Hey there! So I have set myself a summer reading goal: I’m reading a book a week for 15 weeks. I started 6 weeks (and 7 books!) ago and will go through to the first week of September.

So after reading Stiff, When Everything Changed and Will Grayson Will Grayson, I was ready for something more of a novel. My book club read a Tom Robbins book for our first meeting, and I really enjoyed it, so I decided to have a go at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.*

This book, for those not in the know, is essentially a coming of age story about a woman with unusually large thumbs, who finds herself realizing her full potential as the world’s best hitchhiker, but then turns her world upside down when she comes across an all-woman ranch in the middle of a crisis.

Sound a little zany? Well that’s just Mr. Robbin’s style. And it got goofier. There’s a whole page about being able to be whoever you want, realized through different sentences on the page being what they want:

This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn’t care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with a Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause…

And it goes on and on!

So while I find myself a little overwhelmed with this author, his silly and rambling writing style, and his larger-than-life characters, I really enjoy his writing. His books can be pretty divisive, some people can’t get onboard with the strong narrative approach or the several chapter long tangents.

So, here’s my favorite quote:

“Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough.”

Happy reading!

*Having just googled this book to get the URL for Amazon, I’ve come across the fact that this book was made into a movie starring Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves, Angie Dickenson, Pat Morita, John Hurt….and now I need to watch it.