Book For The Week - 12/29/11

Twenty Years At Hull House

by

Jane Addams

While visiting the Hull House Museum this past October I decided I wanted to read something by Jane Addams.  There are several titles available for free on kindle by her and so I selected one called Twenty Years At Hull House.  Since it was written early in the 20th Century,  I found it a long read for me although it was filled with information and brought the inner city immigrant experience of the late 1800s into a clear view.   The labor movement is also described as are reforms in education and health standards of the inner city.  This book gives insight as to why Jane Addams chose to spend her life living in a  poor immigrant neighborhood when she was a woman with resources and shows the ability she had to interact with not only the poor but with the powers of city government to initiate change.  It is an amazing true story.   It is also available for free on Project Gutenberg.  Follow the links by clicking on the title and author's name to learn more.  Or google Jane Addams/Hull House.  There is a wealth of wonderful information online. 

Book For The Week - 12/26/11

My Antonia

by

Willa Cather

Set in the late 1880s, a young man is orphaned and sent from Virginia to live with his grandparents on a farm in Nebraska.   This book is about the people he meets on the Nebraska plains who are immigrant farmers trying to make their way in the new world.  A classic book written in 1918 My Antonia by Willa Cather was a book title brought up by my library reading group as a possibility to read and discuss in 2012 but it was not selected.  It sounded like it would be good to me so I picked it up on sale from audible and listened to it during my commute.   To make a bit of a confession,  I have been MIA from social media the last month or six weeks except for occasionally peaking in quickly,  because I have been very busy with my family tree.  I have found a friend to research with and that makes it so much more fun.   Much of my computer time is spent in data entry or searching for information online.   Since there are a couple of Eastern European lines in both my kid's dad's side of the tree and on my side of the tree,  I found My Antonia   really brought those lines to life.   Even though my ancestors were in the mid west and not Nebraska,  I am sure they struggled to survive.  The book makes real the way that immigrants worked so hard in order that their children could have  a better life than they had.   It shows not only the hardships that were endured but the social outcasts that the people who had been here longer made out of the more recent immigrants.  The young Bohemian, Swedish and Norwegian women were not quite good enough dating material for the towns boys.  This book is a delightful tale of the building of the USA and does a good job of bringing the late 1800s to life.   It is available to read for free on Gutenburg.com so therefore can be downloaded to a kindle at no charge.  Be sure and click on the title and the author's name to follow the link and learn more.

Book For The Week - 12/17/11

Dragonfly In Amber   is the second novel in The Outlander Series which is written by Diana Galbaldon.   I am totally hooked on this series of novels.  In this book, the story of Claire and Jami takes up where it left off in the first novel,  after some time back in the "present"  which is 1968 this time.  After bringing Clair and Jami to the point where she returns from the 1740s to post WWII Europe the book then returns to 1968.   These books have everything.   Science fiction,  adventure,  romance,  sex,  violence are wound around in a web that mesmerizes.   I have been listening to the series on audio and intend to continue through the book list.  If you need a good escape I highly recommend this fiction series.