Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana is such a funny, smart book! Back when we were still living 200 miles apart, Ned and I read it out loud to one another over the phone and laughed so hard we cried–and sometimes cried so hard we needed to laugh some more.

I highly recommend this deliciously honest memoir as well as Kimmel’s novel, Something Rising, Light and Swift, but can’t say the same for her second memoir, She Got Up Off The Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana. It may deserve another attempt when Zippy isn’t so freshly lingering in my memory. It just seemed forced in comparison to Zippy‘s easy pace and tone.

Ned has been begging me to read Kimmel’s Iodine for years because he loved it so much and — he claims — didn’t understand a word of it. He’s thinking I can translate it for him. I’m thinking I’m going to need more room on my nightstand.