Peter Zheutlin is the author of Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride and Rescue Road: One Man, Thirty Thousand Dogs and a Million Miles on the Last Hope Highway, a New York Times best seller.His new book is Rescued: What Second Chance Dogs Teach Us About Living With Purpose, Loving With Abandon, and Finding Joy in the Little Things.
Recently I asked Zheutlin about what he was reading. His reply:
Right now I am reading Elissa Altman’s food memoir, Poor Man’s Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire and the Art of Simple Cooking,Visit Peter Zheutlin's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.which is based on her James Beard-award winning blog of the same name. My wife, Judy Gelman, is a food writer and she suggested I contact Elissa because Elissa and her partner, Susan, share their lives with rescue dogs. I interviewed Elissa for my new book Rescued: What Second Chance Dogs Teach Us About Living with Purpose, Loving with Abandon, and Finding Joy in the Little Things. Elissa’s writing is funny, unpretentious and keenly observant. I interviewed her for Rescued before reading her book and am not surprised at how insightful and thoughtful it is.
This month my book group, a bunch of sixty-something guys who have been meeting for more than twenty-five years, is discussing The Sympathizer by Viet Tranh Nguyen,which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first chapter takes off like a runaway train and it never falters. It ranks up there with my favorite book of all time, William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner.
I also recently read both of Amor Towles' novels, Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow. Towles’s characters are rendered so precisely, and his writing is so smart, that every sentence was like popping a piece of exquisite chocolate in your mouth. I kept thinking, “wow, I wish I could write half as well.” His writing harkens back to other eras…F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton come to mind.
Coffee with a Canine: Peter Zheutlin & Albie.
--Marshal Zeringue
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