Last Bus to Wisdom

By: Ivan Doig 

Narrated by: David Aaron Baker

Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins

 

 

 

Publisher's Summary

The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig's beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an 11-year-old's imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for "female trouble" in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate - bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical - is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can't seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn't traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way. Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless people.
©2015 Ivan Doig (P)2015 Recorded Books

 

Reminds me of Jean Shepard

A few years ago, I saw this book in an Audible sale pile and didn't buy it. I regretted the decision. Then recently, it made another appearance on the sales rack and I bought it. I am so glad I did.

As I was listening to the book, it slowly dawned on me that the storytelling reminded me a lot of a 60s &70s NY radio talk show host named Jean Shepard. There was something about the sound of the narrator's voice and the cadence of the prose that shouted "Jean Shepard." He was a raconteur par excellence and told a lot of stories about his childhood, which are all described as "semi-autobiographical." Probably his mostly widely known piece of work was the 1983 film A Christmas Story, which was adapted from his stories. However, Shep holds a place in my heart because in 1968 he stood on the stage of my high school auditorium with a microphone in his hand, and the principal in the front row, and unmistakably uttered the word "fuck" --and even more miraculously he was permitted to continue his monologue. The times, they were most definitely a-changin'.

But I digress. I'm supposed to be talking about the book I just read, not old memories. I loved the book and I want to read more by Ivan Doig. If I am going to read a coming of age story, this is the way I want it to sound -- youth as a carefree adventure, sweet and old-fashioned.

Four stars and I love the cover.

P.S. I also like the pun in the title. This was Doig's last book and  these were his parting thoughts.

Rocket Boys

 

by Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (read by Tom Stechschulte)

 

 

I read this book years ago when it first came out and really enjoyed. So, when I saw it in an Audible sale pile, I decided that it was time for a re-read.

Homer Hickam, Jr., former NASA engineer, grew up in one of the company owned coal towns of West Virginia. His father worked in the mine first as a miner and then later as a manager. With the launch of Sputnik in 1957, young Homer decided that he was going to work for Werner von Braun. Along with his high school buddies, he decided to build a rocket. Much easier said than done in the days before the internet and not knowing even the basics of rocket science (i.e., the third law of thermodynamic: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). With minimal resources, the boys had to teach themselves the physics, the math and the chemistry they would rely on to launch multiple small rockets.

Rocket Boys is Hickam's memoir of the building of the rockets and of winning the National Science Fair. Yet at the same time, this coming of age story is also about the imminent death of the coal mining industry in West Virginia and of the town of Coalwood in particular. Rocket Boys is the first of three memoirs about his hometown.

While the story is hard and harsh, Hickam's writing is beautiful, positive and uplifting. This is not some whinging celebrity's "boo-hoo I've had a horrible life story take pity on me" kind of memoir that unfortunately proliferate the bookshelves these days. Hickam doesn't whine or complain; he just tells it like it is. We need more memoirs like this, the memoirs of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs with extraordinary results.

Four stars