Marley & Me by John Grogan

I really resisted reading Marley & Me; who needs another book about somebody's beloved pet? Then my daughter said I really should read it, because it's funny and not about a good dog, but about a really bad dog. As the sometimes adoptive parent to a passel of bad dogs, I decided to go ahead and try it.

Marley & Me is about a truly troublesome dog. Marley eats furniture, tears up drywall, and swallows anything that will hold still. He is prone to ear infections and terrified of storms. But Marley & Me is also a memoir hiding behind a dog book. In the 13 years that Marley lived with John Grogan and his wife Jenny, they had 3 children, moved from one house in Florida to another, and then moved to Pennsylvania. So, while reading about Marley--you end up reading the story of a marriage and a family.

I still don't really understand why Marley & Me still perches atop the bestseller list after 41 weeks, but it is easily engaging, and Grogan's years as a newspaper columnist show to good effect in the writing.