May 2024 International Labour Day

The first of May is a public holiday in many countries and marks the struggles of the trade union movement for workers' rights. So the idea is to read a book in May where work is important for the main character(s). And no, it doesn't have to be related to trade unions. Any kind of work will do: on a farm, in a shop, a school; salaried, self-employed or entrepreneurial.
You could read a biography of a famous entrepreneur, if you're inclined to non-fiction, about a wagon scout leading a trek across the North American Plains, a cattle driver in Australia, pearl divers in Japan, a garden designer in England – whatever takes your fancy, as long as it tells something about the industry or business the characters are involved with.
Some books that come to my mind are:
The good earth where farming takes up a large portion of the action
A town like Alice where the heroine provides work for women in her shoe factory
A la bonheur des dames which is set in a Parisian department store
Fanny herself about a woman's career in a Chicago mail order business
God is an Englishman where Adam Swann builds a transport business
etc.

The possibilities are endless, and I'm looking forward to your suggestions!
And please remember the Wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge#MAY_2024:...

The two books that pop into my mind where a character recommends the endorsement of working are Levin, Anna Karenina, and the last line of Candide. Good May Day idea.

I have a number of books that I am hoping to read in May that will fit here. Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix is about the women who worked at the Shirtwaist Factory in New York at the time that it burnt down in 1911. On the lighter side, I have Clothes-Pegs by Susan Scarlett to read. It is about a young woman from the work-room who gets a chance to rise to modelling. Finally I am also planning on reading Yours Cheerfully by A.J. Pearce, this is the 2nd volume of a trilogy about Emmy Lake who is trying to advance from writing a advice column to become a full-fledged reporter during WW II.

I have just the book on my shelf! Work Song by Ivan Doig Ivan is working at a library in Butte, Montana, and ends up helping the striking miners.

On a first glance I don't have many choices on my shelves, but I might read Pole Poppenspäler by Theodor Storm. It is short and he is one of my favourite authors, so why not?

Hmmmm, I do have the three-volume Penguin set of Marx's Capital, but I think it may be just a bit much in length, even just for the first volume! But I also have Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber, which I've been meaning to get to for ages.... I've also got Mary Gabriel's Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution in TBR. I've already read The Communist Manifesto with some really good supplemental materials in a fair recent Norton Critical – read it in a reread of the Manifesto itself some years ago, so I don't see a need for any reread there.

For my first read, though, it's Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, which Wikipedia describes as depicting the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the island of Guernsey (which island Hugo is tributing as his exile refuge). This will tie in well with my 19th Century French novel project and also be a good follow up to my current read of Notre Dame de Paris (for the April "disabilities" theme) in the Oxford World Classics translation.

If I have time, I could also do with a half-century-or-more reread of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is perhaps even more about labor issues despite its influence on the "clean food" campaign. It would be in the Norton Critical for the supplementary materials.

I know Germinal would fit in here, but I want to hold off on Zola until I get through Balzac and I'd prefer to take the Rougon-Macquart series in order.

For a quick read, I have Steinbeck's The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, a collection of his newspaper articles along with photos.

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A few I've already read but that come to mind for anyone else who might be interested....

Gaskell's Mary Barton and North and South. Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (and I wouldn't at all mind yet another reread, being a lot fonder of Shirley than most readers and I actually prefer it over Villette in the Bronte canon). For a queer touch, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg.

And a couple quick reads for anyone looking for children's books. Katherine Patterson's Bread and Roses, Too (Lawrence MA textile strike of 1912, with cameos by the IWW's Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn) and Jewell Parker Rhodes's Sugar (10-year-old Black girl on Reconstruction Era sugar plantation). (Patterson's best known for Bridge to Terabithia.)

>6 CurrerBell: Thank you for introducing me to Leslie Feinberg, I hadn't heard of her. I downloaded Stone Butch Blues from her website for free, although I will not get to it in May.

I like Shirley, too, and it was one of the novels I wrote my final thesis about - although I still like Villette a bit more!

I happen to have requested from the library The Pinecone by Jenny Uglow, which is the biography of Sarah Losh, a 19th century self-taught architect.

I am going to read Last Collection by Jeanne Mackin. This novel is historical fiction and is set in Paris during the three years leading up to WWII. It is about a woman who works for the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli in her haute couture house. Schiaparelli was known for her clothing as art esthetic and this novel is about the feud between Schiaparelli and Channel. This kind of women's work is often overlooked when we think of work, but it is a high dollar industry. I will let you know what I think of it when I get it read.

>6 CurrerBell: I have that Steinbeck, that would be an interesting read.

orwells roses loved this book for many reasons, but there is much here about labor esp in the business of growing roses in Colmbia, where most of our roses come from

I may read Grapes of Wrath for this as I recently listened to a podcast on this book.

Hmmm, Utopia for Realists looks interesting. If my library has it, that might be the one.

I just finished Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago by James Green. It's all about the rise of the American labor movement and the violence surrounding the whole issue. It's kind of dry, but it was very informative. Might be worth checking out.

I have two thoughts for this topic: Dickens’ Dombey and Son and Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-Yong. Both are time consuming but both are on my TBR. I’ll probably choose Mater 2-10 to read first, as it’s on the shortlist for the IB prize. The Booker website describes it as a book about 3 generations of railway workers told in the context of the main character’s staging a sit-in atop the chimney of a factory that has closed down and laid off all its workers, including himself.

>7 MissBrangwen: So many books to choose from—Shirley is also on my TBR. This could be a quarter’s worth of reading! My TBR is greatly increased by all the suggestions in this thread.

>16 dianelouise100: "The novel's popularity turned the distinctly male name Shirley into a distinctly female one." thats interesting. wonder about other formerly male names that switched like Beverly, Asley, Leslie.... (sorry off topic)

In a Paris museum shop I bought La place des bonnes, a non-fiction book about female servants in 1900 and I plan to read this.

>17 cindydavid4: Leslie is really unigender, as in Leslie Howard and Leslie Caron. And there's also Leslie Bogart, Bogey and Bacall's daughter, whom they named after Leslie Howard, who "made" Bogey's career.

Howard and Bogey had costarred in The Petrified Forest on stage; but when the time came for the movie, the producers wanted a bigger "name" for the character of Duke Mantee. Howard, however, who wasn't part of the Hollywood "contract system" (thus uncontrolled by the studios) and whom the producers absolutely had to have for the movie, insisted that he wouldn't sign unless Bogey got the supporting role.

Really OT....

>18 MissWatson: Speaking of female servants, there's also Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey as well as Rachel Ferguson's Alas, Poor Lady. (Ferguson was the author of The Brontes Went to Woolworths, which really isn't about the Brontes, and she's also the author of Charlotte Bronte: A Play in Three Acts, which I've got the only copy of that I've ever seen sold online, and it's safely stored in my safety deposit box.) A lot of Ferguson's admirers (not that she's all that well known) think Alas, Poor Lady was her best book. Tying in with Agnes Grey and Alas, Poor Lady is Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres, this last being one that I've got in TBR but haven't ever gotten around to.

And speaking of Shirley.... The character of Rose Yorke was based on Mary Taylor, who along with Ellen Nussey was one of Charlotte's two BFBs from Margaret Wooler's boarding school at Roe Head (the good school CB attended, distinguish it from Cowan Bridge). Taylor was the adventuresome one among the three friends, emigrating to New Zealand where she made enough money from a general store she opened that she was able to return to England financially independent for life and engage in feminist writing. Her novel Miss Miles (available from Oxford University Press) would fit this month's theme; it reminds me of Gissing's The Odd Women, and I personally prefer Miss Miles of the two (though that may just be a Brontean bias).

Taylor also wrote, for Emily Faithfull''s Victoria Magazine, a series of essays titled The First Duty of Women, which was subsequently republished in book form and which is available on Google Books. For Taylor, the "first duty" was to make money so as to be financially independent of men and family.

And that just brought to mind another book that might fit this month's theme, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

>20 CurrerBell: Ah, yes, governesses! However, the focus of my book is not the maids looking after children, but the ones doing the housework: kitchen maids, scullery maids etc.

I’ve laid aside Mater 2-10 after about 100 pages, may return to it later. I’m now starting Dombey and Son for this thread.

I read Work Song by Ivan Doig This is the book # 2 in the Medicine Country series. I did not read book one. Morrie travels to Butte, Montana, and takes several jobs: a crier for Irish wakes at a funeral home, a bookkeeper at the Library, and an advisor to the miners. The pace is slow and there just doesn't seem to be a spark to ignite the story. The ending just fizzled. It was a very local piece. It reminded me of Garrison Keillor books, which I do not appreciate. 306 pages 3 stars

My second entry for this topic is Grass of the Earth by Aagot Raaen. The story of an immigrant family from Norway to North Dakota. This wasn't your glossed over Little House on the Prairie book, but included the darker side: abuse, alcoholism, starvation, disease. What impressed me the most and why I decided to include this for labor day, was how hard these people worked just to stay alive 24/7, 365 days per year; and yet, some still died of starvation. 276 pages 3*

>21 MissWatson: And I have finished La place des bonnes. It was a surprisingly quick read for a non-fiction book and quite interesting. The focus is on maids of all work, usually very young and from the province. The chapter on the relationship between masters and servants drew heavily on 19th century fiction and gave me lots of titles to seek out.

Victor Hugh, The Toilers of the Sea 3***, and that rating's generous and given out of respect to the author.

We all know that Hugo loved digressions, but this time he overdid it. If you love the unabridged Moby Dick for its technical descriptions of whaling, you might really like Toilers for its lengthy and obscure ramblings. Homer, I understand, enumerated four(?) winds; but Hugo listed, I think, thirty-eight. In fairness, this might all have come off better in French, if one wants to read it for poetically metaphysical evocations of the winds and the sea (and a paleo-existentialist theme of the individual's struggle against a hostile nature and against fate). Some of the difficulty was probably compounded by the lack of annotations such as one would find in Oxford World Classics or Penguins, and Hugo does make frequent obscure (at least to a modern American) references.

I'll wrack this one up for this month's theme because it does involve labor at sea – a solo salvage operation by an heroic seaman to rescue the engine from a shipwreck (and this was in the years just after the Napoleonic Wars, when a ship's engine was immensely valuable in the age of sail). It's really, though, more a beauty-and-the-beast story in which the "beast" retires from the scene so that "beauty" can marry her true love.

>26 CurrerBell: Thanks for the review. Not one to rush out for, evidently.

>26 CurrerBell: I read this some 15 years ago and found it a bit of a chore, especially the long middle section. I seem to remember the start and finish were better.

I learned a lot about advertising in Truth in Advertising. The main character, Finbar Dolan, worked as a copy writer while he lied about his life to himself as well as others. The main accounts that he worked on were for diaper companies so there was a lot of humourous stuff about shooting an ad with lots of babies and mothers while Fin tried to figure out a life complicated by being the only sibling dealing with their estranged father who was dying. It was a story about connection and relationships complicated by the past.

>26 CurrerBell: LOL I'll pass!

I finished High Wages by Dorothy Whipple (1930), re-published by Persephone Books in 2009.

Written in 1930 and set in a northern English mill town beginning in 1912, the story follows 18 year old Jane Carter who gets a job as a shopgirl in a draper's shop. Whipple does a brilliant job of giving us many of the details of a young woman's life in such a shop. Working from early in the morning until late at night (with only Sundays off), Jane gets 5 shillings a week (plus room & board) to clean the shop, assist customers in choosing fabrics and other haberdashery items, and must do just about anything her employer demands. She shares a cold, dingy room above the shop with another shopgirl; they are constantly hungry because of the poor meals they receive; they are cheated out of wages and commissions; and they cannot complain or they will immediately lose their positions.

Jane works very hard; slowly gets her employer to make some modern changes, and by the end of WWI with the help of a friend, she is able to open her own shop with the newest thing: ready-made clothes. Along the way Jane makes friends and falls in love. This is an extremely readable novel and a fascinating look at the lives of young women at this time and the extreme effort and hard work it took for a young woman to open her own shop.

I had planned to read Dombey and Son for this theme, but it’s sort of been shuttled aside for now (definitely to be resumed later). The Iliad and The Odyssey, both in Emily Wilson’s superb translation, are books I’m reading for the RTT quarterly challenge, and my concentration has been focussed there. However, after finishing The Iliad and turning it over and over in my mind, I think that it might be counted for this theme too. The work of the Bronze Age warrior class was war and fighting; and fighting well and winning honor and fame are very precious to the warriors in The Iliad. Three of the main characters, Patroclus, Hector, and Achilles, prefer death to preserving their lives. Patroclus defies the instructions of his dear Achilles, whose armor he is wearing, to return to Achilles’ ship, once the Trojans have begun to retreat from the shore back to their walled city. He pursues the fleeing army, and Hector kills him. Hector ignores the pleas of his wife to retreat inside the walls and fight from a defensive position. He remains outside the walls unsupported and is killed by an enraged Achilles. And Achilles, even knowing he is fated to die if he continues his involvement in the war, continues fighting, even after he has killed Hector, and he is eventually killed (though not in this epic). The rewards of their work, reputation, honor, being remembered and praised after death—not gold, slaves, and other spoils—are so important to these heroes that they knowingly face death to achieve these goals and do their work well. It is their identity.

finally Im going to have a book for this month:The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath had it on my shelves and just found it. think this will fit just right and I should have enough time to read it!

I have completed my read of Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This book not only vividly describes the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 in which 146 workers died, it also explores the general strike that occurred the previous year and delves into the conditions and treatment of women workers in the early 20th century.

Utopia for Realists / Rutger Bregman
3.5 stars

People with a basic income. No stings attached money for poor people. 15 hour workweek. These are some of the things suggested by the author to make life better for all. There are studies to back him up and, though we have been conditioned to think differently, it does not cost more to just give poor people money to do with as they will and they don’t (the vast majority) spend it on drugs or alcohol. In fact, for the most part, they do use it to better their lives in an ongoing way.

These are just some of the things the author talks about. Of course, I already agree with much of this, but there are economic reasons, too – reasons we wouldn’t immediately think.

gypsy harvest by one of my fav authors and books/ its short but full of info on the dust bowl;talk of strikes, camps for them denied by the big buisness farmers and never mind helping the foreign immigrants, immigrants from Oklahoma and Texas were shown the door by their fellow Americans. the more things change.....Stienbeck is at his serious and compassionat self, tryint to wake up the country, .This will be a quick read, Ill report later

>36 cindydavid4: I've nearly finished Grapes of Wrath and will be posting a review later today. A great read.

I first read it when I was 12. probably the first book I read that the human condition hit me so hard. Read it a few more times and each time made me realize that we havent come all that far

read a wiki bio and apparently lots of people were upset that the book won the Nobel, He was so tired of the critism that he stopped writing for a while, The book was also banned. Like I say more of the same....

I finished Grapes of Wrath on my train home today (ironically in heavy rain slightly reminiscent of the weather conditions in the final chapter of the novel). This is justifiably an out and out classic of 20th century American and indeed world literature. It tells of the migration of impoverished tenant farmers westwards from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma to a supposedly better future in California. Alternating chapters detail the travels and experiences of the extended Joad family, with every other chapter containing more general descriptions of the experiences of the broader mass migration westwards. The style is very matter of fact in describing the struggles of the Joads as they move across the country, losing members of their party to death (two grandparents) and desertion (one son, one son-in-law), and their increasingly desperate search for work of any description and to get enough food to feed their party. They move through a succession of camps of varying quality and face provocations from the police and local populations in many areas, denounced as "Okies" swarming into California causing civil disorder and labour unrest, and even preaching "red revolution" merely for wanting to find the dignity of adequately paid labour to feed their families. A monumental and moving work.

the harvest gypsies is less than a novella, but a it is filled with descriptions of what was happening to the migrants and good introduction to what Stienbeck was working on, which led to grapes of wrath This was from a group of articles for the SF paper. Also includes many photos esp fromDorthea Lang

I did not realize it wasnt just the dust bowl that took their land/ It was the farm businees that quickly bought up the land s there was no place to go back too.

Steinbecks jouralist toured through sqatter camps and Hoovervilles of Califiornia. The portraits show once proud farmers reduced to misery. And I had no idea that there were people who accused him of faking it all.

"the articles were just not descriptive, they also contain specific policy recommendations. He called for the expansion of the federal camp program . there was also talk talk of unionizing. the biggest opponent was the Assiciated Farmers, who were also opposed the federal migrant camps, fearing they would unionize, and neighbors didn't want them in thier neighborhoods, the prejudice spread agains migrants. One theatre required 'negroes and okies'to sit the balcony"

The new deal act did not cover these travelers. Agricutrual workers were not covered by SocialSecurity, unemployment insurance, Minimum wage act or the national labour relation act. How did these people survive?

the Simon J Lubin society was set up to assist rhe migrant cause. Stienbeck allowed the group to publish his News articles in pamphlet form, entitled Their Blood is strong. these experience led to the writing the Grapes of Wrath.

there is much more in this little publication about his travels and I enourage people to read it

sorry this is so long, but I read it thinking of our homeless populations, and wonder why things are still the same

rating 5*

>40 cindydavid4: I intend to read this next, Cindy :)

>40 cindydavid4:
>41 john257hopper:

Been on my TBR for sometime! Also going to try to work this in before the end of the month.

>39 john257hopper: Glad you liked it. Good review. You liked it more than I!

>42 Tess_W: my short review posted in my thread here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/357654#n8543794

>43 john257hopper: Thanks, John!

I also read The Harvest Gypsies by John Steinbeck that depicts the hardships of migratory farm workers during the Great Depression, highlighting societal injustices and human resilience. This was a prequel and the basis for his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Besides addressing the plight of the Okies, the Mexican, Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese farm workers was also addressed. 87 pages 4.5 stars

I read Pole Poppenspäler by Theodor Storm. I chose it because the main character is a woodturner, and there is some of that in the novella, as well as repairing puppets and puppeteering (is that a word?) in general.

This is not my favourite novella by Storm, but still well worth a read.