January 26, 2006, Book stuff

We tore through books on the trip. After, many exhortations from my family and friends, I finally succumbed to the Harry Potter madness and am here to tell you that I loved the first book and am now looking forward to the rest of them.

I also read I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe’s latest, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But the book which totally captured me is Jeannette Wall’s memoir the Glass Castle, which chronicles her hardscrabble childhood replete with an alcoholic, but still engaging and charming father, as well as a very unconventional mother. She and her family moved around and were always one step ahead of the bill collectors, but despite this and many other hardships, she writes of her childhood knowingly yet also with great tenderness. Read it. It’s worth it.