Book Club

[PilatesLover]

I just finished West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge.  It's not a book that would have been on my radar except for Amazon First Reads.  

It was quite a different read!  Encompasses the Depression, Dust Bowl, Hurricane of '38, and the adventures of driving two giraffes across the country to the San Diego Zoo.  You get a real life view of living in the times and it's not 100% depressing. Still, it has sad parts - how can a depression novel not.

[catlover00]

@ MrsSB, I have added both to my Goodreads list. So many great titles out there! Thank you.

[violann]

Betty MacDonald has fallen far out of favor because of unfortunately ubiquitous biases towards racial and ethnic minorities, but for those of us who were all too familiar with life as she described it, ALL of her books reveal first hand what life was like during the late '20s-early '40s.

Some are very funny, but typically also poignant and down to earth (at least MacDonald's earth). As much as I loved binge reading them as a kid, I remember wincing at some of her broad brush bigotry and wondering where she'd gotten her comfortable casual indictments of people who didn't look or function mostly as she did.

STILL, her somewhat lesser known "The Plague and I" is a frighteningly detailed description of her life and ultimate recovery in a Tuberculosis sanatorium, and her Depression Era life was absolutely NO"bed of roses".

I think SHE considered her writing to be factionalized autobiography.

Previously her books passed through a period in which she was castigated on Amazon, and I was somewhat mollified to see this morning that they are in reprints, and that there are also biographies written about her recently that served to attempt that she be considered a product of her times- hardscrabble, bigoted, bitter, but descriptive of what life was like.

No excuses for that, but maybe like Mark Twain or Laura Ingalls Wilder?

[Isobel Archer]

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson.

It's about the Women's Packhorse Library established by the WPA.  It also discusses the Blue people of Kentucky and the predjudice they endure.

[sandy53]

My book club read Little Heathens:  Hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression by Kalish.  I didn't like it, but many of the older ladies liked it.  The depression is not of much interest to me.