Truck: A Love Story

I am sorry for my silence. A six-week hiatus with family and friends was bad enough, but then trying to catch up from said break, starting school and creating a couple of new syllabi have provided me with sufficient justification so as to avoid having to write for a while.

Well, I have finally found an author that writes like I would like to write if I could string two words together in a coherent sentence. Michael Perry. Author of Truck: A Love Story and Population:485. That said, Truck is a better read than Population: 485. There a several swears in the aforementioned book, that while he is quoting other folks, still grate a little. Truck was just pure pleasure for me. Here is a review from Amazon.

"One wouldn't think that repairing a beat-up old pickup could become a life-altering undertaking. And yet, for Perry, it was all that and more: an epic adventure that encompassed love, diplomacy, a little hydroponics, and even some danger (like setting yourself on fire). Perry, who is also the author of -Population: 485 (2002), propels the story forward as if he were writing a novel, helped by a cast of characters who range from the lightly offbeat to the totally bizarre. The prose is straightforward, almost deadpan, but behind the words, the reader feels a heightened sense of irony, as though Perry knows how weird it all is but figures, what the heck, it's true so why not just go with it. The heart of the book tells dual love stories--man and truck; man and woman--that are, in their own ways, equally passionate. Perry writes about fixing his truck as if he was resurrecting it, but in fact, he may more accurately be said to have been resurrecting himself. The truck is transformed, certainly, but the multiplicity of changes that Perry goes through run deeper and likely will last longer." David Pitt
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One of my favorite parts of this book is his attempts at growing a garden. It won't be for everyone, but I loved every minute of it. Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I am happy to live in a place where I can chuck a washing machine out my back door and no one judges my behavior unusual"

Here's a link to an excerpt for the book.

Enjoy.