summer reading...

on saturday i started and finished name all the animals by allison smith. i know i'm a crybaby ninny, but this book made me cry full out within the first fifty pages. i knew it was too sad to complete, but i couldn't put it down and continued until i was a messy, puddly mush. thankfully, kelly asked me to go for a walk and bought me dairy queen that night. both cheered me up immensely.

yesterday i started and have almost finished a girl named zippy by haven kimmel -- not a tear-jerky roller coaster ride, rather a laugh a minute account of a girl my exact age growing up in indiana. ms. kimmel even talks about my very favorite lunchtime cartoon show, chuckwagon theatre hosted by cowboy bob (an aside: kelly, i was wrong. sourdough the singing biscuit was not cowboy bob's loveable hounddog, but a puppet of an actual biscuit. i stand corrected). it is a lovely book and i will be sorry when it ends.

and late last week i finished let's not go to the dogs tonight by alexandra fuller. this book took me a long time to finish because i was reading it in snippets before bed each night. ms. fuller made growing up in war-torn africa sound normal and her writing about her mother's mental illness and alcoholism was so factual that it read like everyone in her family was a character from a play not real flesh and blood people. the account of day-to-day life wore me out. i was glad when it was over. and even though ms. fuller longs for africa from the safety of her now home in colorado, i was elated when she escaped.

i think i am calling this my summer of the memoir.