The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

This books tells the true story of Dr Minor (a Yale graduate, civil war solider, doctor, and a murderer) who resides in an insane asylum in England and reads through many thousands of English literature books to help write word definitions for the Oxford English Dictionary. If he had been alive today, his condition, paranoid dementia, would have been treated by medication today and perhaps if he had had such medication he would never have found the solace he did in writing all those thousands of word definitions. The book is written with each chapter starting with a word such as Sesquipedalian - adjective of words and expressions that have many syllables. I liked learning about how this first comprehensive dictionary was written- it took 70 years and the fact it relied on many volunteers- sort of a wikipedia project. I had not thought that Shakespeare did not have access to a comprehensive dictionary in his time. An interesting book although the style made it a little hard to read!

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

When you read this book about Jeannette Walls and her crazy family, you wonder -- is this really true? Her parents were vagabonds and dreamers who certainly would not know the meaning of the words helicopter parent. They drag their four children through a careless, almost abusive childhood. The kids have to fend for themselves to find food. They rarely have baths or clean clothes. And yet there is something occasionally magical that happens such as when Jeanette's dad takes her out on the stoop of their house on Christmas Eve to give her any star she wants and name it after her as a present or when she goes to Barnard on her own and he and her mother are homeless in NYC - he wins $1000 at poker and gives it to her to pay the last $1000 she owes for college.