickens or anything, which is actually pretty easy, if you know what you’re doing. Catching chickens is like catching lies in Miriam Toews books. It’s pitch dark, noisy, and diewel! there are a lot of feathers. Anyways, Pete’s book reading will get him in trouble with the elders soon enough.
But he’s not going to get me involved in that mess. “Nah, Abe, maybe you should read it yourself,” he says, but I wouldn’t be the Schteinback Post’s top book reviewer if I actually read the books, now would I? I just go by whatever the pastor and the gossip tells me. And they’re up in arms about it. I mean, Mannanites don’t even bare arms and yet still somehow the whole town is up in arms about it. It must be quite the book to do that.
They say it’s all about “why does she write books yet?” but, yeah, good question. I don’t know why anyone does. Or reads them. Nothing good ever came from that. Except, like I say, for the Harder Boys and maybe the Nancy Dueck books for the girls. Anyway, if you want my opinion, there are better things to occupy your time than reading and reading yet. I say stick to the knipsbrat.
A Truce That Is Not Peace – 0 roll kuchens out of 5.