Carrying Books

I seldom take reading material to the rock climbing gym but there was the possibility that Patti might be running behind schedule because of rush hour traffic and I'd rather read than twiddle my thumbs.

I'm so glad that I was carrying that book under my arms. Otherwise, Brandi would not have asked me what I was reading and we wouldn't have gotten into a conversation about books and she wouldn't have told me that she was reading Half Broke Horses. I don't know when the book would have fallen onto my radar because no one else has mentioned it to me.

When I finished reading the book, I turned it over, read the authors' bio and blurbs by other authors and quickly requested the author's first book, a memoir. All that to say, I really liked Half Broke Horses, a "true life novel" about the author's grandmother.

In the Author's Note, Walls says that she intended to write the book about her mother but her mother insisted that her mother was the one who had lived a remarkable life. Lily Casey Smith, Wall's grandmother, died when she was eight so a lot of of what she relays about her grandmother has been passed down to her.

However, since I don't have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing -- and I've changed a few names to protect people's privacy -- the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel. (272)

Here's one of my favorite passages in the book. Casey Smith responds to her first husband, Ted:

"You have a mighty high opinion of yourself," I told him. "The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that." (82)

I also liked what Casey Smith said to her second husband after he grew weary of his wife's run-ins with different people.

"These showdowns. It's becoming a pattern."
"It would be either a pattern of me standing up for myself or a pattern of me getting pushed around." (180)

I love a woman who stands up for herself...


Downloaded or had any interesting books tucked under your arm lately?