The Wilder Life

I picked up The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure on my birthday.  I, too, grew up reading and loving Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books.  Ms. McClure has decided to follow Laura and go to her various homesteads around the country.  Who knew that this famous series of books would create a small cottage industry in tourism?

But the Wilder Life is more than just travel memoir, it is also social commentary on why we yearn for these simpler times. We meet fellow travelers who also share the fervor for Laura.  Some of whom have some pretty creepy reasons for learning homesteading skills.

McClure also takes a great portion of the book to talk about her own love of Laura and why she so desires to be part of her world.  Everywhere she goes, she lingers over artifacts and enjoys the sights and sounds that Laura and her family would have enjoyed.

I also loved the intellectual discussions of the fictional Laura versus the real Laura, and I learned a lot more about the role Rose Wilder had in bringing her mother's books to life.  At the time, Rose Wilder was every bit as famous as her mother.

I found this book to be insightful and funny. I enjoyed Ms Mclure's travels and insights and sense of humor.  Although I have not read those books in more than 30 years, it was fun to relive all the moments from the books that I could remember through the lens of a fellow Wilder fan and insightful writer.  I think anyone who loved Laura Ingalls as a girl would enjoy this fun look at her and her writing.

The Time Together by Carol Burnett

I'm so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh and sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, "So Long!"

                  -from the Carol Burnett show

As a kid, I loved watching the Carol Burnett show on Saturday nights with my parents.  I was old enough to appreciate the zany humor of Carol and friends, especially the talented Tim Conway.  I laughed aloud along with my parents at Carol when she made fun of Gone with the Wind.  Her dress was made of curtains with the curtain rod still inserted.  The dress was  the classic television funny moment, and no one else but Carol could pull it off.  The dress now resides at the Smithsonian, testament to the wacky days of the Carol Burnett Show and her brilliant costume designer Bob Mackie.  

Carol tells many many tales of coming of age in the entertainment industry and all the people she met on the way up the ladder.  These stories are not literary feats or a great philosophy on life, rather just funny moments behind the scenes with some of America's most beloved entertainers and actors.  

It took me on a trip down memory lane.  Many of the sketches she writes about you can relive on youtube.  If you enjoy Carol Burnett, and want to take out a quick evening for some fun stories and funny reminiscences of a great comic lady, this would be a good book to pick up at the library.  I wonder if we could get her to host Saturday Night Live?

Meanwhile enjoy this old Carol Burnett sketch:

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.
This is my story.

I found a pristine copy of this book at a used book fair about a year or two ago and eyed it on the pile for a long time.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal had an interesting idea:  write about your life as a series of entries in an encyclopedia, alphabetically.

I approached it warily, thinking it would be annoying and uninteresting, but I found quite the opposite.  Ms Rosenthal is funny and observant and has a unique sense style.  Parts made me laugh out loud; other parts were thoughtful and bittersweet.  An ordinary life can be interesting and even at times profound.

Also,  she poses some interesting interactions between writer and author via the website she sets up.  She simply asks you write her and let her know you read the book and she will thank you.  Since the book was published in 2005, she is not as fast about responding--not even sure she will respond.  I was hoping I would hear from her before I wrote this, but at press time, e-mail silence.

Still it is a nice idea, thanking your readers.

I found a lot of the entries would prompt my own writing.  What entries would I choose for my list of an ordinary life?  Would you?

On writing to writers

I frequently track down authors of books that I enjoy reading and email them and let them know what I enjoyed. Often my emails will ask follow up questions of the author, things I wish I knew but weren't included in the book. I have been doing this for years, even before the advent of email. I did not really know how to find a writer then, so I sent a letter to the author's publisher, figuring someone at the publishing company would know how to reach the author. I did not hear back from too many writer's in the era of snail mail. (I did get a nice letter from Gloria Steinem once. Very cool.)  Email responses are a different ball game. I would guess I hear back from 90% of the people I write.

Once a Muslim writer I complimented, wrote me and asked me if I would invite him to my Unitarian Church while he was on book tour, (I did even though I was on spring break and could not go myself.),   I get put on writer's mailing lists, get my questions answered and feel like I learn something new every time.  My biggest disappointment was Malcolm Gladwell, whose writing I adore.  He wrote me back after about 6 months and then just thanked me.  He did not answer my questions or even address anything I said.  Just, "Thanks for writing."

Last month when reading an early review book called Sometimes I feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman, I was confronted with the need to write the author.  She wrote about a character in a TV series that she did not like and I had just finished a memoir by the very actress who played that character.  The actress's memoir reminded me a lot of Jill (both funny women) and it seemed uncanny that Jill would write about the actress at about the same moment that I was reading her memoir.  So I wrote Jill (we are on a first name basis now, best buds.) and mentioned this book and this actress and suggested she might like it.

Jill wrote me back within a few hours and thanked me and was amazed that I had her book already.  (I surmise that the publisher is trying to get her more of a midwestern following and thus we early reviewers from the heartland got first dibs on her funny funny book.)

Kudos to Ms. Kargman for writing me back quickly and maybe even taking the time to pick up the book that I recommended.  I have a secret fantasy now that the actress and Jill will become BFF's based on my reading suggestions.  They will reminisce that their friendship got started by this weirdo from Indiana who send them emails.  They won't remember my name though but they will laugh every time.

Check out this funny funny book.

For all you e book readers out there

We have an on-going debate in our household over portable e-reading devices.  I say bad.  Husband says, good for the environment.  (He has managed to loose two of them on airplanes at this point.)

I stumbled across this fabulous series of youtube films pitting one of those devices against the book in a series of 10 films.  Guess what?  The book wins every time.

This is my favorite of the 10 films.  Go to youtube to enjoy the other nine.

Mennonite in a Litte Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

This book has been written up several times in the mainstream press. Several friends have mentioned it to me, and, given my proclivity for memoirs written by women of a certain age, this seemed right up my alley.

I did enjoy it a lot although it was not exactly what I expected. I envisioned Mennonites to be a lot like Amish. I thought Rhoda Jantzen was going home to bake her own bread, darn her own socks and drive a horse and buggy. In fact, the Amish broke away from the Mennonites because they were too darn liberal. A fact I found out in the interesting appendix at the end of the book where Ms Janzen answers a lot of questions about the Mennonite lifestyle that I thought would have been woven through the book.

Janzen writes a very funny, lively and smart book about her own 40 something life, newly divorced and coming home to her Mennonite roots. This reminded me a lot of a book I blogged about last week by a forty something mother who is experiencing a mid-life crisis.

I find this phenomena of we middle aged women looking at our sweet lives through these funny and often profound lenses to be empowering. By telling our own true stories in such a frank and funny way, maybe we will figure this whole thing out after all.

So I agree with the smart write-ups about this book, it is laugh out loud funny and very touching in all the right places. But it is a very personal inner search and not a comedy of errors about using an outhouse after years of modern plumbing. There is a long waiting list for this at the local library. If you are in town and would like to borrow my copy please let me know.