The Official Recommendations Page
Every time I ask for recommendations on a particular subject, you guys come up with many wonderful things. Actually, sometimes you come up with wonderful things totally unprompted. And recently I’ve received several emails from readers suggesting books and authors I might like (If you’ve emailed me and I haven’t responded, I’m sorry! I’m terrible about replying to emails. I probably still mean to write back and haven’t realized how much time has passed since you wrote), which has been very cool
Anyway, I thought it would be cool if there was a place here for people to recommend things to me, and to anyone else who happens to be passing by, and the comments on this post are going to be that place. Be as brief or as long-winded as you like.
I just finished reading an awesome children’s book that I’m pretty sure you would love. It’s the first of three books published so far with the same characters. The title is “The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy”
It is sort of like a cross between Little Women and The Moffits but set in today’s time period. The Little Women bit is mainly due to the four interesting sisters who lost their mother shortly after the birth of the youngest sister who is four years old with the oldest sister being twelve. The Moffits bit is due to no sad bits as in Little Women but many bits of adventures with their neighbors and their togetherness as a family. It has the feeling of a book that was written during the 1950s or the 1960s at the latest.
I stumbled across this book while looking up reviews for a different book that was at a rather electic book reading blog “The Ineluctable Bookshelf”. Quite a few interesting reviews there and some books I’ll be checking out because of the reviews!
Another book that you might find interesting is “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Novel”. It’s about an 11 year old girl who really loves chemistry and poisons who jumps at the chance to investigate a murder. It is set in 1950 England and the character is very British and quite interesting.
Those both sound like fun, especially the second one. I don’t buy that many new books, but I’ll keep an eye out for them.
I liked “Cinderella Jane” by Marjorie Benton Cooke rather a lot. It’s a feminist romance novel from 1917 – at least, the heroine is a feminist, and the hero is most emphatically not. I’d love to see your thoughts on it.
(It’s on Project Gutenberg here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33657/33657-h/33657-h.htm.)
That sounds excellent, and I’ll be sure to check it out. I feen like Marjorie Benton Cooke’s name sounds really familiar, but I can’t figure out why.
In the sort of non-fiction side of the house, you might try & snag Marjorie Hillis’s “Live Alone & Like It” and “Orchids on a Budget” (http://thepaintedwoman.blogspot.com/2009/09/live-alone-girl-marjorie-hillis.html). Both are awesome books, although they definitely show their age. The general idea is “Sometimes life sucks, but here’s what you can do about it.”
In the fiction– you’ve read the Moving Picture Girls books, right? So much fun!
And, of course, I know you’ve read the awesome, horrifying Elsie books, but they always bear another mention. And the Little Prudy books. And OMG, Slovenly Betsy (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19915/19915-h/19915-h.htm).
Good housekeeping, Volume 69, July 1919
Kathleen Norris
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Gertrude Brooks Hamilton
William J. Locke
Dorothy Dix
James Oliver Curwood
Rose O’Neill (Kewpies!)
Zona Gale
James Montgomery Flagg illustrations
a Jessie Wilcox Smith on the cover
http://bit.ly/phG6sB
Ooooh.
“Letters of a Woman Homesteader” (1914) and “Letters on an Elk Hunt” (1915) by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Basically, these books are just made up of the letters this woman sent from her Wyoming homestead to her friend in Denver. Mrs. Stewart was a charming and captivating storyteller, and she was a sharp judge of character with a delicious sense of humor.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?default_prefix=author_id&query=6829
Stupid me, I didn’t realize the recommendations page was a place to *make* recommendations, so I left one in the comments section of the About Blog: Long Version. Sorry! But while I’m here … I’d like to suggest “That Affair Next Door” by Anna Katharine Green. Unike her other novels it’s written in the first person, and that person is Amelia Butterworth, whose voice is much terser and more sardonic than Green’s usual narrator. She’s a character I really enjoyed, and I wish Green had used her more.
Not a problem — all comments end up in the same place. Mostly I put this page here to encourage people to make more recs.
I’m probably overdue to give Anna Katherine Green another chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Lincoln
I just finished “Galusha the Magnificent”, which was sweet and delightful, and am currently reading “Cap’n Eri: A Story of the Coast”, which is also proving to be funny and interesting. There are a bunch of his books available over at Project Gutenberg, and I foresee being pleasantly entertained for quite a while.
Oooh, he sounds really interesting. Thanks for the rec!