The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

I was excited when my friend Jessi gave me this book.  I got hooked on the online version of the famous Pioneer Woman's love story but I never got around to finishing it.  I love the Pioneer Woman - her cookbook is phenomenal and her blog is one of the best out there. 

The book did not disappoint.  I stayed up late to read it several nights.  The book is light, easy reading.  It is full of witty remarks and hilarious stories.  I found myself wiping tears away a few times from laughing so hard. 

If you want a fluffy love story that is actually true and contains hilarity along with some serious moments, put this one in your stack.  You won't be sorry!

A Slant of Sun

Once again, I accidentally found this book while looking in the library for something else.  I am always up for reading a memoir or any kind of book about disabilities and when the two are combined, I can't pass it up.  This was a story, written by a mother, about the journey of her son who was given a diagnosis on the autism spectrum.

I have never read a memoir about this subject that was so exquisitely beautiful and vulnerable.  I've worked with many parents of kids on the autism spectrum and even worked in their homes and gotten to know them fairly well.  But to see into the emotions and particularly the relationship of love between a son and a mother alternately squeezed my heart with joy and grief.  And did I mention the writing was exquisite?  Like poetry in prose.

Good Read: The King's English

Are you at all like me?  Have you dreamed of running and owning a bookstore?  Maybe a children's bookstore a la Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail"...or a used/new bookstore like The Book Exchange?  Or like the Tattered Cover in Denver (what a dreamy, dreamy place!)?  Or a tiny local place like Aunt Bonnie's in Helena or The Bookstore in Dillon?

I imagine floor to ceiling shelves, stacks of books in every nook and cranny, comfy chairs, and delicious coffee.  Or, cause I'm me, yummy wine.

Ah the lure of the independent bookstore.  Don't get me wrong.  I think Amazon is great because I can always find what I'm looking for.  And, I love to wander the aisles of Barnes&Noble, Borders, and Hastings (I know, gasp!).  But, I love that feeling of not looking for anything in particular and always finding a treasure.  Or, how the people at the local places have actually read the books and can recommend things to you.

Debbie, at the Bookstore in Dillon, always has a recommendation.  She knows local authors.  And even though I don't live there anymore, she still remembers my tastes and what I have read.  Amazon can recommend stuff to me, but it is always a little off.

Enter The King's English by Betsy Burton, "adventures of an independent bookseller."  It is part memoir of a woman's struggles and successes running a bookstore before the megastores came on the scene and then the effects when the megastores arrived.  It is part literary tribute to all of those wonderful things she read and the authors she met.  And, what I find the most glorious about it, is that it is part book list.

A well curated book list from a life of books and reading.  Whenever I am stumped on what to read, I reach for this book.

25 Mysteries to Die For.  35 Favorite Poetry Books from TKE's First 25 Years.  An Incomplete and Unscientific but Nonetheless Shocking List of Books Challenged or Censored by Bookstores, Libraries, and Schools.  25 Western Fiction Titles Grounded in Place.  25 Books on Reading Books.

You get the drift.  Ah-mazing.

I reach for this book for inspiration, for knowledge, for hope, for dreams, for love of books.

Oh, and I have to be honest here.  This book also came from my mom.  She knows a thing or two about good books.