February 2022 Theme: A Trip to the Country

This month take a trip to the farm, the county fair, or to Appalachia. Read about life in the rural areas; fiction or non-fiction. There are many good reads! Listed below are a few. Please let us know what you are reading and what you might suggest!

Most of all: HAVE FUN!

Don't forget the wiki here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge#FEBRUARY_...

Fiction:
Prodigal Summer: A Novel
The Country Life: A Novel
Mrs. Fytton's Country Life
As the Earth Turns
Any of the Little House Books
A Month in the Country
The Simple Wild: A Novel
Appalachian Daughter
All Among the Barley
On All Sides Nowhere
The Trees Conrad Richter
O, Pioneers!

Non-Fiction
An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood Jimmy Carter
English Pastoral: An Inheritance
The Yorkshire Shepherdess
Four Hedges
Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales
Down the Garden Path
Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life
Rurally Screwed: My Life Off the Grid with the Cowboy I Love
Living our Best Lives Cannon Hall Farm
The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love

That's not a natural habitat for me, I may have to do some digging in the TBR...

I enjoy the fiction of the Southern U.S., so my shelves and TBR are full of possibilities for this theme. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is due for reread,and I’d like to get in some of Eudora Welty, maybe a novel or a short story collection. Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, The Wide Net and Other Stories are titles that come to mind. And on my list for 2022 is The Color Purple by Alice Walker. And February is the shortest month!

I'll be working on a read/reread of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex" novels. I also do want to get around to Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, the one major work by Gaskell that I've yet to read. I'd also like to do Hillbilly Elegy.

A lot of these reads – Hardy, Gaskell, and Victorian country literature in general – will fit in with the first quarter theme of "19th Century (Excluding North America)."

I love this theme! I am going to explore the ranching life with English Creek by Ivan Doig. This is the first book in a trilogy about a family living on a ranch in Montana and I believe it opens in the 1930s.

The book I have stacked for this month's challenge, which will also fit the quarterly theme of, "19th Century (Excluding North America)" is Tess of the 'D'Urbervilles (by Thomas Hardy). It's literally been decades since I read it last-- so it's really new-to-me again! (Also, I'm pretty sure when I read it last, I was not reading critically or with the idea of a theme in mind...)

I'm going to read The Dry by Jane Harper which is about an unsolved murder in the outback of Australia.

Not sure if these are considered 'country', they are instead about pioneers. Let me know what you all think

Infinite Home is about a family trying to make life work in the desert as well as a young immigrant who gets involved with the camel army corps* that comes through the area. Probably wont reread it, but others might

letters of a woman homesteader was first published in 1914, the letters are are fun to read and very interesting

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps

These might work better:

chasing spring just noticed this on my bookshelves and dont think I read it. the author travels through America. Think Ill pic this one.

small world: a microcosmic journey

Blue Highways one of my favorite travel narratives

travels with charlie

Kingdom by the Sea the first book I read by this author and led me to a long love affair of travel narratives. He walks along the british coast and unlike his later books, is actually a pleasant narrator (he later becomes way too cynical and judgemental, not traits to have for a travel writer)

Another early favorite Parnassus on Wheels about a traveling bookseller in New England circa 1915. He has a later book the haunted bookshop about when he settles down in Brooklyn with his own bookstore

oh and of course all creatures great and small

Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd is about country life in 19th century Wessex. If fact, this book would also count for the quarterly theme; 19th century.

I will be reading The Earth Abideth by George Dell, a novel that takes place in Ohio from approximately 1866 to the turn of the century. Touchstones incorrect for this book and off on the author also. This is not a zombie book!

I love this theme! I still need to figure out what I'll read, but I wanted to make a suggestion for fiction: the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

That being said, I'm rereading the Little House series, so next up is Little Town on the Prairie, that's an option.

I usually read nonfiction for this, though, so I'm more likely (unless I do both) to get to The Great American Dust Bowl / Don Brown

I'd like to mention a book I read at the end of last year: Now in November by Josephine Johnson, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1935. Here is my summary from last year:

Now in November tells the story of a family farm in an unnamed place in the American heartland, during the Depression and Dust Bowl years. Told as first person narrative by the middle girl of 3 daughters, this is the story of the love/hate relationship with the farm and the land and each other. The father is harsh, the mother is often silent, the eldest daughter is difficult and the youngest daughter is ever the optimist. Our narrator Marget describes the landscape and animals with a fierce love, even as her father sees it only as his livelihood, and a struggling one at that, for the farm is highly mortgaged and the drought years are taking their toll.

This is a sad and desperate little book, but is brilliantly written and relays the harsh reality about farming life during the Depression years. I believe this book needs more attention from readers; I think it ended up in the shadow of the much longer and more famous Grapes of Wrath which was written several years later.

>14 kac522: On my WL it goes!

I requested and got The Dry from the library in 2 days; hence my read is early. This was the story of a Special Agent returning home to a small town in the outback for a funeral of a friend; part of a triple murder. Small town gossip plays a big part of this story. This was book number 1 in Jane Harper's series. 336 pages 4 stars

Well, apparently I've already read the book I was planning on:
Little heathens : hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression - 4*.
I'll keep looking for a different book from my shelves.

So I have started chasing spring which appears to be a perfect book for the theme. In this early part, he has just had heart surgery and for many reasons decides to look for spring. the author will be taking a route to follow the season as it springs forth, from the NorthEast, the south, southwest, ,up through denver and wyoming to idaho and finally alaska. A surprise comes quickly one of his stops : to the American Museum of Natural History to see his friend, Neil Tyson. Yes, that astrophysist . They spend time talking about the route, and what has changed in the last 30 years (remember this is only 2006) that has changed when spring actually comes, messing up gardens, bugs, birds general time clock. Its odd that this has been talked about for so long (tho I remember talking about it in the 70s in college). The biggest thing that Tyson says is "springis the result of a singular astronomical alignment that rules the chemistry of the plate, the behavior of its plants and animals, and the culture and customs of its people -the tilt of the earth'

Anyway will probably have more tidbits as we go, definitely see the countryside, or whats left of it....

I have read O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare by Niall Williams and Christine Breen, first published in 1987. As a young couple the authors returned to Ireland from America when Christine inherited her ancestral home. Though that sounds grand, the home was a small farm and a four-room cottage that had been empty for decades. This is their account of their first year living in West Clare in an area where traditional rural Irish life was still being lived. Storytelling, music, farming practices and social traditions are all covered.

The couple still live on the land in County Clare and there are three more books about their lives there. I plan to read those and other books they have each written as well.

Oh I read that first one, loved it, didn't realize they were sequels

Thinking that chasing spring will not quite fit hear but enjoying the ride. Rather than a descriptive travel narrative, its become a very interesting scientific journal of Global Warming; each place he goes to he meets up with someone doing work in this area. First one was Neil Tyson. All of the conversaations are very interesting and sobering and the author does a great job of relating the information to the environment around him. Its still amazing to me this was written in 2006 - the data he has collected is now much much worse 25 years later. He's about to head up north from Phoenix in parts that I have traveled in.

>19 clue: This sounds wonderful. I have never read his work, but I have one of his newer books on my TBR. This Is Happiness. Maybe I'll start with your suggestion though. Thanks.

>21 beebeereads: I did like it a lot, just a warning that I thought the start was slow. After I got into their interfacing with the locals though I was hooked.

>22 clue: Thanks for the heads up!

I finished The Other Side of the Dale by Gervase Phinn (1998). This is a memoir by Phinn of his early days as a school inspector in the Dales of North Yorkshire. The settings and people are lovely and memorable, with many laugh-out loud moments. Phinn is at his best when he relates his conversations with school children and his respect for their knowledge. A lovely read.

I’ve finished Silas Marner by George Eliot. Set in the early part of the 19th century in the English village of Raveloe and its surrounding farms, this is the story of an isolated, lonely weaver who lives at the edge of the village. His life of loneliness ends when a small orphaned toddler wanders into his cottage on a snowy night. I think this short novel one of Eliot’s best.

Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree 3***, which fits both this month's and this quarter's theme. First of the Wessex novels, a rather slight affair.

Barbara Pym: Some Tame Gazelle

Set in a small village in England, this very funny novel deals with Pym’s favorite topic, Church of England clergymen and the women who love them. The main characters, sisters Belinda and Harriet Bede, are middle-aged spinsters. Belinda has been in love with the parish rector, Archdeacon Hoccleve (who is married) since their university days. Her younger sister Harriet has many suitors, but is happiest mothering and flirting with the endless supply of young curates who pass through the parish. I enjoyed the picture the novel presents of life in a rural parish. I think it was Pym’s first novel.

I have completed English Creek by Ivan Doig and I am very happy that it is the first of a trilogy as I really enjoyed this coming-of-age story set in Montana.

Yesterday, I finally finished, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (by Thomas Hardy)! It's the tragedy of a young country girl/woman in Wessex during the 1870s who tries to make her way through the world with love and a sense of dignity, even as her world is corrupted by outside influences. There is plenty of fodder for literary criticism and discussion, but what cannot be rendered equivocal is the richness of the text and the vivid, painterly portrayals of the settings and characters. The depictions of rural life in Southern England were both lovingly pastoral and grittily portrayed. This edition contains endnotes that compare other MSS of the text (Hardy made revisions/redactions to accommodate himself and various publications, most notably Graphic in the latter case), as well as references to paintings that the author was influenced by; Biblical citations & notes and; song attributions... all of which are in equal measures tedious and enlightening.

ETA: ICYMBI, This 2016 article from The Guardian, "Bones found at prison may belong to real-life Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (by Steven Morris):
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/thomas-hardy-tess-of-the-durbervil...

the read I chose is sort of theme adjacent. chasing spring an american journey through a changing season The author follows natures season of renewal through the time zones starting in Maryland and ending in ANWR. Not just a look at spring time, but a scientific journey that shows how the delicate balance of connectedness in nature are increasingly endangered by climate change. this book was written in 2006 so all the data on how things were already changing are all obsolete.; how much has it all changed in 25 years is rather sobering. 5*

The Earth Abideth by George Dell begins in 1866 with the marriage of Thomas and Kate Linthorne. It is the story of their life on their farm in rural Fairfield County, Ohio, near Lancaster, raising their children, living and working among their neighbors. The story is told almost exclusively through the eyes of Thomas, but not in the first person. The speech is in the vernacular of the time and place. It is real life, the good and the bad. The author’s love of the land as seen through Thomas’ eyes is described beautifully, never long-winded or boring. Here is an example:

“The year breathed like an animate thing—each dawn the world was newmade. Spring stitched the meadows with fresh green, bound fascinators of dogwood and redbud around the heads of the hills. In the woods maidenhair and bladder ferns curled from the rock ledges. By early June there were fireflies over the clover, white pyramids of bloom on the horse chestnuts and catalpas.”

It was hard to find a book that was both historical and set in the country in my collection. I think that the mystery, The Black Country, fits the bill as it was set in a small mining village in the Midlands. The beliefs of the villagers and the setting were very much on display as two detectives from Scotland Yard dealt with the unfamiliarity of their surroundings while trying to solve a disappearance.

I have just started My Ántonia which is like entering a new world...

>33 MissWatson: And I have finished it. Lovely!

>34 MissWatson: Yes!

Little Town on the Prairie / Laura Ingalls Wilder
4 stars

The Ingalls family have just come off that “long winter” with blizzard after blizzard after blizzard. Pa is working construction in town, in addition to growing corn and oats and raising a few animals on the homestead. In order to help with money to be able to send Mary to college, Laura takes a sewing job in town. Once that ends, school is starting. At 14-almost-15, Laura needs to be serious at school, so she can get her teacher’s certificate when she turns 16 so she can help with money in order to keep Mary at college.

A surprise person from Laura’s life a few years earlier reappears in her life at school this year. She knows who Almanzo Wilder is, as she sees him around town and he once gave her a ride to school when she is running late. As the Ingalls’ move into town for the second winter in a row, the people in town are creating more social activities to do. And the town keeps growing.

This is such an enjoyable series. The illustrations are very nice. There is one uncomfortable bit of town entertainment near the end, unfortunately, but at the time that it would have happened it wasn’t frowned upon, though it most certainly is now (to say the least). Laura’s recitation of American history is, while impressive, European white history. So, due to the time period it is set, there are some no-so-good things about the book, but overall, I still find these books a lot of fun.

>29 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I did not know that there was a real Tess of the D'Urbervilles!

>37 Tess_W: From the endnotes of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin edition) it look like many of the characters from the Wessex novels were based on real people! Hardy's family had a long history in the area....

Thank you for hosting this past month and thanks also to CurrerBell for pointing out that Hardy's Wessex novels worked for this theme! It had been decades since I read "Tess" and, not having read Hardy's other works (hangs head in shame), it was fortuitous having one of my TBR titles this year match up quite so neatly! On my next book buying binge, I'm adding both Jude the Obscure and Far From the Madding Crowd :-)

>38 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Having finished Under the Greenwood Tree for this month's read, I'm about a third of the way through Madding Crowd right now – reading the Norton Critical with its supplementary materials, though, so I'm only about a quarter of the way through the entire book. Hardy also counts, of course, for this quarter's read so I'll be continuing through March. I'd like to do a complete read/reread of Hardy's fiction along with Claire Tomalin's biography and the poetry (ETA: by year's end, that is).

>38 Tanya-dogearedcopy: YVW. I'm glad you enjoyed Tess. I also loved Far from the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Castorbridge. I did not care so much for The Return of the Native. Jude is on my WL.

>31 marell: -- The Earth Abideth sounds like a book I would enjoy; love the quotation you included. (By the way, your touchstone goes to the wrong book.)

>33 MissWatson: -- My Antonia is my favorite Willa Cather! I should have tried another of her books for this month!

I always forget to write something on the threads, though i do list my reads on the wikis. For February, I read:

Indian Horse - 4-1/2*
1960s, isolated residential school in Canada, abuse, hockey

Wolf Hollow - 4*
1940s, Pennsylvanis, coming of age, farm life, walking to school, bullying, prejudice, veterans

The Things We Cannot Say - 4*
1940s & 2019, Poland, Nazis, farm life, resistance, escape, survival, autism

Once a Midwife - 3*
1940s, rural West Virginia, farm life, conscientious objector, midwifery

Silas Marner - 4*
1830s, rural English village, weaver, loneliness, adoption. I liked this one, but of the two George Eliots I have read, I liked Adam Bede more.

Beloved - 3-1/2*
1860s-70s, rural Cincinnati area, getting by on little, supernatural - not my cup at all.

>41 countrylife: I don’t know why the touchstone won’t work for this book. I took out the brackets around the title. If you click on the author the correct book comes up. One time the book came up as a zombie book! Now it’s a book about Australia. Weird.

>42 marell: -- In the Touchstones column, you have to click on "others" to get the other titles to show up.

>43 countrylife: Thanks!

A full year late, but . . .

I've just finished Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. This is a beautiful reverie of a novel about life in the small, rural Kentucky river town of Port William, the people who live and, especially, farm there and the changes that gradually drain the life out of the town's way of life over the years, from the 1910s through the 1980s. The story is told via a sort of fictional talking memoir by the title character. Born near the town in the 1914, Jonah Crow is orphaned not once, but twice. His parents are killed by the Spanish flu when he is a small boy, and Jonah is taken in by an aunt and uncle. But when they die, too, Jonah lands in an orphanage at age 10, finally returning to Port William as a young man and quickly becoming the town barber. Jonah, whose name gradually evolves until he is known by one and all as Jayber, is an outsider many times over. As an orphan, he is separated from the general flow of life of Port William, which flows via family life from generation to generation. As the proprietor of a business that will barely support one person, he has sentenced himself, knowingly, to a life of bachelorhood in a community that, again, values family. All this is an effective strategy by Berry to create in his character the ultimate observer of and commentator about the life of the town and the gradual death of its way of life.

The wonderful strengths of this book are Berry's powers of observation and description, his obvious love of his fictional town, its people and rhythms and its natural setting. Berry is also a poet, and as one of the blurbs on the back of my edition of this book points out, that poetic facility is readily evident in the ebb and flow of Berry's sentences and paragraphs. There is love and sadness in this book, but also much gladness and humor.

I finished Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill, which is about two-thirds an historical novel, as it follows a Welsh farming family, and particularly a pair of twin brothers, from the turn of the 20th century into the 1980s. Lovely writing with lots of acute insight into human nature, but also the psychological dangers of living too insular a life. I found it to be a very enjoyable book in many ways, but not a relaxing novel. Chatwin was born in England rather than Wales, but he seems to have had a strong if somewhat romanticized grasp of Welsh farm life through the 20th century.