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You weren’t a son, but you are everything you ought to be.

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

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CBR15 BINGO: (Politics Square: the politics of prohibition, organized crime, and a family dynasty running ALL of the politics of a rural Virginia town) I’m a big fan of Jeannette Walls so this one was put on hold at the library before its publication. Set in rural Virginia during Prohibition, it seemed right up my alley. Give me a flapper, some bathtub gin (or in this case, moonshine), some small-town organized crime, and digging in! Walls’ does write about what she knows in terms of setting. […]

Trees don’t wonder about things. They just grow.

The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls

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I had been holding off on reading this book because it’s the last of Walls’ books for me. I read both her memoir (Glass Houses) and “true-life novel” about her grandmother (Half Broke Horses) and loved them. Each deals with whip-smart children growing up, rather than being raised, in households where the adults are too preoccupied with their own needs. I normally don’t read book jackets to avoid spoiler-y details but there is a terrific quote in this one that completely sums up this author: […]

People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

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CBR11 BINGO: Reading the TBR This was a book that I received for CBR 10’s holiday book exchange (thanks again, kfishgirl). I read and reviewed Walls’ “Glass Houses” last year and loved it. I waited a bit to start this one because I am quickly going to run out of Jeannette Walls titles to read and I’m trying to drag it out a little. So, this one has been on my TBR pile since December 2018 and thus fulfills the “Reading the TBR” bingo slot! […]

Time to watch the movie

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

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The Glass Castle (2005) by Jeannette Walls has been on my radar for about ten years, but I never quite got around to reading it. My book club chose it as their next read, which was finally the motivation I needed. The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls’ memoir of her childhood with her very difficult parents: Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Her father was a smart, gifted, difficult, truculent, alcoholic. Her mother was artistic, addicted to excitement, and probably had some mental health issues. Jeannette grew up […]

Because this is not a house for the faint of heart

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CBR BINGO: Farenheit 451 While I was fishing around trying to find a banned or controversial book for this review, I stumbled across several articles written in 2016 about a 15-year-old girl in a school district near me. When Jeannette Walls’ memoir, “Glass Castle” was removed from the 9th grade reading list at her school, this young woman was having none of it. She challenged her school district at a board meeting and very succinctly pointed out that the material that the parents were objecting to […]

“A True-Life Novel”

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This is undoubtedly one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. And I have read a lot of memoirs! It helps that Jeannette Walls is incredibly talented, as I already knew from having read The Glass Castle and The Silver Star. But her subject here is really what makes this book stand apart from so many others. “You can’t prepare for everything life’s going to throw at you. And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit […]



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