Little House in the Big Woods

While I grew up reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, they are not books that I kept and re-read over and over. So I was surprised by the number of whippings referred to in "Little House in the Big Woods". I suspect my memory of the books has been overlaid by vague memories of Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon in the "prairies" of Southern California on the TV show. Surely Michael Landon didn't whip little girls, even if they slapped their sisters! Or maybe I've just forgotten that too..

Despite the whippings (which seem quite exotic to a child raised on "time outs" and the occasional empty threat of all her toys being taken away) my daughter loved this book. She was fascinated by the details of this family's way of life. The book describes everything from how the family stored food for the winter to what games the children played and how the wheat was harvested. We were both impressed by how hard people had to work in those days. We were astonished by the idea of children who are five or six years old who go to store for the first time in their entire lives. And, of course, I couldn't resist pointing out how grateful the children were when they received new red mittens and one piece of peppermint candy each for Christmas. Well, Laura also got a rag doll - but she was in rapture about receiving one homemade toy. I will leave you to imagine how impressed my modern child was about this little lecture on gratitude.

Personally, I'm feeling a great deal of gratitude that I'm not Laura's mom, working hard from sunrise to sunset and then mending socks by firelight after the sun goes down. Not to mention sleeping on a bed stuffed with straw in the same room as my children. However did Baby Carrie get conceived? Anyway, this book is great for anyone who wants to appreciate the joys of modern life, or wants to get a little nostalgic for the good old days when the women were strong, the men played a mean fiddle, and the children grew up to be world-famous authors.

Seabiscuit

Who was the biggest newsmaker in the U.S. in 1938? Roosevelt? Hitler? No, it was a racehorse named Seabiscuit. Laura Hillenbrand wrote "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" to show modern readers why Seabiscuit captured the imagination of Americans during the Great Depression.
Yeah, I know, everybody else read this years ago, or at least saw the movie. For some reason I never read it back when it was being hyped.

I was never a horse-crazy girl and have never been to a horse race in my life. I've never even watched the Kentucky Derby on TV, or drank a mint julep. All I know about horse racing comes from reading Dick Francis mysteries, and those are mostly about English hurdling races, which seems to be a rather different sport.

Despite my previous lack of knowledge, I found "Seabiscuit" fascinating. The book gives you a lot of background about horse racing in the 1930's, Seabiscuit, his owner, his trainer, and his jockeys. However, all the information is presented in a way that reads more like a novel than nonfiction, and from me that is a compliment. Sometimes (okay, often) I get bogged down in nonfiction and never even finish the book. But I stayed up late reading Seabiscuit, just to find out what would happen to everyone. This was a great read.

(By the way, I counted my Dick Francis books last week and discovered I had 27 books. Twenty-seven! Surely I had all of them -- but no, according to http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/, Mr. Francis has written 41 best-selling novels. So I guess I can learn more about horse racing while I wait for Ms. Hillenbrand to write another book.)

Chaos on my library book shelf

I have a shelf in my kitchen where I store my library books. I noticed that I have a rather odd collection this week:

Stalin: A Biography

Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt

You Are Your Choices: 50 Ways to Live the Good Life

Life on Planet Rock: From Guns N' Roses to Nirvana, A Backstage Journey Through Rock's Most Debauched Decade

Now guess which book I've already read? Yup, Generation T. If you can count looking at pictures and muttering, "maybe if I was 25 years old and lived in Williamsburg Brooklyn and wanted a shirt to wear clubbing..." as reading. My favorite part? Directions on making your own wedding dress out of seven large t-shirts.

I've read a few pages each of Planet Rock and You Are Your Choices, but so far they aren't doing much for me. I just picked up Stalin, so I haven't had a chance to dive into that 700+ page tome yet. I may need to sit on a beach with a mojito to get in the mood for that one.