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?