Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

Shepherd penned many gems of humorous lit, and a mash-up of his memoirs formed the basis for the cloying movie A Christmas Story (not a fan :/ ). The books make it more apparent that he was writing about a grittier working-class world, one based on family dysfunction among the steel mills of Gary, Ind. That truth makes the soaring humor even more astounding and cathartic. An absolute masterpiece that, I happen to know, helped pull at least one reader out of general spiritual malaise.

Jean Shepherd's stories are undeniably funny and he's a master of vividly describing the life of a kid growing up in the Midwest in the 30s but they're best taken in small doses. Together, they can become slightly repetitive. Still, some of Shepherd's lines are worthy of writing down and/or memorizing and Ralphie will always be a beloved home-grown character for readers in Northwest Indiana.

This is the book that, in part, "A Christmas Story" is based on. I loved the familiar stories about when the Ralphie character was young. But I couldn't really get into the later stories of him as a teenager and adult, I found them kind of tedious. I guess that's why there was no sequel to the movie.

My dad gave me this book when I was growing up, and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I later found out that a few of the stories from this book were turned into the classic holiday film A Christmas Story. Just a wonderfully written, hilarious account of growing up -- with a tall tale aspect to it that just elevates the stories to pure fun!

Jean Shepherd had a radio show on WOR in New York City every night in the early 1960s in which he talked for a half hour about life and his childhood. The stories in this book were originally published in Playboy Magazine and the characters and feel of the stories would be familiar to anyone who listened under the covers when they were supposed to be sleeping. Enough so that (I'll admit it) I didn't finish the book.

Starting with Delbert Bumpas and beyond the eponymous Wanda, Shepherd introduces us to the people who populated his formative years. Like *The Phantom of the Open Hearth* and *A Christmas Story*, *Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories* mines Shepherd's past and delivers the goods in such a way that you cannot help but return time and again.

The author looks back on boyhood and adolescent misadventures. The title story is a scream.