So whatcha, whatcha, whatcha readin?

     I love to read.  I don't always have the time to read, but I love to hold a book in my hands, curl up on my little corner of the couch and really sink my brain fangs into a book.  I will read just about anything.  But the genre I hold near and dear are the stories of National and State Park Rangers.  I have no idea why.  I just love them!  The collections of stories and antidotes, the stories of loved ones and co-workers reflecting on a lost ranger, the life stories of rangers.  I eat them up!  They love their parks so much they are able to pain the most amazing pictures through their words.  I can see every grassy meadow, every snowy trail, every blazing hot desert campsite.  

     

     The funny thing is, when you give me my pick of which park I want to go to, it will be anywhere in the Pacific Northwest EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I love the lush green everything.  Its always a little overcast  which I love.  I am a pale skinned Ginger.  Me and the sun only barely get along, and even then its not for a very long period of time.  

     Whoa!  Tangent.  Back to the book!  I am currently reading The Last Season.  I am only about half way through, but I am hooked!  Its the stories and accounts of a back-country ranger in Yosemite/ King's Canyon.  It goes through his childhood growing up at the base of Half Dome in Yosemite and what his childhood was like, then merges into his adult life and becoming a ranger.  I am at the beginning of the section where his life starts to take a turn and misses radio check ins.  Isn't that the way most of these books go?  Life is rad!  I am a ranger now!  Oh crap that sucked!  Now I am missing!  I don't care, I love these books just the same.  Its more for the good memories and the stories of being a ranger than the sad parts.

     I always seem to pick up a book whenever we are in a park's visitor's center.  I walk in, and it's as if a tractor beam has captured me and is drawing me to the gift shop.  Past the shot glasses and spoons.  Past the travel mugs.  Past the plastic dinosaurs ( I have no idea why these are at almost every visitor's center we go to).  The books pull me in.  They ask me to pick them up and peruse their contents.  They entice me with their weird sawdust smell and promises of beautiful and true stories.  Then the Husbunny calls from across the shop snapping me out of my daze.  "Red!  NO!  Put it back."  And then its all about who is quicker, me to the cash register or Husbunny through the droves of meandering tourists.  This time I won, hence THIS post on THIS book.  

     I halfway recommend this book as I am only half way through it.  I know the whole thing is going to be good, but I can't just assume, now can I?