Half Broke Horses

When I finished reading The Glass Castle, I got online and looked for more information about Jeannette Walls and her family.  I was so fascinated by them, and wondered how they got to be who they were.  Half Broke Horses tells the story of her maternal grandmother's life, which of course gives insight into who Rosemary is and why.

I would read these books again, and would love to chat them out with friends. Lily is quite the character!  I do appreciate many of her aphorisms scattered throughout the book, such as "You can because you have to," and "Kids were like horses in that things went a lot easier if you got their respect from the outset rather than trying to demand it after they'd started seeing what they could get away with," and "In this life, hardly anyone gets to do what they want to do."

I like the voice Walls gave her grandmother.  She was a matter-of-fact woman who did what needed to be done, wasn't afraid of hard work, and learned to judge people's character.  She lived a full life by her own code and it definitely wasn't a boring one!

A few quotes I enjoyed:

"I never met a kid I couldn't teach.  Every kid was good at something, and the trick was to find out what it was, then use it to teach him everything else" (64).  (I love this philosophy!)

"But I had learned a lot--about myself and other people" (85).  (Her response to a particularly difficult time in her life.  So true, take the lessons and move on.)

"Sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and then track them down to talk about it" (90).  (This makes me smile.  It sounds like something I would want to do!)

"I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all.  There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart" (133).  (Isn't that a great point!  This was her reaction to moving to a remote ranch and giving up her indoor toilet.)