The Pony Express is probably something we all remember from the history of the U.S. It is easy to conjure up an image of a young man on a fast horse racing across the country (and boy, is it big)!, braving weather, rough terrain, buffalo and Indians. (it's okay, that was the word used at the time);-) And yet, much of this is not true! Many accounts were written years or even decades after the fact, or from hearsay, or second and third hand accounts, even those who actually saw it like to embellish! Author Christopher Corbett has done a wonderful job of filtering through all this, pulling out what was actually true and what wasn't in Orphans Preferred: the Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express. There's a lot of the history of the West here, too. And some nice mini-biographies of names you will recognize such as Mark Twain and Buffalo Bill. A bit of a slog a couple of times, but overall a captivating read! My favorite image might be that of the Pony Express riders racing past the crew putting up the poles for the telegraph lines that would soon connect this vast country ... and of the buffalo who found them to be wonderful for scratching! :-)

Stuart McLean might be best known for The Vinyl Cafe, a show on CBC FM ... although maybe not so much anymore as he sadly died at much too young an age in 2017. He also wrote essays on everyday life. The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is filled with beautiful, lyrical, thoughtful essays on everything from the daily newspaper (the 'real' one, in print, that could be found on bus seats, park benches, in the break room), the family piano, worms, various months, and so much more. I laughed (twice in public), I cried, I nodded in agreement ... spend some time here, don't rush, contemplate what you read.

Reading Hermit With Dog