Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man by Brian McGrory

Thanks to Kathy Strange for suggesting this book.

If you are middle aged and falling in love again after a long time on your own, there is a good chance that your new love will have a former spouse, children, and maybe some pets. What you do not expect is to add a rooster to your household, but that is what happened to journalist Brian McGrory. He describes his difficult relationship with the demanding bird in Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man.

I listened to this mostly humorous memoir read by Johnny Heller, whose lively reading portrays the Boston Globe columnist as a man who, with some reluctance, gives up his urban bachelorhood for a suburban family life. Another reader told me that she relished the first part of the book in which McGrory recounts ten years with his wonderful dog Harry. Buddy is everything that Harry is not - loud, unfriendly to McGrory, and dangerous - maybe even evil. His new love and her two daughters, however, love Buddy, who is a sweetheart to them. Whether McGrory can adjust to his new life and protect his shins is the dramatic question.

Buddy is well-told and a good alternative to readers who have tired of dog and cat stories - if that is actually possible.

McGrory, Brian. Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a  Family Man. Crown Publishers, 2012. 328p. ISBN 9780307953063. Tantor Audio, 2012. 7 compact discs. ISBN 9781452639215.