Psst! The Glass Castle is great--pass it on!

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
The memoir trend has been going on a while now, propagated in part by Walls’ riveting account of her childhood. She draws each character so richly, from her bi-polar mother to her alcoholic but brilliant father. There is one scene in which her sister gets glasses for the first time. She begins to cry when she realizes she had never actually seen individual leaves on trees before because her vision was so bad. This anecdote was mentioned in a "Grey’s Anatomy" episode, but it wasn’t cited as being from The Glass Castle, and that kind of bothered me. Walls does a superb job of opening up her life to the reader and facing the pains of her childhood. And of course she realizes that she wouldn’t be the strong able woman she is today without the learning experiences of her youth. This book is definitely worth the hype—engrossing, moving, and unforgettable.

What? The Grass Cable smells bad? That's not what I said!