The Great Northern Express by Howard Frank Mosher

Howard Frank Mosher's account of his life as recalled during a cross-country book tour in a 20 year old car he calls the "Loser Cruiser" is guaranteed to make you laugh. I received it through Amazon Vine; it went on sale March 6, 2012.

After a diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer and his 65th birthday, Mosher decides to head out to independent bookstores all over the country to promote his new book. His beloved wife stays home so he imagines passengers to keep him company. It's his habit to talk to imaginary people even as he's walking down the street at home anyway so this is nothing new.

Home is northeastern Vermont, a place he describes so funny you'll hold your sides laughing. He and his wife moved there directly after Syracuse University to be teachers, and the school superintendent there judges days by whether they require two or three quarts of beer to get him through. The new teachers are told that their primary mission is to keep the kids out of the mill, i.e. a furniture factory in town.

This memoir sort of reminds me of William Least Heat Moon's travel memoirs, except that Mosher's trip is so much more hilarious. He stays in Motel 6 or a local dive, refusing to stay anywhere more upscale, and he meets the strangest people. However, this is also an homage to the surviving independent bookstores in this country. All readers, I'm sure, are aware that indies are becoming nearly extinct, but some of the ones still open are becoming quite famous. You'll recognize a few.

This author is so wacky it took me a little bit to decide if I liked the book but then it grew on me and I just drove my husband crazy reading sections to him from then on. By the way, the author and his car both survive to get back to Mrs. Mosher.

Loose Diamonds by Amy Ephron

This book is just what I needed after finishing a long classic novel. It's Amy Ephron's collection of memories of her life. You may know her from her articles in pretigious magazines and her previous books.

Ephron has a delightful sense of humor. She reminds me of a former neighbor who could go in her van to pick up a new chair she had ordered, and come home with a story about the experience that would have the neighborhood in hysterics. Ephron once pulled into a parking space in front of her son's school only to have a Mercedes rear end her - twice. The driver was another mother who had been dating (and dumped by) Ephron's ex-husband. Ephron could only assume she was taking it out on her for divorcing him and setting him loose among the women of the world.

She also writes very movingly about her mother, a woman who kept up appearances even while falling apart. The day Ephron's first child was born is touching even though it turned into a surreal scene in the ICU with Elizabeth Taylor's daughter-in-law screaming in labor across the aisle. The dog (yes, in the ICU) kept barking, the assistant's mobile phone kept ringing, and the mother-to-be sat up and waved merrily in between contractions. It's hilarious.

This short book should cheer up anyone. I read it in one day when we were running errands and I was often in the car waiting for my husband. Lots of fun. I do recommend it.

Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks

Tim Parks is a successful writer who has written novels, nonfiction, and various magazine articles. Now he has written a unique memoir in which he is searching for a diagnosis or solution to mysterious pains and other physical symptoms no one can figure out.

Rather than a sad, whiny, poor-ol'-me sort of memoir, this is honest, factual, and often funny. At first he thinks his terrible pain, urinary frequency and other symptoms are simply physical. Prostate is the first body part to come under suspicion of course, but when he finally sees a doctor and has tests, that suspicion doesn't pan out. He is very funny about the indignity of his symptoms and more so the tests.

Then he fears he has cancer but that doesn't seem to be the case either. There is no physical diagnosis. He buys a book that helps some, but mostly convinces him that his lifelong constant tension and anxiety could be the problem. He tries therapy, massage, and finally retreats. What happens to his mind and his physical symptoms along the way is surprising but entirely believable. This guy doesn't just launch into possible solutions with enthusiasm; rather he drags himself into them with a hearty dose of skepticism. He would be the first to detect quackery and denounce it.

I loved his humor and the fact that the best thing he learned in this process was to be honest with himself. His wife was at first supportive, then bored with the whole thing, and then very happy with the new Tim Parks. I hadn't read anything by him previously, but I imagine his writing became much better, and took a whole new direction during his long search for a cure. Memoir lovers, this is for you. I think you'll find it unique among the other memoirs you've read.

Review of a Memoir

This memoir, One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest, was one that I really wanted to read and yet dreaded reading. I knew he was wheelchair bound; the memoir might be difficult or it could be incredibly upbeat. Actually it is down to earth, factual, neither terribly sad nor too optimistic. Guest wrote his story as it has happened so far without mincing words or wanting pity.

He was a bright 12 year old in a gifted class when a ride on someone else's bicycle turned into a life changing event. He discovered as the bike picked up speed going downhill that it had no brakes. He hit a drainage ditch and was thrown across the road where he landed awkwardly. As he lay there aware that something awful had just happened, a couple men from the neighborhood insisted on picking him up. When his head flopped to the side, they realized that had been a big mistake. Guest will never know if that mistake did more damage, but he had known before they did it that he couldn't feel anything below his neck.

Since that day, Guest has been a quadriplegic, and will remain so. He writes of all the degrading humilitations he has to endure since he can't do anything for himself, and he describes those things almost clinically. After all, what else can he do? This is fact, it is his reality. He writes of his discomfort when people gush over him, of the time a man robbed him as he sat helplessly in his wheelchair in an elevator, of embarrassments, and of his longing for normal love and marriage with a girl.

He writes of the sacrifices his parents have made for him and their acceptance of that need as well as their loving care. And then finally of his discovery that he had talent for writing. He began with poetry and at this point has written five books.

I haven't read his other books, but the tone and style of this memoir are right on. He definitely has talent. Having said that, I feel he has erased almost all emotion from this work for fear that people will pity him. Well, I can't help feeling badly for him, no matter whether he shows emotion or not. He has been dealt a bum hand and I don't know if I would have the strength to face it like he does, but I don't pity him, mainly because he is determined to live as good a life as he can.

There is no everything-works-out happy ending for Paul Guest, but he is engaged and madly in love. He still lives with pain and the difficulty of living everyday life, but he has found love. I'm glad I read his book.

I received this book from Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint, through GoodReads.