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New York Times Book Review – October 10, 2006 --
Manhattan Transfer by EVE CONANT -- In the age of Botox and “60
is the new 40” hype, few of us seem to be thinking of the future in
finite terms. But just shy of her 45th birthday, Katherine Lanpher
does the math. She’s “as Midwestern as weak coffee” but she’s been
offered a job in Manhattan with the fledgling radio network Air
America. Calculating that she’s got one, maybe two shots left at
personal transformation, she takes the leap. Her first months
provide a dash of Beverly Hillbilly-meets-Broadway cliché, but
Lanpher doesn’t dwell too long on the learning curve of bribing
building superintendents: “You would think I had moved to some
distant Eastern European country before the fall of the Iron
Curtain.” Most of her observations are funny and subtly
embarrassing; it turns out you don’t have to tip the cable guy, and
wearing black does make one feel “somehow better protected.” ...
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Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) -- December 1,
2006 -- Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move -- By Sandra
Fish, Special to the News -- Book in a nutshell: The story line is
simple: Midwestern girl leaves her comfortable home for a new, risky
job on the national scene and the streets of Manhattan. But here's
the twist: It all happened at age 44.
Lanpher's memoir of learning to love New York City encompasses far
more than just her big leap from Minnesota Public Radio to Al
Franken's left-leaning Air America Radio talk show. She recollects a
childhood in a tight-knit Mid-western town as she embarks on finding
her place in the ultimate metropolis. She recounts her conversion to
feminism in sixth grade; her joy at getting married; her sorrowful
acceptance...
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People Magazine – October 16, 2006 – Critic’s
Choice – Four Stars -- Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis by
Katherine Lanpher -- By Bethanne Patrick -- Turns out, I like to
leap," Lanpher confesses in "Flying Lessons," an essay about trapeze
instruction that opens this spirited collection. Lanpher, a
freelance journalist, seems almost breezy about her own bravery. Her
wry pieces are inspired by her '04 move to Manhattan on, yes, a Leap
Day, when she leaves her native Minnesota to join Al Franken as
cohost on Air America Network. Behind her are a successful career at
the St. Paul Pioneer Press...
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Publishers Weekly – Starred Review – June 12, 2006
-- Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move --
KATHERINE LANPHER. Springboard, $23.99 (224p) ISBN 0-8212-5830-3 -- Lanpher,
a journalist, spins cultural vertigo into comedy after forsaking her native
Midwest for New York in 2004, at age 44, to cohost Al Franken’s radio show
on Air America—a gig that demands the good-natured wit and
epigrammatic aplomb on display here. “I came of middle-age in
Manhattan,” she writes, a city in constant flux that strikes her as
a fitting spot to undergo her own transitions. Recently divorced and
largely friendless, she readily...
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Kirkus – June 15, 2006 -- Lanpher, Katherine -
Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis -- Essays by a
displaced over-40 divorcee with deep Midwestern roots who moves to
Manhattan.
Onetime Minnesota Public Radio reporter Lanpher decided as far back
as her teens that she would never live in New York because "I didn't
want to pay the price." The point of reference: a college
acquaintance with an intimidating Park Avenue address who liked to
boast that "she had her own shrink." Nonetheless, the day came:
Lanpher was offered the job of co-host of Al Franken's Air America
radio show and – on a leap day, Feb 29th – made the jump, renting
out her beloved, cozy house in Saint Paul and...
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