Half Broke Horses

I read this book last Friday in an afternoon and found it very easy to breeze through but wondered what there was to discuss. And today I learned that apparently there wasn't much to talk about.

Those of us who had read Glass Castle found this to be a prequel of sorts and we wandered in to discussions of that book, and for those of you who haven't read it, I hope you will.

None of us liked Lily very much and as Carolyn said, the older she got, the less likeable she because. We enjoyed her father's pithy quotes like "Most important thing in life is learning how to fall." And the places she took us were certainly interesting.

We did feel that the book would have been strengthened if Walls had used the third person for the narrator instead of the first. At time Lily's voice was inauthentic, especially when she was trying to sound tough. Her mothering and nurturing skills were lacking but we commented on how odd the women in her family were in the first place. She didn't have the best teacher in her own mother.

Mary said that her favorite character was Big Jim. We also liked Rooster, the deputy. Diana was fond of Lily's pony, Patches. We talked about the Mormon school where Lily was dismissed and then the discussion migrated away from the book entirely.

We decided we didn't have much left to say about the book, though we liked it and would recommend it. From there we went to the list of suggested titles for 2013 and spent more time on it than on the book.