Recently Read

1.  Cat Daddy by Jackson Galaxy - Memoir by the star of the "My Cat From Hell" reality show.  Interesting, and even though I've seen every episode of his show (several times), I still learned new things about cat behavior.  And drug abuse. (Galaxy is a former addict.)

2.  Okay, in trying to edit this post just now I lost a bunch of book entries, so, whoops.  We'll never know the identity of those missing books.

3.  A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman - Charming novel about a Swedish curmudgeon.  An enjoyable read.

4.  We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich - Memoir about living in the Adirondacks in the thirties.  I really love homesteading books, mostly for the descriptions about how HARD it is to do, but according to this woman, living out in the middle of nowhere was easy-peasy!  No big deal!  I got a good ways in, leafed forward and saw that there was another 200 pages to go, and noped it.  No hard feelings.

5.  Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson - Originally published in 1919, I'm sure this novel about small-town life was considered shocking in its day, but I found it a snooze.  Relegated it to the "bathroom book" for a while, but still couldn't finish.  Snore.

6.  Boy's Life by Robert McCammon - I recently re-read this one.  A coming-of-age novel set in the early 60's, this is one of my Top Five books.  Love, love, love.   Read it!

7.  The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff - This novel is basically two books, one set in the 1870s and one in modern-day, and they both sucked.  At over 500 pages, cutting it down to about 300 might have helped it, but ... nah. Stinkeroo.

8.  Revival by Stephen King - Novel about a shady faith healer.  Pretty short by King standards.  Good, but his quality has definitely declined over the years.  I wish he'd take a few years and write a really good book, because I know he can do it (see:  The Stand, The Long Walk), as opposed to cranking out a couple of mediocre books every year.

9.  All My Patients are Under the Bed by Louis Camuti - Old memoir by a vet who treated cats in NYC.  Hopelessly dated (in a way that James Herriot's books, of a similar vintage, manage not to be).  Mr. Camuti obviously felt that most of his clients (well, the owners of his clients) were blithering idiots.  It's a rare book about true-life cat stories that I can't get through, but this was one of them.

10.  Fierce by Barbara Rubinette Moss - Memoir.  I liked her earlier book, Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter, about growing up with an alcoholic father, but this one, about her tumultuous twenties, I found less engaging.  Still an interesting read.


So!  Not much to recommend there, except Boy's Life, which I cannot recommend highly enough.  What have you been reading lately?