Half Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls

The thing I like the most about being in a book club, is I get the chance to read books I probably wouldn't think about ever reading, and I enjoy them.

Half Broke Horses is one of these books.

It is a true life novel. In that, Jeannette Walls has written the story of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, but since her grandmother passed away when she was 8, a lot of the stories are second hand. But still, I would don't normally like biographies, but this was great.

Lily's father had me in stitches. I think reading about him, and the things he would say, really got me interested in reading more. "If words were simply spelled the way they were pronounced, he argued, pretty much anyone who learned the alphabet could read, and that would virtually wipe out illiteracy."  His ranch was called Casey Ranch, but since he was a fan of phonetic spelling it became KC Ranch.

Lily lead an exceptional life. Forget about what she accomplished in the that time, most woman (myself included) would probably not do as much in their lifetime. Lily grew up on a ranch and learnt to break horses. At 13 she was sent to boarding school but was withdrawn when her father spent her tuition money on great danes. At 15, she got a job teaching in a small town, and went there on her horse. She moved to Chicago, fell in love, and got married, only to learn her husband was a double crossing arse, who was already married with children! She learnt to drive a car, fly a plane, remarried, had children, and kept up an exciting and adventurous life.

Thanks Amanda for choosing this book for us to read. I would probably never have thought of it.