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Laura Ingalls Wilder
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I have the book on reserve at the library -- I think I am number 150 in line. Her descriptions of life in the period are unparalleled. All that food, in FARMER BOY! And her description (I think it's in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE) of how to build a pegged door with a leather latch is so good that I have constructed one myself, with those directions, for a dollhouse.
Good luck on being patient while you wait, Brenda!Yeah it was interesting the way she talked about the food. And yeah, it was in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE that Laura helped Pa make the pegged door with leather latch. Was your dollhouse a log cabin-style dollhouse?
It was in fact a stable for some toy horses, and was made out of a cardboard shoe box. But they needed a door!There is also a grand LAURA INGALLS WILDER COOKBOOK around, which has recipes for all that nummy food. It was farm cuisine, high fat and high calorie, very unsuited to us chair-warming internet-surfers.
Thanks for the link/head's up. Very interesting. True, not SF/F... but she's such an important figure in American Lit and 70's pop culture that I think the bio is worth mentioning. I remember being near addicted to that TV show growing up--I still have a lot of memories of it, though my memory of, say, The Waltons is much more vague--and the dichotomy between that show and things like Star Trek reruns never occurred to me. ("Wagontrain in Space" and all that, no doubt.)Anyway, Pioneer Girl going right into the "to read" list.
Brenda wrote: "It was in fact a stable for some toy horses, and was made out of a cardboard shoe box. But they needed a door!There is also a grand LAURA INGALLS WILDER COOKBOOK around, which has recipes for all ..."
Of course they needed a door!
I think I heard of that cookbook, Brenda.
Gary: Thanks. As soon as I heard the audio I thought "Hey! Possible discussion on Goodreads!" And you're right about the pop culture of the 70's, though I would say it extended into the early 1980's. I watched the reruns of LITTLE HOUSE, STAR TREK, the first runs of CHiPs, and first runs of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 1980 as well as the reruns of the previous seasons of the original BSG and they were ALL influences on pop culture during that era, but I thnk for kids who weren't quite as geeky as I was it was LITTLE HOUSE they geeked out on.
I geeked out on everything I just mentioned as well as BUCK ROGERS, SUPERBOOK, STAR BLAZERS, the original B&W MICKEY MOUSE CLUB and the original B&W ADVENTURES OF OZZY AND HARRIET when the Disney Channel had NO COMMERCIALS WHATSOEVER!
Members of the younger generation probably don't know who Ozzy and Harriet Nelson were which is sad... unless they watched the music videos of their grandsons Matthew and Gunnar on MTV back when MTV still played music vdeos.
There's a huge LIW industry in South Dakota where the Ingalls homestead was. (Not a lot of tourist attractions in SD, so it's important.) You can also go visit her house in Mansfield MO, which apparently has been kept just as it was when she died. A LIW groupie went on a tour of all these sites and wrote a book about it.
Yeah...aside from the Black Hills, right? Or is that in NORTH Dakota? :)I wanna go to Mansfield, MO. I live across the river from St. Louis, in Belleville, IL.
There is a web site (google on it) that has many images. There is not only the house that Almanzo built for Laura and Rose, but the house that Rose built for her mother later on.
I now feel like I missed out on something in my childhood by not reading those books. They didn't have them in Poland and by the time I was reading English in 5th grade in America it was Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Goosebumps. I may have to take some time and read those books now. Ingall seems like a fascinating person, though. Would love to read her biography.
http://www.npr.org/2015/01/28/3821603...
Having listened to this story, what do you think about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder?