January
The Wednesday Letters. Jason F. Wright
Learning to forgive in a family situation....
Child of the Mist. Kathleen Morgan
Anne MacGregor, an herbal healer, is handfasted to widower Niall Campbell in 1564 in Scotland. Two different clans at war; a traitor trying to kill Niall and take over the clan; accusations that Anne is a witch....
Where Women Create. Inspiring Work Spaces of Extraordinary Women. Jo Packham
Lovely. Kitty Bartholomew, Anna Corba, Dena Fishbein, Sandra Evertson, more.
Garden People. The Photographs of Valerie Finnis. Ursula Buchan
What a lovely book! Valerie was a gardener in England from about the mid 1920s through about the turn of the century. She was also a photographer. The book is filled with her photographs (all exceptional!) And stories about the people in the photographs and a little about Valerie herself. Wonderful book.
Joseph Cornell: Secrets in a Box. Alison Baverstock (an Adventures in Art series book)
Great close-up photographs of some of Cornell’s works; great explanations about his work and the origins of his work; thoughts about looking at his art; plus a little biographical information and some photos of him. A short 24 pages, but the photos of his work are wonderful! Does not include information how he created his art.
February
|One of Each. Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman
A children’s picture book. Oliver Tolliver looks like a stylized Airedale. He lives alone and is quite satisfied with his situation until he brings a friend to visit. With only one of each object, he realizes he doesn’t have enough for his friend too. Cute story. Very colorful paintings.
A Midwife’s Tale. The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
Martha Ballard was 50 in 1785 when she started her diary. She wrote daily, usually just a few sentences – always about the weather; usually about her comings and goings; the births and deaths attended; her house and garden work; and sometimes about the events in the community around her. I love the interpretations and discussion which follow the diary entries in each chapter. The author adds lots of information and insight.
I think Martha Ballard is a hero to me. She was such a faithful woman. She served so many people in so many ways. She was still digging in her garden starting new beds and planting until she was 76, a year before she died! I think she was an amazing woman.
It was interesting to read about her daily activities and to notice how she spoke and wrote (hors, shee, workd, fatagud, brot, etc.). No standardized spelling in those days!
I love this book!
From the jacket cover: “Martha Ballard’s diary coolly notes her adventures–setting out in ‘a doleful storm’ or waist-high in snow, making perilous river crossings, riding miles alone through back roads (‘the hors Blundereed & I fell & hurt me’) to help usher infants into the world or treat a variety of ills from the colic to scarlet fevers. She records at the same time the comings and goings, pleasures and conflicts, of her household (her surveyor-miller husband, her children before their marriages, usually a hired girl) and her town. She succors her husband in debtor’s jail. She helps her daughters with their babies. She worries about her violent son. She manages a bevy of weavers, brews beer, makes vinegar from pumpkin parings, pulls flax, barters, doctors her cow and lamb, cooks, bakes, grows twenty kinds of vegetables and fruits and countless medicinal herbs-–the roster of work accomplished is luxuriant and dizzying-–and rushes off in the black of night to her midwife’s task.”
March
Stargirl. Jerry Spinelli
A teen/y.a. book. Told in the first person by Leo, an 11th grader, about a new girl at school, Stargirl, who is unusual, individual, non-conformist, slightly eccentric -- but she’s always thinking of and doing for others. Of course, she’s not accepted at school. She likes Leo and Leo realizes he likes her. But he would like her better if she were “normal.” I especially liked the following exchange between the two. They are discussing her practice of giving gifts and cards to people she doesn’t know without signing the cards. Leo is speaking.
I said, “Why don’t you leave a card or something with your name on it?”
The question surprised her. “Why should I?”
Her question surprised me. “Well, I don’t know, it’s just the way people do things. They expect it. They get a gift, they expect to know where it came from.”
“Is that important?”
“Yeah, I guess–“
[He suddenly realizes a surprise gift left on his doorstep with an unsigned card a year or so earlier was from her, and there’s a brief exchange about it.]
“Where were we?” she said.
“Getting credit,” I said.
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s nice to get credit.”
The spokes of her rear wheel spun behind the curtain of her long skirt. She looked like a photograph from a hundred years ago. She turned her wide eyes on me. “Is it?” she said.
Coming Through the Blizzard: A Christmas Story. Eileen Spinelli
I didn’t much like the drawings or the story.
|Three Pebbles and a Song. Eileen Spinelli; D.S. Schindler, illus.
A cute story about a mouse family preparing for winter. They all gather food and supplies except the little boy, who gathers only pebbles for juggling, a song, and a dance.
|When Mama Comes Home Tonight. Eileen Spinelli; Jane Dyer, illus.
What a great, comforting book for a little child. Wonderful illustrations of a red-haired, curly-headed, sweet-cheeked child: pat-a-cake; face-to-identical-face with Mama; in the bathtub; snuggled on Mama’s lap while she reads a story; asleep with thumb in mouth; nestled in bed.
Roses for Mama. Janette Oke
When both parents die, the two oldest children, Thomas and Angela, are left to care for their younger siblings, Louise, Derek, and Sara. Told through the eyes of Angela, who, in trying to raise her younger siblings, tries to do as her mother would do. I especially appreciated the following quote: “Never despise a task – any task. In doing any job, you are either creating something or bettering something.”
Love, Stargirl. Jerri Spinelli
A continuation of the story of Stargirl, written in the first person in the form of a letter (or journal entries) to Leo. Good, but not as good as Stargirl. She lives in Pennsylvania now, homeschools, and, though she misses and continues to love Leo, she meets other people and is involved in life. She an her agoraphobic friend, Betty Lou, are discussing how to be comfortable with lives of uncertainty. Stargirl thinks Betty Lou has an answer.... Betty Lou’s advice:
“Ah, yes, the answer. Live today. There.”
“Live today.”
“Yes. Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry [Stargirl’s current boy interest, but it could be anything not in our present].”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today that you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you’ll never know.”
Milkweed. Jerry Spinelli
Definitely a book for mature young adults. Remembrances of a young boy’s experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. Poignant, alarming, touching, frightening. I almost quit reading it several times, but something kept pulling me back. I suspect it is a true story, presented as fiction instead of a biography. I’m glad I finished it. Really, it’s a book about courage, about keeping going, about living with the past. A good book, but not for the faint of heart.
April
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. An Assembly Such as This. Pamela Aiden
So, this is Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view. Very interesting. There are two more volumes to the series. I expect to read them in quick succession.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. Duty and Desire. Pamela Aiden
This is book two in the series. It takes place “away from” Elizabeth Bennet, while Darcy is wife-seeking. He realizes he loves Elizabeth, but argues with himself about his duty to his name, vs. his desire for Elizabeth. Excellent but not as good as the first.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. These Three Remain. Pamela Aiden
The third and last in the Darcy series. Really good, insightful, interesting. Actually, I didn’t want to put it down, much to Brenna’s dismay. It was longer than either of the other two and I was anxious to finish it.
Second-Hand Dog. How to Turn Yours into a First-Rate Pet. Carol Lea Benjamin
I think this is the very best primer on human interaction with dogs. Chapters include: how dogs learn; an alpha primer (because you must be in charge); what your dog needs (both physical and emotional needs); dog training (including sit, stay, come, heel); what to do when problems persist; and professional secrets. It’s just a very excellent beginner book. Buy it!
May
Before Green Gables. Budge Wilson
This is a prequel to Anne of Green Gables and I think it’s excellent. The style is a little different than L.M. Montgomery’s, but the story is very believable. Great fun. It makes me want to read the Anne... books again. I listened to part of it on tape, finished it by reading.
A Perfect Mess. The hidden Benefits of Disorder. Eric Abrahamson & David H. Freedman
This was an audio book read by Scott Brick. It took me several months to listen to it while driving to and from various places. A broad discussion of mess in a huge variety of places and how it may be a hidden benefit. Very interesting.
The Last Lecture. Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
Lessons for living from a man dying of cancer. Excellent!
June
A Heart Like His. Making Space for God’s Love in Your Life. Virginia H. Pearce
Ooooh, excellent book. I love how she suggests an experiment – just to notice where your heart is, and then progress from there. Very non-threatening. Also very effective. She shares experiences of a group of women who try this experiment and explains why it’s so important to have a heart like His. Probably worth reading repeatedly until the message sinks into my being and becomes a part of me!
The Enchanted April. Elizabeth von Arnim. Read by Nadia May
I think this is one of my favorite fiction books! Magical. I think this is the second time I’ve listened to it on tape. Love it!
August
My Ántonia. Willa Cather
What a lovely, quiet book. Told in the first person, Jim Burden recalls his years as a young boy growing up in Nebraska with his grandparents. He remembers a young Bohemian neighbor girl named Ántonia, her family, and other immigrants from various countries. To me it seems to point out the importance of remembering people who touch our lives and whose memories live with us through the years.
September
Little Heathens. Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Such a fun book! Lots and lots of great information about making do. Good ideas even for today. I enjoyed Mildred’s writing style and the experiences she shared. She included recipes, homemaking tips, etc. Worth the read. One of the things she said (p. 54) was that she grew up thinking that certain expressions were one word: agoodwoman, hardearnedmoney, agoodhardworker, alittleheathen, demonrum, agoodwoolshirt. She received a good, honest, upright upbringing.
October
Mutant Message Down Under. Marlo Morgan
The author says the events in the story actually happened but she chose to publish it as fiction because so many people didn’t believe her story. She was to be honored at an event in Australia. Instead, she was taken on a 3-month walkabout with Aborigines. She tells some of the things she learned. Very interesting. Lots of interesting concepts and ideas. A quote on p. 75: “We automatically give to each person we meet, but we choose what we give. Our words, our actions, must consciously set the stage for the life we wish to lead.” Quote about unbirthdays on p. 164: “They believe that the purpose for the passage of time is to allow a person to become better, wiser, to express more and more of one’s beingness. So if you are a better person this year than last, and only you know that for certain, then you call for the party. When you say you are ready, everyone honors that.” Lots more interesting ideas. Definitely worth the read. (Though I have to admit that I don’t agree with everything in the book.)
Garden Junk. Mary Randolph Carter
The author photographed the book, and it’s full of fabulous photographs. Her intent was to focus on the “junk” and not on the environment of the junk. Some of the chapters include the topics tools’ gold, flower power, from Arles with love (sunflowers), pot luck, pot holders, the wheel thing, old paint (painted furniture, mostly), garden bones (fences, mostly), floral fakes, gimme shelter (hats), and garden sculpture (bird baths, angels, etc.). Sidebars tell how to clean old rusty tools, how to “olden” sculpture, how to repaint, how to build a free-standing, outdoor porch/room, how to make a tent, etc. I liked this book quite a lot. She has a lot of verve and definitely an appreciation for old and imperfect objects. A good book for inspiration when money is limited.
November
Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead. Five Steps to the Drop-Dead Gorgeous Garden of Your Dreams. Cassandra Danz
About cottage gardens. She gives fairly specific directions for making/building/doing some things: wattle fence (p. 9); permanent walkway/path (p. 35-39); rusticated arbor (p. 42); digging a hole without ruining your back (p. 166). She advocates packing the border (that is, planting perennials over bulbs for a successive bloom); and planting in drifts, that is, putting several of one kind of flower together instead of spreading them out along a border so that there’s enough of the plant together to have a presence. She talks about mulch varieties and explains how to use “the old newspaper trick” (p. 70) to get rid of plants, then cut a hole and plant in the hole without moving the newspaper. She explains about proportions (too mathematical for me, especially because I didn’t have a specific place in mind while I was reading). Perennials. Climbers. Shrubs. Gardens based on direction of sun (east-facing garden, etc.). Gardening to have flowers all season. Getting rid of bugs (pp. 161-164). Color: which colors do what to other colors; which plants look/don’t look great together, with plant suggestions for color gardens. Definitely NOT a reference book, but it has helpful information.
The Trees. Conrad Richter
Poignant story - and the first in a series of three. Early America in Ohio, probably about 1800-1825. No date is given but from the descriptions the story happens before there are many people here. The Luckett family moves to Ohio, the mother dies and the oldest daughter, Sayward, is left to take care of her 4 younger siblings and her father.
At one point in the story, Sayward’s younger brother, Wyitt, arranges to buy a gun to shoot meat for his family. The following happens after he comes home after a dangerous encounter:
“Sayward sopped the wet rag over his [Wyitt’s] hard, naked, young body. When the caked blood washed off, you could see deep cuts in plenty places. He would carry scars and welts from this. Oh, she knew a long time whom he took after. He’d grow up a hunter like his pappy, following the woods, moving on with the game. If it was in him, it would come out. There was no stopping such kind.
“She could see him in her mind, yonder through the ups and downs of life, skinning deer and trap-drowned mink and otter, giving a rap over the head to foxes that hid in bushes ashamed to be caught and to coons that sat up as big as you please on a log as if they didn’t have a trap and clog hanging to one paw. Snared panthers would shed real tears when he pulled out his hunting knife, and beaver would swim out of their smashed houses and find he had left no ice for them to come up and breathe under. No, they would have to come out on the bank where he would take them by a back foot to bleed them. If he took them by a front food, they would bite him.
“That shock of sandy hair would be farther down over his shoulders then and his young face that had hardly fuzz on it as yet would be covered thick with a sandy beard. His buckskins would be bloody where he wiped his hands, and his hair would be full of nits. Not often would he wash, least of all his itchy feet. Where those feet would take him, a sister had no means of knowing and no business if she had. Didn’t Worth [Sayward’s father] say once he hadn’t seen his brothers after he was fourteen? And Jary [Sayward’s mother] and her sister never heard from each other again.
“She better wash him tender whilst she had the chance. Later she’d think of this many a time when he had gone off yonder with none perhaps but an Indian woman to tend him and a gray moose cow for milk. For all she’d know then, her brother Wyitt might as well be dead and buried, deep in some woods or plains she never saw and never would see.
“‘Now stand up to the fire and dry yourself warm,’ she told him. ‘I’ll git something on you till I fix you a new frock and leggins.’”
December
The Fields. Conrad Richter
This is the continuing story of Sayward (pronounced Saird) and her family. Married, with children. The land becomes fields. By the end of this book, there is a small town around her house. Excellent book. I think this series is excellent for social history for the genealogist! (I hope to finish The Town by the end of the year!)
The Town. Conrad Richter
I think Sayward Luckett Wheeler is one of my heroes! There is a quiet, sensible, almost primitive, wisdom about her – very down to earth. This book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951. While the series takes place between the late 1700s and mid-1800's (through about the Civil War), the last book seems timely for today!
Sayward is the mother of 10 children, all alive at her death except one. Either at the end of The Fields or early in The Town she has several more children. The youngest is Chancey, a sickly boy. He’s catered to, receives extra attention, and has an easy life with little work or responsibility. In a word, he was “coddled,” as Sayward herself thought, though too late to make a difference in his life. Part of the story in this book revolves around Chancey and his dislike of work. As a youth and young adult, he disdains work and would rather not. In the Chapter 26, “The Flowering,” Chancey, Sayward, and her husband Portius, have a discussion about work.
“This spring he [Chancey] tried every excuse to get out of working in the lot and garden. When she held him to it, he cried out it was a disgrace. She was thunderstruck though she tried not to show it.
“‘Why is honest work a disgrace?’ she wanted to know.
“‘It’s all right for those who have to,’ he told her. ‘But you’re the richest woman in Americus and I’m your son and yet we have to go out and work like hired men in the field.’
“It came to her mind to say, I thought you said you weren’t my son, Chancey, but never would she cast that up to him. [As a child, Chancey believed and told others that Sayward and Portius were not his real parents.]
“‘Work’s the best thing we can do, Chancey,’ she said.
“‘Robert Owen didn’t think so and he was one of the greatest thinkers of our age. He said if you make a man happy, you make him virtuous. That’s his whole system---making people happy.’
“‘We want to make you happy, too, Chancey,’ she said mildly.
“‘That’s what you say. But what you mean is you want me to work and be happy. You’re so used to working all your life, Mama, you can’t live without working. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. Thank God I’ve never been spoiled like that.’
“‘Spoiled?’ Sayward swallowed.
“‘Yes, you won’t even have a hired girl in this big house. You insist on doing all the work yourself. Don’t you understand, Mama, there are more important things than work in this world?’
“‘What for instance?’
“‘Well, Robert Owen said that one of the main occupations of working people should be play. He practised it, too. He arranged in his factories that the laborers could dance, relax, talk and sing and amuse themselves all they wanted. He was the real pioneer, Mama, not you and the settlers. Now phalanxes are taking up his revolutionary ideas. Every member of the phalanx is going to be equal. Nobody can order another around. Everybody can choose his own work and do as little of it as he wants to. That’s in the constitution.’
“‘If everybody can pick the easy work, who’ll do the hard and ugly work?’ Sayward asked meekly.
“‘Of course there’ll have to be a little repulsive labor at first,’ Chancey admitted. ‘But progress will do away with all toil and labor in time. Meanwhile those who do that work will get a little more credit against their rent and meals. They’ll also get a share of the profits. Everybody else will share alike. There’ll be no rich people and no poor people, just brothers and sisters. And everybody will have security and happiness.’
“‘Everybody but your mother,’ Portius put in. ‘I can’t conceive of her being happy there.’
“‘Not if I had to work to make up for all those lazy shirkers who wanted to dance and play and have a good time all the time!’ Sayward agreed bitterly. ‘I’d sooner go out on the desert with savages and rattlesnakes for my brothers and sisters and live my own life and get paid for my own labor. Such schemes never worked in this world and never will, but the’re always cracked people getting born who try to get something for nothing.’ ...
“‘I don’t see our grandchildren coming in the world with didies on now that things have changed and folks are so well off like you say,’ she retorted. ‘There always was work and there always will be. Some folks just never want to do any. Even those who had to slave and sweat the most to get their heads above water now say they don’t want their young ones to have to go through what they had to. They’d never reckon to train a young horse by letting him stand in the stable or pasture. They know mighty well the minute they’d put him in a plow or on the road, he’d sweat his self to pieces. He’d be too soft. But that’s the way they coddle their own flesh and blood. Well, what they don’t learn their young ones about work and hardship, life will learn them later on.’
“‘That’s a cruel and outmoded thing to say,’ Portius declared. ‘People are more enlightened now in the nineteenth century.’
“‘Robert Owens says, Papa,’ Chancey put in, ‘relieve the people of want, and you relieve them of evil and unhappiness.’
“‘Bosh and nonsense, Chancey!’ his mother flared. ‘Making a body happy by taking away what made him unhappy will never keep him happy long. The more you give him, the more he’ll want and the weaker he’ll get for not having to scratch for his self. The happiest folks I ever knew were those who raised their own potatoes, corn and garden stuff the first spring out here. They’d been half starved but they found out they could get the best of their own troubles. They wouldn’t have traded that first sack of meal from their own corn for half of Kentuck. That kind made good neighbors, too, and mighty handy to have around in time of trouble. If making your young ones work off their own troubles is old-fashioned, and out of date, then the good Lord is out of date because that’s the way He lets us sink or swim with our troubles.’
And then later, in Chapter 33, “The Witness Tree,” Sayward ponders being the last of her generation alive....
“...Those wild shaggy mossy oldtime butts [trees in Ohio’s first-growth forest] would be out of place in Americus today as would the shaggy oldtime folks she had known. Yes, and she was out of place her own self, living her old life like she did in her day, taking care of herself at her age [80-something] and doing her own work, giving no thought if she lived or died. That’s one reason why her children wanted to move her. Younger folks couldn’t stand seeing her do it. It was too hard on their ‘narve strings.’
“What gave folks ‘narve strings’ today and made them soft so they couldn’t stand what folks could when she was young? Oh, she was no learned judge like Portius, just an old woodsy woman who hadn’t learned to read and write till her own young ones taught her. Her eyes were not so good any more and her mind would lately forget. But she had her own notions. It had taken a wild and rough land to raise the big butts she saw when first she came here, and she reckoned it took a rough and hard life to breed the kind of folks she knew as a young woman. If you made it easy for folks, it seemed like their hardihood had to pay for it. Didn’t she know? Which one of her young ones was it she had raised the softest, done the most for, coaxed and prayed along, saved from bad things one time after the other? Wasn’t it the same one that now could take life and his country the least and wanted to change God’s world over from top to bottom? It was the same with sick folks, Sayward noticed. Once they had been taken care of too long, they got to feeling the world ought to be changed and softened, centered towards themselves.
“But why in God’s name did soft and weak folks want to make the whole world over like they were for? In her time in the woods, everybody she knew was egged on to be his own special self. He could live and think like he wanted to and no two humans you met up with were alike. Each had his own particular beliefs and his reasons for owning to them. Folks were a joy to talk to then, for all were different. Even the simple-minded were so original in their notions they either made you laugh or gave you pause. But folks in Americus today seemed mighty tiresome and getting more so. If you saw one, you saw most. If you heard one talk, it’s likely you heard the rest. They were racked on living like everybody else, according to the fashion, and if you were so queer and outlandish as to go your own way and do what you liked, it bothered their ‘narve strings’ so they were liable to lock you up in one of their newfangled asylums or take you home where they could hold you down to their way of doing, like Libby wanted to do.
“What was the world coming to and what hearty pleasures folks today missed out of life! One bag of meal her pap said, used to make a whole family rejoice! Now folks came ungrateful from the store, grumbling they had to carry such a heavy market basket. Was that the way this great new country of hers was going to go? The easier they made life, the weaker and sicker the race had to get? Once a majority of the men got weak and soft, what weak, harmful ways would they vote the country into then? Well, her pap’s generation could get down on their knees and thank the Almighty they lived and died when they did. How would they ever have come and settled this wild country if they said to each other, ‘Ain’t you afeard?’ How would her pappy have fetched them the long way out here on foot if he’d kept asking all the time, ‘Are ye all right? How do ye feel? Do ye reckon ye kin make it?’ No, those old time folks she knew were scared of nothing, or if they were, they didn’t say so. They knew they ran bad risks moving into Indian country, but they had to die some time. They might as well live as they pleased and let others bury them when the time came. Now Libby’s generation, it seemed, lived mostly to study and fret about ailing and dying.”
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