Where Courage is Like a Wild Horse: The World of an Indian Orphanage by Sharon Skolnick (Okee-Chee) and Manny Skolnick

I have read several good books from the University of Nebraska Press, including the memoirs The Days are Gods by Liz Stephens and Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior by Brandon R. Schrand. While inventorying our books on Native Americans last week, I found a somewhat older memoir, Where Courage is Like a Wild Horse: The World of an Indian Orphanage by Sharon Skolnick (Okee-Chee) and Manny Skolnick.

While the very well selected memoirs, biographies, histories, and nature books from the University of Nebraska Press are mostly regional, they are not limited to Nebraska. Sharon Skolnick's book is an account of a year with her younger sister in the Murrow Indian Orphanage, now known as the Murrow Indian Children's Home, on the outskirts of Muskogee, Oklahoma. At the time, the author was known as Linda Lakoe. The woman who adopted her gave her the name Okee-Chee, meaning little bluebird, which as an adult she has used as an artist and owner of a gallery for American Indian art.

The setting of Where Courage is Like a Wild Horse is 1950s Oklahoma, when there was still blatant discrimination against Indians by whites. In one chapter, Linda and her sister are twice denied service in local ice cream shops, both owners saying "We don't serve their kind." Being Apaches, the sisters also find themselves shunned by girls from other tribes. They have to fight to survive the bullies in the orphanage where the tough-love headmistress doled out communally-owned dresses in the morning. Girls hoped to be rewarded by getting a pretty dress for the day.

Where Courage is Like a Wild Horse is a compact memoir that could easily be read in a day or two by most readers. I found myself cheering for the plucky girls to overcome their tormentors and find a good family. I was not disappointed.

Skolnick, Sharon (Okee-Chee) and Manny Skolnick. Where Courage is Like a Wild Horse: The World of an Indian Orphanage. University of Nebraska Press, 1997. 148p. ISBN 0803242638.

Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape by Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is a well-known environmental activist and author. While inventorying our library's travel collection, I came across his 2005 title Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks, an account of recent hike through the forests and mountains that transformed him several decades earlier from a suburbanite to a nature enthusiast.

The hike started in Vermont near Robert Frost's cabin near Mount Abraham, headed generally west (with lots of long curves), and ended in New York at his house near Garnet Lake. Some portions of the trail was harder than he remembered and he took one good fall, but mostly it was a delight, as he was joined for stretches by friends, most of whom are also environmentalists. In their conversations, they told McKibben their career stories. The narrative also reveals how the Northeastern United States has become a symbol of conservation and restoration. It is one of the few areas on earth in better shape now than 100 years ago.

At this point, McKibben has written many books. This is one of the shortest and most leisurely. It is a good introduction to his important body of work. Readers who enjoy travel accounts will especially appreciate Wandering Home.

McKibben, Bill. Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks. Crown Publishers, 2005. 157p. ISBN 0609610732.

The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt by David Giffels

Having grown up and stayed in Akron, Ohio, David Giffels tells in The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt of seeing most of his friends move far away. They were not the only ones to leave, as the city's the population is down to its count from 1910. Once the world center of the rubber and tire industries, Akron is a poster child for the Rust Belt, Midwestern cities that lost their factories to nonunion cities in the South or overseas. Akron also lost many of its company headquarters, many absorbed by foreign corporations. By the 1990s, much of downtown Akron was empty. Giffels witnessed the city's decline as a child, then teen, and later as a journalist.

Giffels can be described as an inside observer. His father was an independent engineer who contracted for most of the big companies at some point - Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich - and Giffels tagged along. As a teen and young adult, he and his friends often climbed fences to explore abandoned factories. As a journalist, he was granted access to buildings before demolition. In The Hard Way on Purpose, he recounts his city's fall and recent signs of recovery at street level.

In his wide-ranging essays, Giffels also comments frequently on Cleveland, the state of Ohio, and the region. Topics include basketball, bowling, punk rock, and saving architectural pieces from demolition. He begins the collection telling how Akron native LeBron James became a Cleveland Cavalier and nearly lead the team to championships but after several years signed with Miami Heat, becoming the most prominent symbol of flight from the Rust Belt. (In 2014, too late for Giffels' book, James returned to the Cavaliers.)

In The Hard Way on Purpose, Giffels offers readers an intimate look at his beloved city and his own life in it. I enjoyed it and would now like to try All the Way Home, his book about living in and restoring a house that was to be condemned.

Giffels, David. The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt. Scribner, 2014. 256p. ISBN 9781451692747.

Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Maseur

I have read bird rescue stories before, but I never imagined that emergency relief could specialize in just hummingbird rescue. I realize that hummers differ from other birds in some ways and emergency helpers might need special knowledge and skills, but I never realized that there would be enough rescues to keep anyone busy. Obviously I have not lived in the Los Angeles area where there are far more hummingbirds and species of hummingbirds than most parts of the United States.

From reading Terry Masear's book Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood, I have learned there are many hummingbird-human interactions in L.A., and many end badly for the hummingbirds. Often after trees or shrubs are pruned, nests with tiny hummers are discovered. Unless a homeowner can rehang the nest in its exact previous location (not even a foot away), the parent hummingbirds will never find it. Usually baby hummers will need rescue services after pruning. Other people find their cats have killed parent birds, leaving needy nestlings. Also many adult hummers are stunned or injured from running into picture windows or even moving vehicles.

Masear handles several hundred cases annually. Her Hollywood home is filled with cages and aviaries. An English professor during the rest of the year, she devotes her springs and summers to hummingbird rescue and is often up through the night feeding nestlings or nursing injured birds.

Fastest Things on Wings may sound like just another cute animal book, but it is not. Partly this is due to the hummingbirds not really being cuddly birds. Some are downright mean and attack Masear and other hummingbirds in her care. Another factor is the strange variety of people who contact Masear when birds need rescue. The author fills her book with their desperate stories, giving much insight into living conditions in Southern California.

I found Fastest Things on Wings compelling, entertaining reading.

Masear, Terry. Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 306p. ISBN 9780544416031.

The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family by Roger Cohen

In the case of The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family by Roger Cohen, the subtitle is a better indicator of its subject than the title. Cohen's book is not focused on one person who came from a particular place, that being a neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. Instead, the book is a sweeping family history, recounting the lives of the author's ancestors and their descendants in Lithuania, South Africa, England, the United States, and Israel. In one sense the book is a where-I-came-from memoir, but it is much more. Through telling about his family, Cohen recounts the global story of Jewish people from the late 19th century to the present.

Having now finished, it is hard to remember the point at which Cohen starts his story, for he goes back and forth in time and from place to place frequently. The reader has to stay alert to track the various members of his mother's and father's families as they migrate to new lands that promise greater freedoms and a chance of fortune. The true starting point of the family was the Lithuanian shtetls of Zagare and Siauliai. Many of those who stayed there survived pogroms only to exterminated by the Nazis in World War II. Many of those who move suffer new injustices and mental illness in new lands.

In its lyrical telling, The Girl from Human Street reminds me of The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. Both stories evoke both pride and regret for the past actions of families. Both will help readers get beyond textbook histories of the modern world.

Cohen, Roger. The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. 304p. ISBN 9780307594662.

How About Never - Is Never Good for You?; My Life in Cartoons by Bob Mankoff

I seldom pick up The New Yorker now, but there was a time when once a week I would take the latest copy from the library's magazine room to our lunch room to read the cartoons during lunch. I would also glance at the "Talk of the Town" and the book reviews and scan the table of contents, occasionally coming back to the issue if I wanted to read the short stories, but the cartoons were the draw. I recollected this past with pleasure as I read How About Never - Is Never Good for You?; My Life in Cartoons by Bob Mankoff.

"How about never - is never good for you?" is the memorable part of the caption of Bob Mankoff's most famous cartoon. It has been enshrined in The Yale Book of Quotations and, according to Mankoff, been ripped off by comedians and the makers of T-shirts. He is collecting royalties on sales of the cartoon from the Cartoon Bank, which he founded, so he has profited. He tells stories about several of his cartoons in his multifaceted book.

How About Never - Is Never Good for You? may be called a memoir, but large sections of it deal with topics other than Mankoff. He recounts the history of cartooning and the story of The New Yorker magazine, and he profiles many of his fellow cartoonists. He also gives readers hints on how to win the weekly caption contest at The New Yorker.

Anyone contemplating cartooning as a career will find Mankoff's behind-the-scenes stories very instructive. The rest of us can appreciate the artistry and laugh at the many cartoons included. It is worth several hours of pleasure reading and may lead some readers back to The New Yorker.

Mankoff, Bob. How About Never - Is Never Good for You?; My Life in Cartoons. Henry Holt and Company, 2014. 285p. ISBN 9780805095906.

Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart by Carol Wall

Carol Wall and her husband Dick never enhanced their yard. There were not any flowers, the grass was patchy, and the shrubs and trees looked weary, in need of pruning and rejuvenation. The couple was too busy to deal with yard issues beyond mowing, and Carol was opposed to flowers. Carol was sure their yard was an eye-sore to their neighbors, who had beautiful yards. Neighbor Sarah Driscoll was even a Master Gardener. Why did Sarah have a new man working in her yard?

This new man became an object of interest to Carol, a teacher who had taught English as a foreign language. She saw also him bagging groceries at the local supermarket and helping people load their plants at the parking lot of the local garden center. Unlike most hourly low-skill workers, he seemed to attract the attention and high regard from the customers. He spoke in an oddly charming way. Was he an immigrant?

In Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart, the author tells about her friendship with Giles Owita and his wife Bienta who immigrated from Kenya with their two sons to attend colleges in the United States. While gardening is a continuing theme in their recounted conversations, it is not really the focus of this book. Instead, self-discovery, overcoming self-imposed limits, and leading a full life prevail. There is also a mystery for the author to solve.

Ironically, most libraries have Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening in their gardening sections. Bonnie, who is also a librarian, told me that she thinks there is not really any better place in Dewey for this hard-to-categorize book. Being about non-famous people, it would be lost in biography. It could be placed with friendship books, but who ever goes to the library for a friendship book? Maybe we need shelves just labelled "Good Reading." It should be there. Check it out.

Wall, Carol. Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart. Amy Einhorn Books, 2014.  294p. ISBN 9780399157981.

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

At a time when memoirs are fashionable, Sonia Sotomayor has published an autobiography. My Beloved World is not her full life story, ending the book with becoming a federal judge in 1992 after being recommended by Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and nominated by Republican President George H. W. Bush. Her wide-ranging book tells of her childhood, education, and early career as a lawyer. Besides being a how-I-got-to-this point-book, it is a testament to the years of her youth - which were the youthful years of the Baby Boom Generation.

The major outside force in Sotomayor's early life was the Civil Rights Movement. Her personal challenges were diabetes and the death of her Puerto Rican father when she was only nine. She took charge of her daily insulin shots, helped her mother run the home, and graduated as valedictorian at Blessed Sacrament Catholic School and at Cardinal Spellman High School. She received a scholarship to Princeton thanks to affirmative action, for which she is grateful. She is not ashamed of needing help and taking it. She points out that she was academically qualified and won many honors because she applied herself.

Sotomayor's book is a lesson about effort being rewarded. She tells several stories of starting new phases of her life without having role models to prepare her for the cultural challenges. The key she says is to be honest about your needs and ask questions and for help when necessary.

Being of Sotomayor's age, I enjoyed My Beloved World thoroughly and hope she will write another to recount her years as a judge.

Sotomayor, Sonia. My Beloved World. Vintage Books, 2014. 398p. ISBN 9780345804839.

I Was a Child by Bruce Erik Kaplan

Our job as children growing up is to accept and reject. Accept our parents for who they are. Reject some of their ways. Be close if possible in loyalty, but move away, perhaps physically great distances if necessary. Find our own ways better for us. These are my thoughts on reading I Was a Child by Bruce Erik Kaplan, a cartoonist for The New Yorker as well as a television writer and producer.

Kaplan and I are by no means twins, as his ways are not mine, but we definitely shared some experiences. In his cleverly illustrated memoir, he briefly recounts moments that send me back to my own childhood. And I think Kaplan might agree that we never wholly leave childhood, as we are still children as long as we have parents or even remember our parents.

I was particularly struck by all the useless things in his parents' house, all the broken things that remained in place. He tells about a box outside his parents' door for the milk delivery. Decades after milk was no longer delivered, it was still there. He also tells about a console holding a nonfunctioning record player and old never-played records. I am not the only child to have noticed such things! He also tells about closet doors that won't close, and I feel a sudden urgency to get a door fixed.

I can imagine some readers will believe that Kaplan is disloyal for shining a light on his parents' failings. They might also argue against almost any revealing childhood memoir. For this reason and because I Was a Child is very entertaining and quick to read, I think it would be a great choice for some book discussion groups.

Kaplan, Bruce Erik. I Was a Child. Blue Rider Press, 2015. 193p. ISBN 9780399169519.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Falconry tests the endurance and sanity of anyone keen to attempt the sport. Author T. H. White was ill-prepared for his first attempt. Over 70 years later, Helen Macdonald was more experienced and realistic when she acquired a goshawk. Still, her experienced included self-doubt and despair, as well as self-discovery, as she recounts in H is for Hawk.

Just as it helps to read Middlemarch by George Eliot before reading My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, having read The Goshawk by White will enrich anyone's reading of Macdonald's book. Thankfully for me, reading H is for Hawk also explained much of what puzzled me about The Goshawk.

Of course, you are more likely to have read Middlemarch than The Goshawk, as Eliot is still fashionable and White is mostly forgotten. He was most popular in the mid-twentieth century when children were reading The Sword in the Stone and their parents were reading The Once and Future King. In the 1960s, his Arthurian tales were source materials for a Disney animated film and the broadway musical Camelot.

Luckily for all, you do not have to have read White's book before reading Macdonald's, as she liberally recounts and quotes sections of it as she describes her experiences with Mabel, a young goshawk that she acquired from a breeder in Ireland and brought to her home near Cambridge to train to hunt. Like White, she take's her bird on walks through field and forest and frets over how much it weighs. For the benefit of good reading, Macdonald did not stick to White's narrative as a template for hers, and her prose flows more pleasingly.

Mead's book My Life in Middlemarch is an easier book to compare with Macdonald's title. Both mix these elements:

• Memoir of the author
• Biography of famous author
• Story of a famous book
• Observations about English history and culture

To this formula, Macdonald adds a dose of natural history, letting readers know much about hawks and falconry. The result is a great book that keeps the reader engaged.

Now I should try So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan, another book in which a reader recounts her relationship with a book.

Macdonald, Helen. H is for Hawk. Grove Press, 2014. 300p. ISBN 9780802123411.

The Goshawk by T. H. White

In the 1930s, before he became famous for writing The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, T. H. White was an impoverished young writer with an interest in falconry. He read numerous classic books on the subject and supposed that he could apply what he learned from them to train a bird of his own. He acquired a goshawk and quickly discovered he was totally unprepared. He recounted the experience in his 1951 book The Goshawk.

Being a writer in search of a topic for a book at the time of his acquiring his bird, White started a journal, which he used for much of the content and structure of this book. Helen Macdonald, author of the recent memoir H is for Hawk, read it as an aspiring young falconer and was upset by it, as were many falconers of 1950s and 1960s. White was roundly criticized for being a know-nothing. Since that time literary critics have reviewed it more favorably, saying that White was courageous for being so honest about his ineptitude. They also argue that his tale contributes to the literature of adversarial relationships between humans and other animals, joining Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ideas about how humans should treat animals have changed since the middle of the 20th century. When I recently read The Goshawk, my sympathies aligned with the bird. White put it through much needless torment, which he seemed to realize as he spent night and day with the goshawk, trying to subdue its will. I wanted the bird to escape. The conflict does resolve about halfway through the book, but readers will find the aftermath just as interesting. It is a good reading choice while waiting for H is for Hawk.

White, T. H. The Goshawk. New York Review Books, 2007, 1951. 215p. ISBN 9781590172490.

A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz

When I found that Bonnie left A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz on my nightstand, I thought that I had found a fantasy. The beautiful illustrations by Catia Chien lend the book a magical aura. In side its covers, however, is a true story. Rabinowitz has written an inspiring memoir for children about his overcoming stuttering to become a noted zoologist and conservationist. It is fantastic.

Through his love of animals and good counseling when he reaches college, Rabinowitz finds his clear voice through accepting that he will always start from a stutter.

I don't want to give too much away, but I will point out that there is a plug for the book on the back cover by Temple Grandin. You do not have to be a child to enjoy this picture book.

Rabinovitz, Alan. A Boy and a Jaguar. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. ISBN 9780547875071.

Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove

On a family trip to Orlando in 1980, John Hargrove saw a killer whale show at SeaWorld and immediately knew his vocation. He wanted to be a trainer and ride the orcas into the air. To get his wish, he focused on learning everything about the whales and convinced his family to take vacations that included the Florida theme park. He asked trainers questions at the park and wrote letters to them from home. Finally in 1993, his dream came true when he was hired as apprentice trainer at SeaWorld in San Antonio.

In Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish, he recounts how after many years as a dedicated SeaWorld employee he slowly realized how his love for being with the killer whales had blinded him to the ethics of using them in popular entertainment. He saw they were stressed by the demands of performing unnatural behaviors up to seven times a day and then bored in the confinement in small pools when not in training or performing. He was also appalled by the discomfort and danger to whales required for artificial insemination and by SeaWorld's policy of separating mothers and offspring, who would be together for life in the ocean. He began to sense the truth in the animal rights movement criticism of trained animal entertainment.

Changing sides was still difficult because it meant leaving his employment, closest friends, and the whales he loved. Agreeing to speak out in the documentary Blackfish was his declaration of his new conscience.

While at first glance Beneath the Surface might seem a book that would appeal to a narrow audience, for Hargrove is hardly a national celebrity or killer whales a frequent front page news story (except when a trainer is accidentally killed), but his situation is universal. Many of us have matters of conscience that trouble us upon which we do not act because we would sacrifice so much. Combine that with subjects of animal rights, wildlife conservation, government regulation, and corporate responsibility and the title deserves a wider audience. Nonfiction book discussion groups should consider Beneath the Surface.

Hargrove, John. Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 272p. ISBN 9781137280107.

Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

I have often heard that most authors are not good audiobook readers. I wonder if memoirists are an exception. In the last year, I have listened to Dick Van Dyke, and Michael Chabon read about their lives and enjoyed their storytelling. In each case, I felt the memoirist was talking with me. I enjoyed the same feeling with Truth and Beauty: A Friendship written and read by Ann Patchett. Having been to two of Patchett's library conferences programs, I expected her reading to be entertaining. Having listened, "entertaining" is not a word I now want to use because the book is so sad. I'd rather say that her reading is mesmerizing.

I did not know the subject of Truth and Beauty when I downloaded it to my old iTouch. I saw it was an older title that I had overlooked. The various library audiobook services to which I have access all seem to have a scarcity of good nonfiction titles to interest me, so I sometimes try books I might otherwise decline. Within minutes of beginning Truth and Beauty, I knew the subject, for I read Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face in 2012. I did not recall that she was Patchett's friend, but friendship was not a focus of that memoir. It was more about alienation, loneliness, and the hardships of cancer and cancer treatment. Patchett's account works as a welcomed continuation of the story.

It has taken me over a week to start writing this review. I am still not exactly sure how I feel about Patchett's role in the story. How can she have been so accommodating to her troubled friend over so many years? Could I have been so generous if a friend continued on a self-destructive path? Did her kindness delay Grealy's ultimate end? Patchett tells the story with little if any analysis. She has left judging for readers, and for that reason, I think her title is a great book for discussions.

Starting the story at a date when Grealy and Patchett shared the same dream as well as the same apartment in Iowa City where they attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop sets us up to compare their fates, much in the way we make similar comparisons in reading The Other Wes Moore. What factors made the differences? I suggest looking at the mothers in both books. What else do you see?

Patchett, Ann. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. Harper Audio, 2004. 7 compact discs. ISBN 0060755997.

The Latehomecomer: An Hmong Family Memoir by Kai Kalia Yang

I love when Laura introduces me to a good book. We have had books as a part of our relationship for as long as she has had eyes and ears. We started with my reading to her from The Real Mother Goose just days after she was born. Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, and Meet Peter Rabbit followed. Advance the time machine 26 years, and she texts to me that I would enjoy The Latehomecomer: An Hmong Family Memoir by Kai Kalia Yang. She is right, of course. She knows her dad.

Laura probably came upon the story because she lives in Minneapolis, and there are many of the Hmong in the Twin Cities area. Among them are the Yangs who came, as did many other Hmong, via refugee camps in Thailand in the 1980s. The author was born in one of those camps, Ban Vinai, and was only six years when the family was transferred first to an orientation camp and then flew to Minnesota. Fear of the journey and new places, as well as the wonder of modern America, impressed themselves on her.

The Latehomecomer is as much about Yang's paternal grandmother, parents, and sister Dawb as about Yang herself and is truly a family memoir, as she tells what she has been able to learn about her maternal grandparents whom she never met. In the closing chapters, which recount her grandmother's final months and three-day funeral, she is even attentive to the reactions of her uncles and aunts. It is a remarkably close family thanks to the grandmother who held them together through the Vietnam War, the subsequent genocide, refugee camps, and the move to America (which she initially resisted.)

Published by a small nonprofit press with grant monies, The Latehomecomer has succeeded in getting into nearly 800 libraries. Even if your library does not have a copy, it should be able to get one easily. A few libraries even have it as an audiobook. I am pleased for the first time author who works with immigrants needing writing and translating. She has also made a film about Hmong Americans. I hope we hear more from her.

Yang, Kao Kalia. The Latehomecomer: An Hmong Family Memoir. Coffee House Press, 2008. 277p. ISBN 9781566892087.

A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story by Qais Akbar Omar

In the U.S., we have seen much of what has happened in Afghanistan since 2001. Even before that Afghanistan was often front page news, but our attention was sporadic. Our country boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979. We noted when the warlords of the Mujahedin pushed the Soviets out and were later themselves displaced by the Taliban. We decried human rights abuses and mourned the Taliban's destruction of the ancient Buddha statues in Banyan. But worrying about whether all our computers would crash on January 1, 2000 and about the value of our tech stocks, we lost track of Afghani news until we invaded the country in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 hijackings of American commercial aircraft by Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Qais Akbar Omar and his family never for a moment forgot what was happening in Afghanistan as they had to live every dangerous day. Omar recounts their experiences from 1991 to 2001 in A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story.

Omar was only nine years old in 1991 when the Mujahedin no longer had a common Soviet enemy to unify its ranks. Various warlords representing different ethnic groups began carving up the country and its capital Kabul, and factions began firing rockets in support of street fighting. Omar's moderately well-to-do family was forced out of the house that his grandfather had built on a hill and accept the hospitality of his father's carpet business partner in another neighborhood. Front lines of battle shifted around the city day by day for years. Omar and his father listened the BBC news in the morning to plan their daily errands.

A Fort of Nine Towers is a memoir filled with great characters, dangerous encounters, and success stories. I think it could make a riveting television mini-series. If done right, American and European viewers might get a better understanding of what happens in many countries when people are pawns to militarized governments that rule without their permission. Of course, reading will always more fulfilling than viewing a TV mini-series.

A Fort of Nine Towers has disturbing details that might turn away sensitive readers, but it is their loss if they can not overcome their reluctance to face reality. In the end, Omar's story offers both hope and caution for the future.

Omar, Qais Akbar. A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. 396p. ISBN 9780374157647.

Biographical and Autobiographical: Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2015

If best books lists are used as evidence, 2014 was a big year for biographical and autobiographical books. When I examined the lists from the eight review sources that I used last year, I found a surprisingly larger number of titles. In 2013, Amazon's editors named 16 biographical titles to their top 100 books. This year the number is 22. Booklist included 11 such titles in 2013 and 16 in 2014. If I kept counting, I suspect I would find similar results in most cases.

What I also noticed this year is the lack of agreement among the book reviewing editors. Most of the titles were chosen only once. Only one biography made seven of the lists: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs. Another biography made five of the lists: Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright. One memoir made five lists: Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart.

As you scan the lists below, you may wonder at some of the inclusions, such as Thirteen Days in September, which many readers would consider a history instead of a biography. I think it is both, representing the category of collective biography. Someone interested in any of the three figures named in the title would enjoy reading this book.

The result of the long and diverse lists is there are many excellent titles from which readers may choose. Kirkus offers 53 biographical titles! Enjoy and have a happy new reading year.


Amazon

Biographies

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark

Cosby: His Life and Times by Mark Whitaker

A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harlan

Updike by Adam Begley

War of the Whales: A True Story by Joshua Horwitz

Memoirs

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West by Bryce Andrews

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

I'll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist by Betty Halbreich

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham

Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler


Booklist

Biographies

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig

Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought and Work by Susan L. Mizruchi

Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez by Miriam Pawel

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergency of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces by Miles J. Unger

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III by Janice Hadlow

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

Victoria by A. N. Wilson

Memoirs

The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning by Julene Bair


Kirkus

Biographies

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark

Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard by John Branch

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchill

A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel

The Double Life of Paul De Man by Evelyn Barish

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kristin Downey

The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science by Armand Marie Leroi

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold Holzer

A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, from the Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man by Holly George-Warren

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith

One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Alan Paul

Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin

The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America by Edward White

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz

War of the Whales: A True Story by Josshua Horwitz

William Wells Brown: An African-American Life by Ezra Greenspan

Memoirs

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia by David Stuart MacLean

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir by Daisy Hernandez

Dear Leader: A Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look Inside North Korea by Jang Jin-Sung

Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher by Garret Keizer

The Great Floodgates of Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

History Lessons: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, and the Brain by Clifton Crais

If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir by Jessica Hendry Nelson

Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories by Terrence Holt

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

The Other Side by Lacy Johnson

Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling

Pandora's DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree by Lizzie Stark

Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God, and Real Estate in a Small Town by Sarah Payne Stuart

The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare

Take This Man: A Memoir by Brando Skyhorse

There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond by Meline Toumani

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything by Amanda Gefter

Unremarried Widow: A Memoir by Artis Henderson


Library Journal

Biographies

An American Cardinal: The Biography of Cardinal Timothy Dolan by Christina Boyle

Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Story of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

Memoirs

Bulletproof Vest: The Ballad of an Outlaw and His Daughter by Maria Venegas

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love, and the Perfect Meal by Ava Chin

The End of Eve by Ariel Gore

Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild by Novella Carpenter

The Great Floodgates of Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

History Lessons: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, and the Brain by Clifton Crais

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth About Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham

The Other Side by Lacy Johnson

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan

Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life by David R. Dow

Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped by Gregg McBride


National Public Radio

Biographies

Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten Army by Barnaby Phillips

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

Bolano: A Biography in Conversations by Monica Maristain

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS by Martin Duberman

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson

A Long Way Home: A Memoir by Saroo Brierley

The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - And Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman

The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps by Michael Blanding

Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Memoirs

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mouth Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You? A Memoir by George Clinton

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Fresh from the Farm: A Year of Recipes and Stories by Susie Middleton

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, The Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird

How I Discover Poetry by Marilyn Nelson

How the World Was: A California Childhood by Emmanuel Guibert

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Loitering: New and Collected Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death by Colson Whitehead

A Painter's Progress: A Portrait of Lucian Freud by David Dawson

Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki

The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait by Blake Bailey

Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life by David R. Dow

Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz

Thrown by Kerry Howley

The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana


New York Times

Biographies

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon

Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism by Jennifer Percy

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James S. Romm

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth

Elephant Company:The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke

Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief by James M. McPherson

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha

Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War by Yochi Dreazen

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing

True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas

Memoirs

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, The Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones by Sandra Tsing Loh

Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood by Joachim Fest

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss

Thrown by Kerry Howley


Publishers Weekly

Biographies

Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard by John Branch

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg

John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas

Memoirs

A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss


Washington Post

Biographies

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold Holzer

Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris by Steven Levingston

The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It by John W. Dean

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics by Michael Wolraich

Updike by Adam Begley

War of the Whales: A True Story by Josshua Horwitz


Memoirs

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel

S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D. C. by Ruben Castaneda

Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace by Leon Panetta

Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl by Martin Windrow

Martin Windrow considered writing a book about his owl Mumble for over twenty years. Grief among other factors held him back. He needed a bit of distance and perspective before he could write openly about his subject, which he has in The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl.

Windrow is a bit of a rule breaker. When he wanted an owl to live with him, British conservation laws had already forbad capturing wild species for pets. He found someone who could give him a fledgling tawny owl born of captive parents and completed the necessary official application and assurance papers. Upon receiving his owl, he then took her into a London-area apartment building where pets were specifically prohibited, hiding her from the landlord for about three years before moving into the countryside.

In The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar, Windrow lovingly describes the relationship that he developed with Mumble, including all of his special accommodations to make her residence first in his apartment and then in his country home work. He also had to buy a lot of frozen mice. One of my favorite parts explains her moulting (British spelling), the long, slow annual replacement of feathers during which birds are vulnerable to predators - if they are in the wild. He also tells how wild owls were able to locate Mumble despite her initial urban setting.

Though Windrow sometimes compares Mumble to a domestic cat, The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar is not a gentle read. Readers should expect some gore and excrement. Still there is a good dose of compassion in this don't-try-this-in-your-own-home book. Readers might also like Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose.

Windrow, Martin. The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 302p. ISBN 9780374228460.

My Wild Life: A Memoir of Adventures within America's National Parks by Roland H. Wauer

Readers with a taste for books about national parks and wildlife will know Roland H. Wauer for his 25 books and many articles published in journals, such as Southwestern Naturalist, Condor, and Summit Magazine. His titles are often very specifically focused on wildlife of a park or region. He has long had an interest in birds and recently has devoted much time and writing to butterflies. When I read The American Robin four years ago, I learned that he had been a ranger with the National Park Service, but I never realized how varied and important his work for the service had been. He recounts his career in My Wild Life: A Memoir of Adventures within America's National Parks.

For most of his career, Wauer had a job that most of us can only dream about. He spent many of his days hiking park lands, sighting, identifying, counting, and recording the birds and other wildlife along paths that he would retrace in another two weeks or a month. He also presented countless ranger talks and led park visitors along trails in some of America's most beautiful places. He also got to meet and work with leading naturalists to learn how to protect those places and their natural inhabitants. He must have suffered hot, cold, wet, sunburn, mosquito-bites, and soreness, but he does not complain about the physical hardships.

Wauer's biggest troubles were bureaucratic and political. He mentions them slightly without brooding in his mostly chronological account of his career, which began at Crater Lake National Park in 1957 and lasted until 1989 after he worked for three years in the Virgin Islands. Most of the time in between was spent in parks, like Death Valley, Zion, Big Bend, and the Great Smoky Mountains. For about five years during the Carter and Reagan administrations, he worked at park headquarters in Washington, DC, from which he was sent to many international conferences.

You know a book is effective when it moves you to action. Since having finished reading My Wild Life, I have read more of Wauer's books, worked on my bird lists, and pledged to visit more national parks, especially Big Bend. I read from an uncorrected proof. I look forward to seeing the finished book with Wauer's color photos.

Wauer, Roland H. My Wild Life: A Memoir of Adventures within America's National Parks. Texas Tech University Press, 2014. 288p. ISBN 9780896728851.

Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar by Keith Richards and Illustrated by Theodora Richards

Sweet is not an adjective that many people would apply to Rolling Stones founding member Keith Richards. They might reconsider after reading Gus and Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar by Richards and his daughter illustrator Theodora, a children's book about a boy and his grandfather.

As a Baby Boomer who has listened to my share of Rolling Stones songs, I was charmed by this story that tells how Richards became a musician. His musical interest was inspired by his warm and attentive grandfather Gus, who introduced the boy to many instruments and musical genre. When Keith was able to play "Malaguena" on guitar, Gus told him "I think you're getting the hang of it." A career was launched.

I like the book's illustrations which blend bands of color into pen and ink drawings. They move from page to page, carrying the narrative forward. I also like how I had to turn the book 90 degrees for one two-page spread. Gus and Me is fun to read.

Gus and Me comes with a compact disc of Richards happily reading the book with a little of his own guitar accompaniment. Be sure to listen.

Richards, Keith. Gus and Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar. Megan Tingly Books, 2014. ISBN 9780316320658.