Before the Blog: A Girl Named Zippy

A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I WANTED to like this book....I TRIED too like this book....but I DIDN'T like this book. This is a memoir of a girl who grew up in the early 70's in small town Indiana. If I've learned one thing in the past year, it is that I am NOT a fan of memoirs! Most read like a series of anecdotes that may be fine in small doses as short stories, but instead result in a book with no real plot that is far more interesting to the author as she writes the book than it is to the reader. This book reminded me very much of 'Sh*t My Dad Says' without the course language.

Imagine that you make a new acquaintance who seems interesting, so you invite her to lunch so you can get to know each other better. You order, then ask about where she is from. She tells you not only where she was born, but the circumstances of her birth. She tells you about the creepy lady across the street. She tells you about the mean boy next door. All through lunch SHE talks and she never-shuts-up!

Or imagine instead, she invites you for dinner. As dinner is cooking she pops in a DVD of old home videos. Many hours later, as your eyes glaze over, you are only hoping for it to end so you can escape.

That is pretty much how it feels to read this book! I realize that some people enjoy reading memoirs, which is why they sell very well. I am just not one of them! But if you are a memoir fan this is possibly a book you will enjoy. I read it as a book club selection, and most enjoyed the book. I really did TRY to like this book!

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Why did you choose this book? I read this book because it was a book club selection.

When did you read this book? March of this year.

Who would you recommend this book to? Fans of the memoir genre.

   Here is the synopsis of 'A Girl Named Zippy' from Goodreads where it rates 3.77 stars. You can read member reviews here.

If you look at an atlas of the United States, one published around, say , 1940, there is, in the state of Indiana, north of New Castle and east of the Epileptic Village, a small town called Mooreland. In 1940 the population of Mooreland was about three hundred people; in 1950 the population was three hundred, and in 1960, 1970, and 1980, and so on. The book that follows is about a child from Mooreland, Indiana, written by one of the three hundred. It's a memoir, and a sigh of gratitude, a way of returning. I no longer live there; I can't speak for the town or its people as they are now. Someone has taken my place. Whoever she is, her stories are her own (taken in part from the prologue)

Before the Blog is a new meme hosted by YA Litwit. The idea here is that we have all been reading much longer than we have been blogging and have many books in our reading past that are worthy of blogging about. This is a way to 'rediscover' these gems by answering a few basic questions. For details check out the YA Litwit blog.