April 2006

My Antonia, by Willa Cather
The first of about 10 books -- for $21! -- from the Stone Ridge Book Sale. Beautiful so far.

Stern Men, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Just a book of short stories to go and I will have read the complete published works of Elizabeth Gilbert, who fortunately is very young so there will be more published works. Am very pleased about that. This was great -- the story of Ruth Thomas, a girl from a remote island off the coast of Maine, trying to figure out if she wants to live on the island or off with her rich distant relatives who want her to be a slave for them like her mother and grandmother. She is independent, willful, smart, everything women truly want to be. Grade: A.

Lobstermen fight over every cubic yard of the sea. Every lobster one man catches is a lobster another man has lost. It is a mean business, and it makes for mean men. As humans, after all, we become that which we seek. Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless. (5)

We Are All Welcome Here, by Elizabeth Berg
Interviewed her.