Monday, October 2, 2017

Peter Zheutlin

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, 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.
Visit Peter Zheutlin's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Zheutlin & Albie.

--Marshal Zeringue