Recently Read

Hi everybody!  Long time no see!  I thought I'd pop by with a Recently Read.   As usual, read 'em if you wanna.

1.  Nomads of a Desert City by Barbara Seyda - Nonfiction; vignettes of homeless people in Tuscon.  Told in their own words, these stories are striking.  A quick read that will stay in your mind afterward.

2.  Winds of Skilak by Bonnie Rose Ward - Memoir of homesteading in Alaska in the 1980s.  Lots of details and very interesting.

3. Southern Discomfort by Tena Clark - Memoir of a young woman growing up in the South in the 60s.  Really good. I grew up in the 60s, too, and this book really brought home just how entrenched racism was in the South back then.   But the book's not "just" about racism - it's about dealing with family nutcases, and trying to find your footing when you're different from those around you.

4. The Once and Future King by T.H. White - Described as a "fantasy classic" in the vein of The Hobbit, etc., I was plugging along on this one until a scene describing the brutal death of a cat and then I noped noped noped right out. Did not finish.

5.  City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - I didn't realize who the author was until I took it home from the library.  Unfortunately, I find the author of  "Eat, Pray, Love" to be absolutely insufferable, so I only got far enough in this one to see that she was basically working from a genre checklist, and put it aside. Did not finish.

6. The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez - Memoir of growing up poor in a Texas border town in the 70s and 80s.  Good.

7.  Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts - Novel about the writing of the Wizard and Oz and, years later, the making of the movie.  Very good - I really enjoyed it.

8.  The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora - Novel about two high school friends, one famous and one unbalanced, and what happens when they meet again in adulthood.  This got good reviews so I gave it a shot.  An okay read.

9.  City of Flickering Light by Juliette Fay.  This was a historical novel about Hollywood in the 1920s by the author of The Tumbling Turner Sisters.  I enjoyed it a lot; a fast-paced, light read.

10.  The Able McLaughlins - Pulitzer-prize winning novel from the 20s about early settlers in the midwest.  Right up my alley, but it just seemed awfully dated.  Did not finish.

11.  Freeman by Leonard Pitts, Jr.  - Novel by the noted columnist about the aftereffects of the Civil War on former slaves and an abolitionist.  Involving and good.

12.  All the Forgivenesses by Elizabeth Hardinger - Novel about growing up extremely poor in Kentucky.  Very good.

13.  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline - Historical novel about the childhood of a little girl placed on an orphan train in the late 1800s.  Good.

14.  Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell - Novel about a teen traveling on a river after events break up her family.  Started out strong, but became more improbable and less interesting as it went along.  Did not finish.

15.  Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens.  The first half of this novel was fabulous, detailing a young woman growing up wild in North Carolina marshland.  But then it turned into a poorly-dialogued murder mystery, and I lost interest.  Did not finish.

16.  One Day by Gene Weingarten - Nonfiction consisting of short vignettes about defining moments in people's lives.  I LOVED I Thought My Father Was God by Paul Auster, which had a similar premise, but unfortunately One Day had a very strong Paul-Harvey-The-Rest-of-the-Story vibe to it, unlike Paul Auster's book, which just let people tell their stories, so while One Day was an okay read, it was just that - okay.  And one of the vignettes, about spousal abuse, was frankly so horrifying that I put the book down and walked away.  Did not finish.

17.  The Speed Queen by Stewart O'Nan - A previous book of his, Last Night at the Lobster, showed that O'Nan has a real talent for writing about marginalized people, and I really enjoyed The Speed Queen, a novel about a young woman sitting on death row for crimes she was party to.  Very good - I really liked this one.

So there you go!  A long-delayed Recently Read.  What have you been reading lately?

Recently Read

Yep, that's right - I've been away for weeks, and all you're getting is a lousy "Recently Read" post.  My apologies!  I'm doing okay, if exTREMEly busy,  and counting the days until my 6-month work eval, at which point I can transfer out of my current position and into another office while still keeping my accrued PTO, etc.  Am I going to be out of there like a shot? OH YES I AM.  haha.


1.  Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean - Keilloresque short stories.  Charming, if a little too cutesy.

2.  News of the World by Paulette Jiles - Novel about a traveling "news reader" in the 1870s.  I liked some of her previous novels, but I didn't like the narrative style of this one and didn't get very far.  I might try it again at some point, though.

3.  Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie - Novel about a woman coming to terms with her turbulent childhood.  Okay.

4.  Growing up in Cooper Country - edited by Louis C. Jones - Boyhood memoirs from two men who grew up in upstate New York in the late 1700s/early 1800s.  Very interesting.

5.  Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch - Novel about a boy on a whaling expedition in the 1800s.  Very interesting and well-written, but bad things happen, and I just wasn't in a place emotionally to deal with it at the time I read it, so I quit about 80 pages from the end.  Still a good read, even if I couldn't make it to the end.

6.  Chickens in the Road by Suzanne McMinn - Account of a novice who bought a farm.  Good.

7.  Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King.  Short stories.  Good, of course.

8.  Burn Down the Ground by Kambri Crews - Memoir of growing up with deaf parents in rural Texas.  Engaging.

9.  Walking to Listen by Andrew Forsthoefel - Account of a young man who, after graduating from college, walked across America.  Interesting.

10.  A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska - The Story of Hannah Breece edited by Jane Jacobs.  Hmmm ... a memoir about (a) frontier Alaska and (b) schoolteaching?  OH YEAH.

11.  All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot - An old favorite, memoirs of a veterinarian in England in the thirties.

12.  Poor Cow by Nell Dunn - I guess this novel, about an unwed teen mother with a thief for a boyfriend, caused quite a stir when it was published it in the 60s.  I found it interesting but rather tame by today's standards.  How times change!

13.  The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard - I don't know why I pick up murder mysteries - I just don't enjoy the genre.  Still, I made it all the way through this one, so that says something.

14.  Little Green by Loretta Stinson - Novel about a rootless young woman who gets involved with a bad man.  Really, really good.

15.  The Growing Seasons by Samuel Hynes - Memoir about growing up in the thirties.  I'm a sucker for books about growing up in the Depression, and this was a good one.

16.  A Ticket to Ride by Paula McLain - Novel about a young woman growing up in the seventies.  I grew up in the seventies, too!  haha.  I liked this one.

17.  If The Creek Don't Rise by Leah Weiss - Novel about a small Appalachian community in the seventies.  Okay.

18.  Trauma Junkie:  Memoirs of an Emergency Flight Nurse by Janice Hudson.  Good!

19.  Leaving Wayne by Danny Clune - Memoir about a man who grew up in this area in the 50s and 60s.  He mentions lots of places (and people!) I know, so it was an interesting read.  Good.

Recently Read

Yeah, I KNOW, posting's been light.  This whole "job search" thing is taking of more of my time than I though it would.  Go figure!

As always, skip it if you wanna.

1.  Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy - Giant novel about the people who stayed behind on the home front in World War II.  I only got about thirty pages in, because every. single. character. was an insufferable twit.  While I understand that the author was probably making the characters really, really vacuous in the beginning, so that she could show how they matured after experiencing the horrors of war, I just couldn't with these people and gave up.  Ech.

2.  Spellbound:  Growing up in God's Country by David McKain - Memoir of growing up in central PA in the 1940s and 1950s.  I read a TON of childhood memoirs, and most of them are along the lines of, "Sure, times were tough and we were poor but we loved each other and we had a lot of fun!"  This memoir was ... not that.  The author's father was unstable and the home life wasn't the greatest, and the author was not shy about discussing it.  Interesting.  We tend to sugarcoat the "good old days", and this book helped me remember that good old days were not good for everybody.

3.  The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis - Novel about a young woman living in the Barbizon Hotel for Women in NYC in the fifties, and another, modern-day woman researching her story.  I liked the part of the story set in the fifties, but I had zero sympathy for the modern-day character, and stopped reading about halfway through.

4.  Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head - Novel, written in the sixties, about a high school couple who "have to" get married.  Kind of quaint, and the way it ends is a copout, but still a good read.

5.  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor - Novel set in Mississippi during the Depression about a rural black family and the struggles they faced.  Technically for younger readers (it won the Newberry Medal), it was an interesting and involving book.

6.  Miss Jane by Brad Watson.  Novel about a girl with an unspecified gynecological birth defect growing up in the Depression.  This book got glowing reviews, but I found it kind of meh.

7.  A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter - Century-old novel about a young woman who catches moths to fund her schooling.  It was interesting in the beginning, but by about halfway through I just felt sorry for all those poor moths.  Did not finish.

8.  Intensive Care:  The Story of  Nurse by Echo Heron - Nonfiction about the author's years in nursing school and her career as a critical care nurse.  Interesting. I also enjoyed her book Tending Lives.

9.  My Old Neighborhood Remembered by Avery Corman - Author's recounting of growing up in the Bronx in the 40s and 50s.  A quick, interesting read.

 
And that's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.

1.  Growing up Stubborn at Gold Creek by Melody Erickson - Memoir about growing up in Alaska in the sixties.  Good.

2.  Where am I Now? by Mara Wilson - Essays from a former child actress - Meh - did not finish.

3.  Perfect Peace by Daniel Black - Novel - Interesting premise - Boy child raised as a girl by delusional mother - but not very well written - I gave up about thirty pages in.

4.  Trials of the Earth by Mary Mann Hamilton - Innumerable memoirs have been written about settling the American West, but this memoir was about settling the South in the 1800s.  Very interesting, if hard to read at times for the heartaches that beset Ms. Hamilton and also the vernacular language, which included ample descriptive use of the word "nigger", but I understand that that is the word that was used back then.  Still a good read.

5.  The Whole Town's Talking by Fannie Flagg - Novel about the inhabitants of a small Missouri town, from the 1800s up through present day.  I normally love Ms. Flagg's novels, but this one had so much ground to cover that it was more a series of short vignettes than a comprehensive novel.  Each time I'd get interested in a character, the story would switch to someone else, and in the end I didn't finish it.  I still like Ms. Flagg's books as a whole; I just didn't care for this one.

6.  Little Heathens by Mildred Kalish - Memoir about growing up on an Iowa farm in the 1930s - This book is really interesting, because it goes into great detail about how people actually lived back then.  Very good.

7.  Dairy Queen Days by Robert Inman - Novel about a teenage boy in Alabama in the seventies.  Booooring.  It was well-written I guess, but there was not a single character I cared about.  I got about two-thirds through, decided life is too short, and quit.

8.  The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katerina Bivald.  Novel.  Nope, too cutesy.

9.  Moonlight at Midday by Sally Carrighar.  Nonfiction about Alaska.  Nope, too dry.

10.  The Immigrants by Howard Fast - I read another Howard Fast book (Max) and really enjoyed it, but The Immigrants was basically Max all over again, just with different character names and a different setting.  Did not finish.

11.  I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows - Novel about a family in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1930s.  Interesting.

So!  That's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?









  

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.

1.  The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow - Novel about a backwoods Kentucky family who move to Detroit in World War II so the husband can work in a factory.  Depressing, at times heartbreaking, and one of my absolute favorite books.  You'll become so involved in the life of this family that you won't want the book to end.  Highly recommended.

2.  Max by Howard Fast - Fast-paced novel about film-making in New York at the turn of the (last) century.  Very interesting and just soap-opera-ish to keep it fun.  I enjoyed it!

3.  Claiming Ground by Laura Bell - Subtitled "A Memoir", this is more a series of vignettes of the author's life as a sheep herder in Wyoming in the late seventies.  Did not finish.

4.  Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck.  Memoir.  Young girl's mother gets sick and dies; dad's a real dick.  Dad dies; stepmother is a bigger dick.  The end.

5.  On the Edge of Nowhere by Jim Huntington - One of the best books I've read lately, this memoir by a man who grew up in Alaska in the early 1900s is absolutely mesmerizing.  Very good!

6.  The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn - Account of the time the author spent at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.  I picked this one up because I really enjoyed another book of hers, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, but I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much, I guess mainly because I'm not interested in cooking techniques.  Did not finish.

7.  Call the Nurse by Mary J. MacLeod - Memoir of a nurse who practiced on a remote Scottish island in the 1970s.  Interesting and entertaining.

8.  The Gin Girl by River Jordan - Murder mystery novel set in Florida. *yawn*  Well, THAT'S a few hours of my life that I won't get back again.

9.  Tending Lives: Nurses on the Medical Front by Echo Heron - True stories from nurses.  Very good.

10.  The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber - Novel about a family of Black homesteaders in South Dakota in the early 1900s.  Good.

And that's what I've been reading.  You?

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.

1.  A Long and Happy Life by Reynolds Price - Novel about a young woman in the 1950s struggling with her relationship with her boyfriend.  Interesting.

2.  Home is Burning by Dan Marshall - Account of the year the author spent taking care of his dying father.  The author comes across as a real smart-ass dick, albeit a self-aware one, so meh.

3.  What We Have by Amy Boesky - Recounting of how cancer affected the author's family.  Did not finish.

4.  Finders Keepers by Stephen King - My love of Stephen King (especially his older stuff) is well documented, but this one, a detective story rather than something in the horror genre, just didn't do it for me.  For one thing, a lot of the characters were carried over from an earlier book (Mr. Mercedes) and a lot of time was spent alluding to or explaining the characters' relationships with each other, which Do Not Care.  And, now that I think of it, a LOT of King's work has a central theme of Children Acting Heroically, which, I do not know of a whole lot of children (myself and my friends when I was a child included) who are particularly heroic or even very kind to each other, period, a lot of the time.  At least in the case of me and my childhood friends, we were more interested in serving our own interests than we were about anything outside of ourselves.  If a giant scary monster suddenly showed up in a room full of kids, I'm pretty sure the kids would ruthlessly climb over each other in a mad dash for the door as opposed to banding together to defeat the scary monster, but I digress.

ANYway, Finders Keepers, meh, I actually had a hard time staying interested enough to keep reading until the end, and only did so by taking it along for what I knew was going to be a slow day at the office.

5.  Waterwoman by Lenore Hart - Novel. Started out interesting, about a fisherwoman in the 1920s, but then turned into a standard romantic triangle story, so eh.

6.  Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry - Novel.  Interesting setting and interesting characters, but man, one bad, horrible thing after another kept happening.  I got about halfway through and realized I didn't want to read another half-book of terrible things to get to the (presumedly) happy last chapter and quit.

7.  The Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay - Like Church of Marvels, this took place in an interesting setting, in this case vaudeville of the 1920s.  But unlike Church of Marvels, this book wasn't completely focused on tragedy, although bad things certainly occurred.  The characters were interesting, the storylines were good, and a lot of it was set in the area where I live.  Good book! I enjoyed it, and look forward to reading more from this author.

8.  Green Mountain Farm by Elliott Merrick - Memoir by an author who raised his family on a Vermont farm in the 1930s.  Good.

So that's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.

1.  Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller - Memoir of growing up white in South Africa in the Seventies and Eighties.  Very interesting; a personal account of life in turbulent times.

2.  Its Head Came Off By Accident by Muffy Mead-Ferro - Memoir about growing up on a Wyoming cattle ranch.  Good.

3.  Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson.  Ms. Lawson, aka The Bloggess, previously wrote Let's Pretend This Never Happened, a memoir, which I really enjoyed.  Furiously Happy is more in the style of the writing of her blog - short, humorous essays.

4.  The Sky Isn't Visible From Here by Felicia C. Sullivan - Account of how the child of a drug addict became a drug addict herself. A quick read, and interesting.

5.  Live Through This by Debra Gwartney- This one was in the same area of the library stacks as #4.  I first heard this woman's story on an episode of "This American Life" - It's about how two of her daughters ran away together as teenagers, and her struggle to get them off the streets..  Interesting.

6.  One Man's Wilderness by Richard Proenneke (and Sam Keith) - Memoir from a man who went to Alaska in the sixties and homesteaded, alone, for many years.  I'd seen his specials on PBS a million times, but I didn't realize until recently that there was also a book.  Fascinating.

7.  Riding the White Horse Home by Teresa Jordan - Memoir of growing up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming.  Good.

8.  Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow by Dr. Jan Pol - I love the tv show "The Incredible Dr. Pol", and I love books by veterinarians, so this book, a memoir by Dr. Pol, was a win-win.  Good!

9.  The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Brelinski - Novel about a girl coming of age in the seventies, who is sequestered with her older sister when the sister, a religious zealot, becomes pregnant.  Poignant, funny, and captures the era well.

10.  Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon.  I usually stay away from YA lit, just, well, because, but someone recommended this to me (one of you, maybe?) so I picked it up.  It's a book about a teenager with an immune disorder who finds herself attracted to a neighbor.  Interesting and fast-paced, but the plot twist toward the end is total bullsh*t (there, I said it), so I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have otherwise.

11.  Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein - Four horror short stories, all of which ended just as we were about to find out what the monster was.  Meh.

So, that's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?

Recently Read

Yep, here we go again.  Skip it if you wanna.

1.  If Wishes Were Horses:  The Education of a Veterinarian by Loretta Gage, DVM and Nancy Gage - Vet school memoir.  Absorbing.

2.  Two in the Far North by Margaret Murie - BO-RING.  It's a memoir about living in Alaska, which I usually eat up, but according to this book, set in the early to mid 1900s, Alaska was full of civilized people living cushy if simple lives, and it never even got that cold, evidently.  Bah.  On the bright side, evidently Ms. Murie's Alaska experience was COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from that of every other Alaska memoirist I've ever read, so good for her.

3.  Animal Patients by Edward J. Scanlon - Yep, another veterinarian memoir.  Good.

4.  The Animals Come First by Mary Bowring - Just for a change of pace, this was NOT a veterinarian memoir.  It was a veterinarian's WIFE'S memoir.  Ha.  I enjoyed it.  OF COURSE.

5.  The Flying Circus by Susan Crandall - Novel about barnstormers in the 1920s.  A light read, and I didn't get really invested in it until about two-thirds of the way through, but a good book.

6.  Honey in the Horn by H.L Davis.  Novel about homesteading in Oregon in the early 1900s. Did not finish. 

7.  A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary - Memoir of childhood from the woman who wrote the "Ramona Quimby" series of children's books.  Charming.

8.  Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong.  Memoir of the experiences of a woman who became a nun at 17 in the mid-sixties.  Interesting and well written, and did not disavow me of the opinion that organized religion is whacked.

9.  Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall -  I thought The Flying Circus was enjoyable, so I checked out this one.  Didn't like and didn't finish.

That's it!  Anybody reading anything good?

Wayback Machine

Sorry about the radio silence around here - Ponyboy had dental surgery on Monday, so between his continuing recovery and work being an insane asylum, I've been a little preoccupied.

But!  I did borrow a book the other day on an inter-library loan, and look what was on the flyleaf:

Remember these?  Remember getting them stamped when you took out books?  Remember going to the library and using the *gasp* card catalog?

Yes, it's official.  I'm older than dirt.

Recently Read

As always, skip it if you wanna.


1.  44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith - This author was recommended to me as having a style similar to Maeve Binchy, whom I LOVE.  However, 44 Scotland Street was a bust for me, mainly because so many of the characters were sooooo unlikable.  I got about halfway through, realized that I didn't care what happened to the painting OR the missing underwear, and quit.

2.  The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory - Memoir from a guy who rescued a cat.  The first two chapters, involving the rescue, were engrossing - the following chapters were a bunch of meh.  Meh.

3.  Looking for the Klondike Stone by Elizabeth Arthur - Memoir about the years the author spent at summer camp as a young child.  I have nothing but admiration for people who can remember events and conversations from their childhood, because I don't remember any of that stuff from my own growing up, but still, this book was a little ... er ... boring?   As a series of long-form essays on line, it might have been interesting, but ingested all at once it was kind of meh.  Summer camp has a special place in my own heart, but that doesn't necessarily mean I wanted to read about someone else's experiences with it. Didn't finish.

4.  The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner - Account of the author's childhood in a polygamous family.  I LOVE this kind of thing, but the author could've used a ghostwriter.  Didn't finish.

At this point, I'd like to say, I really, REALLY am not trying to dis these authors.  I keep doing these Recently Read posts because, so often, I'll get partway through a book only to realize that I'd read it before, because I am OLD, so now I put all the books I've read down in these lists so that, before I buy a book or take it out of the library, I can search for the title on the blog here and find out if I've already read it.   Every single one of these authors is to be admired for actually writing a book, even if me, Little Miss Nobody, didn't find it interesting.

5.  Ambulance Girl - Memoir about a woman who became an EMT.  Way, WAY too much about her feelings about becoming an EMT, and almost nothing about what being an EMT is actually like.  Not good.

Movie review time!  Hands on a Hardbody (minds out of the gutter, please!) is an old documentary about people trying to win a truck by being the last one standing.  Fascinating and sad.

6.  The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp - Memoir about a woman in her twenties who was supposedly homeless.  Oh oh OH there is a LOT that I could say about this book, none of it good, but suffice it to say that she wasn't actually homeless and leave it at that.  Blech.

7.  Ever By My Side by Nick Trout - Veterinarian's memoir.  I read a LOT of veterinarian's memoirs, because they're usually an enjoyable read, and this book was no exception.

8.  Off Keck Road by Mona Simpson. Novel. Didn't finish.

9.  The Journeyer by Gary Jennings.  Historical fiction about the travels of Marco Polo.  I read this book many, many years ago and LOVED it.  All this time later, I could still remember parts of the story.  So I finally bought a copy to see if it was as good as I remembered.  This book, at over a thousand pages, can give War and Peace a run for its money, length-wise, but that didn't bother me at all, because YES, it was as good as I remembered.  Parts were somewhat sensationalistic, and I had to kind of skim over some of the more-graphic parts, but oh boy, this is a good book.  Highly recommended.  Very good.


So!  That's what I've been reading.  How about you?

The book I want to read ...

- Is published in a pleasing, not-too-small font.  I don't want to get a headache reading the book I want to read.

- Has no Prologue, Epilogue, or Author's Note.  It starts and ends, definitively.

 - Is set in the past.  Sometime between 1900 and 1950, which is when everything went to sh*t, book-character-wise.

-  Features a family who is living in poverty but is very, very happy, with lots of descriptions of how they "made do", ala The Waltons.

- They're very poor, but nobody gets seriously ill or, God forbid, dies.

- Likewise for their pets and/or farm animals. There are lots of charming anecdotes involving the animals, all of whom are happy and well and apparently live forever.

- Nothing horrifying happens. Nothing scary happens. Nothing that could be remotely considered scary happens.  Everything is fine, with lots of whimsical stories about silly misunderstandings between the children and detailed descriptions of lovingly-prepared meals. There isn't a lot of food, but nobody cares, because they are rich in other things.

- The main characters will be the Mother and Father, who met in school, fell in love, stayed in love, never strayed from each other, and are still happily married at the end of the book.

- This could probably go without saying, but there are no sex scenes.  None.  We all know how the kids got there; we don't need it described to us.

- Nobody ages.  Okay, maybe Mother and Father can age a little bit, but not the kids.  The children all stay the same age.  Like The Simpsons.  That show's a million years old, but the kids are still kids.  Like that.

- In the last chapter, either Mother or Father wins the lottery/inherits money from a long-lost uncle/had previously invented something which totally out of the blue merits a sudden windfall.  The family decides to move into more spacious and comfortable lodging, taking the pets and farm animals with them, and the money ensures that all the children get solid educations.

- The last words are, "And we all lived happily for the rest of our lives."


So, basically, it's like Dickens without the bad parts.  Yep, that's it.

Recently Read

1.  As Cool as I Am by Pete Fromm - Novel about a girl struggling with adolescence and her mother's struggle with aging.  Meh.  Didn't finish.

2.  Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig - Novel about a boy and an old man on a Greyhound bus trip in the 1950s.  Good.

3.  Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn - Described on the flyleaf as "a family history with recipes", this memoir of growing up in the fifties was very good.

4.  Arctic Homestead by Norma Cobb and Charles W. Sasser - Memoir about a woman who homesteaded in Alaska with her husband and five young children in the seventies.  I love, love, LOVE reading about people roughing it in Alaska, maybe because it is the last thing in the world I would ever want to do myself, and unlike a lot of people who embark on such an endeavor after years of planning, Ms. Cobb and her family, broke and underemployed in their lives before Alaska, basically half-assed the project and learned as they went.  Very interesting.

5.  $2.00 a Day:  Living on Almost Nothing in America  by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer.  An absorbing look at several families trying to get by on very little.  Very interesting.  America's a great place to live, unless you're really poor, and then it sucks worse than a lot of other countries with better social safety nets.

6.  All We Had by Annie Weatherwax - Novel about a teen who gets moved around a lot by her shiftless mom.  Okay, but not memorable.

7.  The Final Frontiersman by James Campbell - Nonfiction account of Heimo Korth, who is raising a family in a mostly uninhabited area of Alaska.  He was featured on the show "The Last Alaskans".  As mentioned above, I LOVE books about people living in Alaska, and this one was very good.

8.  Like Family:  Growing Up in Other People's Houses by Paula McLain - Memoir from a woman who grew up in the foster system with her sisters.  Good.


So!  That's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.

1.  Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery - Biography of a woman who, in the 1950s, through-hiked the Apalachin Trail.  She was sixty-seven, and hiked in sneakers and without a tent.  This after surviving decades in an extremely abusive marriage.  Hardcore!  Excellent book.

2.  Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado - First-person narrative about how difficult it is to survive on minimum wage.  Been there, done that.  Good book.

3.  Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair by Susan Sheehan - Non-fiction account of a young woman growing up in the foster care system in NYC in the eighties and nineties.  Sobering and interesting.

4.  The Hero of the Herd by Dr. John McCormack - One of a series of memoirs from a veterinarian who practiced in Alabama in the 1960s.  A quick, thoroughly enjoyable read. 

5.  While You're Here, Doc by Bradford Brown, DVM - Another memoir, from a veterinarian who practiced in Maine in the 1950s and 1960s.  Very good.

6.  The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman - Novel about a crippled immigrant girl in NYC in the early 1900s who founds an ice cream empire.  Interesting, and a good summer read, but the protagonist wasn't a very likable person, so that kind of made it an only so-so book.

7.  Gone South by Robert McCammon.  This author's book Boy's Life is one of my favorite books ever, so I thought I'd give another book of his a try.  He usually writes in the horror genre, which I'm not a huge fan of (except for Stephen King), but Gone South is about a murderer on the run, being chased by bounty hunters.  It's pretty good, and he packs a lot of characters into one book.  A page-turner. You'll either like the ending or boo-hiss it, one or the other. :)

8.  Trailer Trashed by Hollis Gillespie - Autobiographical essays from a humor columnist.  Good.


Currently I'm working through a couple of old Shirley Jackson books, so we'll see how that goes.  How about you?  Reading anything good?

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?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.


1.  Chestnut Street, by Maeve Binchy.  Short stories, published posthumously.  I'm a big fan of Maeve Binchy, but her style - following the lives of several characters over a span of decades - isn't really compatible with the short story form.

2.  Movie review!  Life Itself is a doc about the movie reviewer Roger Ebert, who died of cancer.  The hospital scenes were tough to watch, but Mr. Ebert himself was fascinating.  Very good.

3.  Holy Ghost Girl by Donna Johnson.  Memoir about growing up in the inner circle of an evangelical faith healer.  Interesting.

4.  Movie review!  Rich Hill is a documentary about poor kids in Rich Hill, Missouri.  Depressing, but interesting.  So much of a kid's future depends upon what his parents do or fail to do.

5.  With or Without You by Domenica Ruta - Memoir about growing up with a drug-addicted mother.  The recounting seemed a little clinical and detached, but I have nothing but respect for someone who went through that and came out in one piece.

6.  Movie time!  The Imitation Game is about Alan Turing, who cracked Germany's Enigma code machine in WWII.  Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightley are very good.  Good  movie with a sad ending.  But! I have a question about one of the plot points, so if somebody's seen it, please let me know.

7.  The World According to Bob by James Bowen - A sequel of sorts to A Street Cat Named Bob, which was a charming memoir about a recovering addict and his cat.  Ultimately, The World According to Bob is more of a rehash, covering the same ground over again.  Read one or the other, but don't bother with both.

8. On the Occasion of  My Last Afternoon by Kaye Gibbons - Novel about a wealthy Southern woman during the Civil War.  Well-written but detached; I never really got involved with any of the characters.

9.  Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.  We all know the scenario:  Blogger gets book deal, promptly quits blogging.  But in Ms. Brosh's case, it wasn't because fame went to her head, it was because she evidently had a breakdown.  If you're familiar with her blog, you know how insanely talented and funny she is, and the book (told in cartoon style) is great.  It's just too bad that it precipitated her disappearance from the scene.  

side note:  Until alarmingly recently, I thought that  "Hyperbole" was pronounced "Hyper-bowl".  hahahaha yep I'm a dipsh*t.

10.  Summer Lightning by Judith Richards.  Novel about a little boy growing up in the Everglades just prior to WWII.  A little implausible - the boy was precocious, to say the least - but still a good, lighthearted read. Recommended.

11.  One more movie - Boyhood.  About, well, a boy growing up.  It was just fascinating to watch all the characters age, and the movie itself was very good.  I was surprised that it didn't win Best Picture last night after all the hype; now I'll have to rent Birdman, to see if it really was the better pic.



So!  That's what I'm reading and watching.  How about you?

Recently Read

As usual, skip this if you wanna.  I feel like a lot of my posts are getting skipped, lately, so I figured I might's well throw this one in here.  Ha.

1.  Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess.  Memoir.  If you read her blog (and who doesn't?), you're familiar with her writing style, and this book is a series of blog-post-like vignettes.  Entertaining.

2.  A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams.  Novel set in the thirties about a woman, her best friend, and their romantic entanglements with the same man.  Eh, they all acted like a bunch of dipsh*ts, but it was a fairly entertaining read.

3.  One Step at a Time by Elena J. Hanuse - Oh, I am a sucker for walk-across-America books.  But this lady had her hubs follow her in an RV, so she could sleep in a bed every night.  Totally understandable, but not quite in the spirit of the genre.

4.  Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King - It's unusual to read a King book with no scary woo-woo stuff in it.  This is basically a police procedural novel.  I usually like the characters' back-stories as much as, or more than, the main plot in his books, and sadly, this book was lacking in that regard.  At "only" 400 pages, short for him, I got the feeling that maybe an editor took a good chunk out of this one.  Still a good read, if not one of his best.  Looking forward to reading his next one, Revival.

5.  Good-Bye, Boise ... Hello, Alaska by Cora Holmes.  Nonfiction account of a family living on a remote Alaskan island.  Very interesting.

6.  Movie Time!  Dallas Buyers Club is about a dude with AIDS in Texas in the early eighties who goes up against the FDA to provide drugs to fellow AIDS patients.  I really, really do not care for Matthew McConaughey, and that car commercial was just bizarre, but man, he is a good actor.  And Jared Leto was just astonishing as Rayon.

7.  Home to Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani - This author is quite popular, so I thought I'd give it a try.  This book is evidently one in a series, and not the first one.  I couldn't get into it and didn't finish it.

8.  Movie time again!  I saw Into the Woods on Christmas day, the first showing of the morning, and that theater was sold out.  Usually when I go to the movies on  Christmas it's a ghost town, but not this time.  See review here.

9.  Another movie review:  Johnny Got His Gun, from 1971.  An anti-war film which I first became aware of thanks to Metallica's song One  many years ago, this movie is about a severely injured WW1 vet.

10.  Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas.  Memoir about coming of age in Harlem in the 30s and 40s.  Good.



So that's what I've been reading/watching lately.  And you?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.

1.  Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast.  Ms. Chazt is a noted cartoonist, so I'm not sure why I was surprised that her memoir, about her aged parents' decline and death, was in cartoon form, but I was.  Anyway, it's really good, and a really quick read, and her Dad had dementia, so I could relate to it in a billion different ways.  Plus, she's flat-out funny.  Favorite line:  "Where, in the Five Stages of Death, is EAT TUNA SANDWICH!?!?"  (Her mom, er, lived a little longer than the doctors expected.)

2.  Heartbreak Cafe by Penelope Stokes - Novel about a recently widowed woman who opens a restaurant. Think Fannie Flagg lite.

3.  Cruddy by Lynda Barry - Novel about a young girl with a hard childhood.  I was having a hard time getting into this one, but I knew I had read one of Ms. Barry's novels before and really liked it, so I did a blog post search and ...  it was this book!  I read it back in 2008 and, according to my review, really liked it!  This time around, I didn't like it, couldn't even get very far into it,  so it just goes to proves that your own life situation at any given time has a lot to do with whether or not you'll enjoy any particular book, I guess.

4.  Wild by Cheryl Strayed.  I wanted to read it before the movie came out.  It's a memoir from a woman who hiked portions of the Pacific Coast Trail.  Good.

5.  The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro.  Humorous essays.

6.  Untamed:  The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harlan.  Biography of  naturalist Carol Ruckdeschel.  Really, really good.  Along with a fascinating portrait of a woman who truly loves wild things, this book also explains, in an entertaining way,  lots of subjects that might ordinarily be considered dry, like the Social Darwinism concept, and why Jimmy Carter is interested in monitoring elections,Very, very good and highly recommended.

7.  Whistling in the Dark by Leslie Kagan.  Novel about a child murderer on the loose in a small town in the fifties told from the viewpoint of a young girl.  Okay.

8.  Let Us Build Us a City by Donald Harington - Nonfiction about several small Arkansas towns and their inhabitants.  I loved, loved his novel When Angels Rest and I enjoy reading about small-town life, so I thought I would like this book as well.  Nope.  It just wanders all over the place, and not in a good way.  Didn't even get past the first town.

9.  O Pioneers by Willa Cather.  No, I'd never read it before.  Novel about Nebraska farmers in the late 1800s, written in the early 1900s.  Interesting, because unlike a lot of books of that era that come off as really dated, I felt like this one could have been written today.  Good.

10.  Found by Davy Rothbart.  Series of essays, mainly written by hipsters and people in bands nobody's ever heard of, about found things.  Meh. 

So!  That's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?

Recently Read

1.  Movie time! "The Waiting Room" is a documentary about a hospital emergency waiting room.  Very good.

2.  Okay, now we'll do some books.  I'm Down  by Misha Wolff is a memoir about a poor white girl growing up in a poor black  neighborhood.  Very funny and very good.  A keeper.

3.  Coop by Michael Perry - Memoir about a guy who moves to a hobby farm.  Okay.

4.  Chalktown by Melinda Haynes is a novel about a small Southern town, some of its inhabitants, and a murder.  It could have been interesting, but instead was boring as sh*t.  I finished it, but I'm not sure why I bothered.  yawn.

5.  Crazy Enough  by Storm Large - Memoir by a rock and roll chick who struggled to understand her mentally ill mother.  Good.

6.  Another movie! "We Need to Talk About Kevin".  Da fuq?  I think this was supposed to be a movie about a "bad seed", but I got fifteen minutes in, couldn't make heads or tails out of it, and bailed.  It was like watching some indie producer's fever-dream.  Sorry, can't review, didn't make it to the half-hour mark.

 7.  The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield - Novel about a preacher's family in 1950s Arkansas.  Good.

8.  The Butterfly Garden by Chip St. Clair.  Memoir about childhood abuse.

9.  The Wives of Los Alamos by Tarashea Nesbit.   This novel was written in a narrative voice of which I was previously unaware - the royal we.  "We took the car to the shop to get the oil changed."  "Some of our husbands left first."  "Our brothers said we looked like movie stars."  Da fuq?  Sorry, too distracting.  I got two pages in, leafed through the rest, and quit.

10.  My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin.  Novel written in 1895 about a young woman in the Australian Outback struggling with class and gender biases.  The protagonist is annoying, but the book is good.


So!  That's what I've been reading.  How about you?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.


1.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - Novel about a young girl in Germany in the 1940s, I found it stilted and disjointed.  I didn't finish it.

2.  Couldn't Keep it to Myself by Wally Lamb - Life stories written by women prison inmates.  Interesting, but they were all kind of the same:  "I got involved with a bad man, and now I'm in prison."  Eh.

3.  Bootstrapper by Mardi Jo Link - Memoir about a single mom raising three sons.  The subtitle of the book - "From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm" made me think they were back-to-the-landers, but other than a few chickens, no.  Still, a fairly interesting read.

4.  A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen - I tend to stay away from cat biographies, because, well, we all know how they end, but this one, about a recovering addict street busker in London and his stray cat, was a charming, quick read.  Recommended as a gift for the cat nut in your life.

5.  Hunter's Horn by Harriette Arnow - Novel about a backwater Apalachian family in the runup to WWII.   Very, very good.  I loved her book "The Dollmaker", so I'm not surprised I loved this one as well.  Hated for it to end.

6. A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien - I  thought this was a memoir about growing up in old Hollywood, but instead it was a novel.  Meh.

7.  The Bartender's  Tale by Ivan Doig - Novel about a little boy and his father, who runs a western saloon, in 1960.  Good.

8.  Sisters - Coming of Age and Living Dangerously in the Wild Copper River Valley by Samme Gallaher and Aileen Gallaher - Memoir of two sisters in Alaska in the 1920s.  Very interesting.

9.  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I don't know why I pick up murder mysteries; I don't like them.  This one got rave reviews, but I found it contrived and only got about fifty pages in before I gave up.

10.  Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller - Memoir of a woman who grew up in a hoarding household.  Interesting.

11.   A Land  More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash - Novel, told through different viewpoints, of a boyhood tragedy.  Good.

12.  Mary Coin by Marisa Silver - Novel about a Depression-era mother, told from three different viewpoints.  I read the parts that were set in the Depression, and skipped the other eras (60s and modern-day), and it was good.


Okay, guys, I'm looking for some good books to read.  Whaddaya got?

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.


1.  Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.  Eh. Meh.  I don't know - Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not smart enough to appreciate some of these "modern classics".  This novel, about sisters who are cared for by relatives after their mother dies, just rang blah to me.  None of the characters are particularly likeable, and I got the feeling that even the author didn't really care for them, she wrote about them so dispassionately.  Can't recommend.  So sue me.

2.  Tallulah Falls by Christine Fletcher - YA novel about a teen runaway.  Good.

3.  Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn by Marjorie Myers Douglas - Memoir by a farmer's wife in the fifties and sixties.  Interesting.

4. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr - I've read this one before, but I really enjoyed it, so I read it again.  Memoir about the author's messed-up Texas childhood, told so that you'll laugh out loud.  I wasn't so fond of her later memoirs, but this one, the first, is a gem.

5.  Documentary time!  Paul Williams is Still Alive is an eponymous doc about the 70's songwriter.  I LOVE his songs, and yet this documentary was annoying as sh*t, so I gave up about a half-hour in. 

6.  The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg - I love anything Ms. Flagg writes, and this book, about a group of sisters in WWII, was very enjoyable.

7.  Time for another documentary:  Twenty Feet from Stardom is a doc about backup singers.  Very interesting.

8.  Joyland by Stephen King - I almost skipped this one, because it was marketed as a one-off, a noir novel, but it really wasn't noir.  Atypical  King, for sure, because it came in at under 300 pages, but it was almost a relief to pick up a King book that I didn't need to invest the next few months of my reading time in.  Good book about a murder at an amusement park and one summer in the life of a college student.

9. Movie time!  Geez Louise, I'm not taking recommendations  from other bloggers seriously anymore.  "What Maisie Knew" is a boring-ass, painful movie about divorce from a kid's point of view, featuring Julianne Moore and some random dude screaming at each other in front of their daughter.  The young actress who plays Maisie is great, but the movie itself is a dog.

10.  The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani - This book got great critical reviews, but I didn't like it.  I need to start reading the negative reader reviews on Amazon* - If I had done that with this book, I would have found that reviewer after reviewer called it boring with unlikeable main characters, and I would have skipped it.  As it is, I only got 40 pages in.


So!  Better World Books had another awesome sale, so I've got more books on the way.  Hopefully they'll be good ones.  What have you been reading?




*Which are sometimes hilarious.