Why did I love this book?
Sometimes the timing of a book’s addition to our personal reading list can make the difference in how willing we are to permit a particular message to infiltrate our lives.
For me, The Glass Castle was such a book. I was in the midst of reading the emotionally charged text that was fraught with familial dysfunction when I interacted with one of my fourth-grade students. Sitting beside him, I immediately noticed the stench of cat piss on his clothing. Rather than hold my breath at the gag-worthy smell, I inhaled, as I wanted to see past the invisible fog of his environment.
23 authors picked The Glass Castle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Now a major motion picture starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson.
This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents.
At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane,…