Thursday, June 2
An apology
for posting this here, but for some reason, I am having trouble getting getting my comments to post. Jilly, send the titles for those books about pioneers- I am mad about stories like that. If you haven't read willa cather- you are in for a treat (although my antonia is probably more widely read, o, pioneers I liked better). And Tree recommended a book by her friend, Lauri B ( OK, I am having a senior moment,, I can't remember the title or her last name) that I think I sent on to,,, someone here in the shelf. If they still have it, maybe they can send it on to you. Lovely book- modern ranching with lots of personal stuff also. Delicious.
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2 comments:
There are two memoirs by Laurie Wagner Buyer. One is Spring's Edge (ranching memoir) and the other is When I Came West, a memoir about her life as a mail-order "bride" to a Vietnam vet who lives off the grid in the 1970s. It's an incredible, harrowing story. Both of them are really good. I might be biased because I'm friends with Laurie, but she has a lot of fans within her genre.
wohoo book talk!
As a start:
1) "letters of a woman homesteader" by elinore pruitt stewart (non-fiction and a GREAT read. she was a widowed mother and went out west with independence for her and her daughter in mind. She wanted a big adventure where she could prosper and try all sorts of new things w/o being told what to do.)
2) "woman on the american frontier...." by william worthington (also non-fiction. i haven't read this one yet so i can't tell you if it's good by my standards)
3) "a lady's life on a farm in manitoba" by lady mary georgina caroline hall (also non-fiction and i give it an eh b/c the woman is a Lady (a dutchess) and so was only playing at survival and able to go home to england or find a new pastime beyond survival at any time, and she would praise herself for roughing it by milking cows or cooking her own breakfast and then bitch at the lack of hot water or single beds at hotels).
"the homesteaders: A novel of the canadian west" by robert j. c. stead (fiction and i'm about 50% done. compared to all the non-fiction i've read on the subject, it's quite accurate. i'm not a huge fan of the way the story is told, but the way the farming was done and other daily life things etc. is accurate.
"the american frugal housewife" by lydia maria francis child. (non-fiction. it's an account of how one can be frugal as a housewife in the mid-late 1800's. it was so popular, that someone has made a "Modern frugal housewife." I think it's a good read b/c it explains a lot of the things the homesteader wife does, but in more detail.
I went to amazon, selected kindle, and searched for books about "homesteaders" and dozens upon dozens of old books about the topic came up. I only wanted the "classic" or free ones. I REALLY like the diaries and letters that people have found from long-dead relatives and have since published, like the "lady in manitoba" etc.
i don't think one has to have a kindle to DL and read kindle books. But you could alway ssearch amazon for the homesteader type books and see if someone else has them free too.
I have read several books by willa cather and liked them all. "Song of a Lark" was one of my mother's favorite books when i was a girl. I DLed a free audio version of "My Antonia" to my ipod from Librivox and liked listening to that on a car trip we took.
jilly
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