I guess because I spent so much time reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder for her reading challenge this past month. my mind is still buzzing with various thoughts about her life. I thought I’d share some of them here.

Ma. I identified with Ma a lot this time. Being the chief homemaker, I can’t imagine doing all she did in the conditions she did with such a good attitude. There may have been times alone with Pa that she tried to talk him out of a course of action, but overall the books seem to present her as a sweetly submissive wife and creative mother. Maybe she liked wandering and liked being away from civilization as much as he did, but I get the impression that was primarily his bent. I really respected that she did try to keep things as civilized as possible and taught the girls good manners and didn’t let them go “wild.” And I dearly love that the final touch, one of the things that made each new place “home” was setting her china shepherdess on the mantle.

Garth Williams was not the first Little House illustrator, but his illustrations are the ones probably most of us are familiar with. I loved reading that he traveled to every place that the Ingallses had lived, did extensive research, and even met with Laura — and that she liked his work.

Rose. I read a biography of Rose some years back and was very surprised that she was so different from her mother. I read that she had a much harder time with the family’s early poverty than her mother had had with hers. The Ingallses seemed to be the type of family where the kids would grow up and say “We were poor but we didn’t know it then.” It seemed adventurous. I wondered what made the difference in Rose’s perspective, if it was just her personality or what. I do think she was very sensitive. But she was also an only child: she didn’t have the built-in companionship of a playmate and peer to experience what she was experiencing. Plus, when the Ingallses were homesteading and such, other families were, too. I didn’t read this in the books yet this time around, but do remember when Laura and Mary went to school, they were teased because their dresses were shorter than everyone else’s. I don’t know if Laura was ashamed of that so much or if she was just annoyed, especially at Nellie Oleson. But it seemed to really bother Rose that her clothes were different from her school peers. She did develop spunk in other ways, though. There is speculation about how well she got along with her parents, particularly her mother, but I never saw anything in Laura’s writing so far that indicated any underlying animosity there. She visited Rose in San Francisco partly to see the Intentional Exposition (one of the books I got to read for next time is West From Home, Laura’s letters back to Almanzo about that trip) and she mentions her frequently in her columns. She was particularly pleased that adult Rose, by then a famous writer, said of her mother’s pie that she’d rather be able to make a pie like that than write a poem. Maybe there is more about their relationship in Rose’s writings. Maybe some day I’ll get to those, too.

The TV show. I did enjoy the Little House on the Prairie TV show. I think it was on during my later college and early married years. Though I dislike that it varied so much from the books, it did still contain a lot from them, and it was good wholesome entertainment for the most part. In some ways I enjoyed it more if I kept it separate in my mind from the books. But it did inspire new reading of the books and interest in Laura. From what I have read many of the Laura historical sites contain memorabilia from the show as well as Laura’s life. I got the DVDs of the first season of the show some time back through some special deal and meant to watch an episode or two for the challenge but never did.

Little House crafts. I didn’t do any Little House related crafts during this challenge, but I meant to share on my wrap-up post yesterday that some years ago I did do a sampler specifically inspired by reading the books. I guess young girls in those days did samplers to learn their stitches, and at the time I did this there was an abundance of sampler patterns.

Truthfully, now it is not my favorite piece, but it still brings back fond memories of that time. I really liked the Early American style of decorating then and also bought what is supposed to be an antique raisin rack (used to dry grapes til they became raisins) decoupaged with a Burpee seed label (I didn’t decoupage it — I bought it that way).

I keep them together in our family room.

I hope you’ve enjoyed thinking a little more about Laura with me, and I do promise I will move on to other topics soon. 🙂

It’s the end of February…and the end of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. I’ve tried to catch some of your reviews throughout the month.

I had been wanting to have some kind of give-away for those who have participated in the challenge, but wasn’t sure just what I wanted to do until I came across Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson. I just got it last week and was able to read through it in an evening. It is set up just like a scrapbook,  with photos of the family, of some of the houses, a sample of Mary’s handwriting in a letter after she was blind, etc. It also has a condensed history of Laura.

To enter the giveaway, you must have participated in the challenge in some way and leave a comment telling us how you did so: either let us know in the comments what you read and your thoughts about it, or share a link back to your blog, whether you wrote a wrap-up post or want to link to your reviews of the books you read (it’s fine if you have multiple links in a comment here, but WordPress’s spam catcher will likely think it is spam. But I do check my spam folder every day and will fish it out if it lands there.) I’ll draw a name for a winner a week from today, Wednesday, March 7.

The books I finished are:

I Remember Laura by Stephen W. Hines, reviewed here, a collection or articles and interviews of people who actually knew Laura.

Little House in the Ozarks: the Rediscovered Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, compiled and edited by Stephen Hines, a collection of newspaper columns and magazine articles she wrote before starting the Little House books, reviewed here.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here, the first book in the series.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here, their year in “Indian Country.”

Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson, not reviewed.

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure, Laura fan extraordinaire, reviewed here.

I just got The Little House Cookbook by Barbara Walker last week but have only had time to flip through it a bit. I’m a little over halfway through Saving Graces: the Inspirational Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder edited by Stephen Hines. I was disappointed that these are just columns from his previous book, but I guess for anyone who just wants an overview of this aspect of her life, it is nice to have them all in one place. I’ll have more to say about this book when I finish it.

My reading turned out to be a complementary mix of books by Laura and books about Laura, both old and new. A part of me really wants to keep going through the series, but I should probably save the rest of it for next year.

I have enjoyed immersing myself in Laura-related books this month. It gives a new insight to her. I should probably do this with other authors as well.

I shared in my review of The Wilder Life many new things I learned about Laura this month. There were several things I learned from I Remember Laura as well (among them, that Almanzo was 5’4″, Laura was even shorter, and they built their final home to their dimensions; that he preferred Laura on the other hand of a saw more than anyone else). That was interesting, but it was also cozy to reread the first two books in the Little House series. Each time through, at different ages and stages of life, I get different things or identify with different things from the book. I also learned of many Laura-related books I hadn’t known of before: I’ve gotten two already and am looking forward to exploring more next year.

Next year I’d also like to do something special on Laura’s birthday. I chose February for the challenge because Laura was born in February and then died in February a few days after her 90th birthday, but it didn’t even occur to me to mark that day especially until it arrived.

With this challenge just following Carrie‘s Lucy Maud Montgomery Challenge, one obvious difference between the two authors is that LMM is more more flowery in her descriptions. Laura tends to be more straightforward, yet her imagination isn’t less than LMM’s (she even had several magazine columns about fairies) — it’s just expressed differently. Perhaps the fact that she was writing primarily from real life made for a difference as well in her style.

I’ve always admired the sense of history, the strength of character, the love of family, the endurance of whatever life threw at them that comes through in Laura’s books.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you read and hearing your thoughts! Thanks so much for being a part of this challenge.

Update: The giveaway is now closed: congratulations to Kami! But feel free to continue to leave comments related to the challenge here if you’d like.

I thought about saving The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure until after I had read all the Little House books so the references would be fresh to me, but I’ve had it for a while and really wanted to complete it for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge, especially since some of the other participants were planning to read it, too.

I had won it from 5 Minutes For Books months ago, and Jennifer warned me it was “irreverent.” I wasn’t sure exactly what way that would play out, so that and the fact that I’d run into bad language and such in most anything modern and secular lately made me a little wary. There is a smidgen of bad language and a couple of unnecessary sexual references, but it was all much less than what I was afraid there would be, not that I’m brushing it off or condoning it.

The crux of the book is that Wendy loved the Little House books as a child, even having Laura as her imaginary friend whom she wanted to show her modern world, and then rediscovered them as an adult. She wanted to experience “Laura World,” so she read extensively, tried her hand at churning butter and preparing some recipes from the Little House cookbooks, and then she visited several of the LIW-related museums, homes, sites, pageants, and such. On the Ingalls Homestead she actually got to stay in a covered wagon overnight (for $50 at that time), complete with an electrical hookup and an unexpected hail storm (during which her significant other, Chris, asked “What about the wheat?” Loved that. There actually was wheat, corn, and oats growing at the time, which they checked out the next day, and it all seemed to be okay.) She even saw “Laura Ingalls Wilder: the Musical” with Melissa Gilbert (TV Laura) as Ma!

In some places she had some neat experiences, such as when Chris was reading one of the books, came across an illustration of the prairie, lifted up his eyes and realized he was seeing the exact same landscape depicted in the illustration, or when Wendy stepped into Plum Creek and recognized it from the books’ description. Other times there was a strange disconnect between Laura’s world that she was seeing and and the “Laura’s World” in her own mind, or the one she had thought she would see. She found some absurdities (like what sounded almost like a cult of people preparing for the “end times” by learning prairie ways) as well as some surprises, like the insight she found at Almanzo Wilder’s childhood home (the only home at all related to LIW still standing on its own foundation) when originally Farmer Boy, based on Almanzo’s early life, was her least favorite book in the series. It helped, too, to read in The Road Back, a kind of a travel diary of Laura’s rare visit back to De Smet, where the rest of her family lived, that Laura experienced her own disconnect with things being different from her childhood and missing the ones who had passed on (pp 296-297).

Wendy discusses as well some of the disputed things that came up in her reading and research: whether some of the books’ content was actually fictionalized, how much Laura’s daughter Rose had to do with the books, whether Pa did actually know that the land he was on in disputed Indian territory (here is where some of the irreverence comes in: she calls Pa an “opportunistic jerk.”)

Some of the quotes I found most interesting or insightful:

“I didn’t think of Laura’s life as history. It was more alive than that, and more secret, too” (p. 7).

Speaking of childhood road trips: “I hoped we’d come across the cabin the Ingallses abandoned at the end of Little House on the Prairie. We’d see it in the distance, waiting for someone to come back to it. I wanted that someone to be me: I wanted to find that door and open it and complete the story” (p. 8).

Quoting from Barbara Walker’s foreword to the Little House Cookbook: “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s way of describing her pioneer childhood seemed to compel participation” (p. 38).

She used to come into her room, “describing it’s details to herself as if I’d never seen them before…For a few moments my room felt enchanted, just from the power of observation I’d borrowed from Laura…The story of the Little House books was always a story of looking (p. 61).

“Sometimes when I hear folks maunder on about how simple Laura’s lifestyle was I wonder if they’ve ever thought about all the hauling and fetching and stowing and stoking it took just to boil a pot of water” (p. 165). (I have, too!)

“Sometimes, Laura World wasn’t a realm of log cabins or prairies, it was a way of being. Really, a way of being happy. I wasn’t into the flowery sayings, but I was nonetheless in love with the idea of serene rooms full of endless quiet and time, of sky in the windows, of a life comfortably cluttered and yet in some kind of perfect fend shui equilibrium, where all the days were capacious enough to bake bread and write novels and perambulate the wooded hills deep in thought” (p. 172).

I learned several new things, among them:

Rose suggested that when Laura’s character got too “old,” perhaps they should focus on Carrie as the main character now. Laura replied, “We can’t change heroines in the middle of the stream” (p. 98). I am SO glad they didn’t. I’m glad they followed through with Laura’s life as she grew older and married. (Plus I get really tired of the idea that kids can only relate to kids near their own age. And here I thought that was a new line of thought.)

There is a 2005 Disney version of the books on film.

Ed Friendly, who began the LH TV series, wanted to keep it close to the books, but Michael Landon wanted heartwarming, moral lesson type stories (which he actually could have had by sticking closer to the books…)

Rose Wilder Lane’s book Let the Hurricane Roar was written before the Little House books and took elements from different parts of the Ingallses history. Rose “hoped it would inspire Depression-era readers with its themes of resilience in the face of hardship and the strength of the American character” (p. 168). But I don’t think Laura had conceived of writing the books yet. Wendy has a good section on Rose in Chapter 6, “The Way Home.”

Wendy didn’t like adult Laura’s non-fiction writings as much as I did, and overall she writes from a secular, non-conservative, “postmodern” viewpoint. Everyone I’ve known who really loved the LH books was more conservative and religious, so it was interesting to see “Laura’s world” through that perspective. She can be snarky in tone, which won’t likely sit well with many. But overall this was a really interesting book of a dedicated Laura fan. She even started a Twitter account where she comments as Laura at @HalfPintIngalls.

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

For such a short month, February has been an awfully full one! But then the fourth Tuesday of last month left us with a full week of January, so I guess we did get an extra reading week in there.

Here’s what I completed reading since the last Nightstand post:

Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, reviewed here.

Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery, reviewed here.

Vicious Cycle by Terri Blackstock  (audiobook), reviewed here.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (audiobook), reviewed here.

I Remember Laura [Ingalls Wilder] by Stephen W. Hines, reviewed here.

Little House in the Ozarks: the Rediscovered Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, compiled and edited by Stephen Hines, a collection of newspaper columns and magazine articles she wrote before starting the Little House books, reviewed here.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.

Little House on the Prairie is by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.

Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson, no reviewed.

Practical Happiness: A Young Man’s Guide to a Contented Life by Bob Schultz, with my youngest son, Jesse, not reviewed yet.

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure, just finished, hope to review in the next day or so. Review is up here.

I also listened to Silas Marner, but it wasn’t an audiobook as I had thought: it was an 111 minute production/adaptation. But it was very good! I will have to read the book some day.

Since I’ve been exploring audiobooks the past month or two, I wrote some thoughts on audiobooks, but basically I do prefer a real physical book in my hands for several reasons, yet audiobooks have been wonderful for driving time and other times when my hands are busy but my mind is free.

I am currently reading:

Saving Graces: the Inspirational Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder edited by Stephen Hines. I was disappointed that these are just columns from his previous book, but I guess for anyone who just wants an overview of this aspect of her life, it is nice to have them all in one place.

Intervention by Terri Blackstock (audiobook).

I’m not sure what’s next. I’ve been pushing hard to get books completed for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge, which ends Wednesday, so I haven’t thought much about what to read beyond that. But I have The Big 5-Oh! by Sandra Bricker on my nightstand, and it looks like good. I’ve enjoyed Carrie‘s LMM and my LIW reading challenges immensely, but it will be nice to get back to modern times and a little more free-form reading this month.

When Pa feels that too many people are living in the Big Woods, he decides to take the family West into Indian country, ushering in quite an adventurous year for the Ingalls family.

They pack things up in a covered wagon, leaving major furniture behind “because Pa could always make more” (and I am sure because it would have taken another wagon just to load bigger things like beds and tables), say a poignant good-bye to grandparents and cousins without knowing when they would be able to communicate again, much less see them again, cross the frozen Mississippi River only the day before the ice starts to break, then endure traveling unnumbered days (with no DVDs, radios, iPods, or McDonald’s!) and make camp in a new place almost every night.

Finally they reach Kansas, where they see wide open space with “nothing but the rippling grass and the enormous sky” which seemed to curve over them in a perfect circle, quite a contrast to the Big Woods. But they traveled on still to Oklahoma, passing through a dangerous high creek in the process. I felt almost as sick as Laura said she felt til they were safely on the other side.

When they finally choose a spot to settle, then the long process of making a home begins: making a tent of the wagon covering, hauling logs, making the cut-outs at each end so they can stack together, making doors (without nails!!) Once again I was impressed with the industriousness and knowledge of both Ma and Pa as well as everyone’s bucking up under what we would consider hardship. I can’t quite imagine having a dirt floor or making beds on it: wouldn’t everything constantly get dusty? Yet everyone seems patient with the time it takes to get everything done step by step. When Pa is finally able to build a bed frame and they fill a straw tick with dry grass from the prairie (which almost makes me itchy just to think about), Ma says she is “so comfortable it’s almost sinful.”

The Ingalls had word that the Indians would soon be leaving, but there were still plenty of them around, giving Ma a fright when they would show up at her door and apparently want something to eat. Wolf packs, fire in the chimney and then on the prairie, “fever ‘n’ ague” (which Laura said later was probably malaria) which would likely have taken the whole family if someone had not come upon them when there were sick are just a few of the trials the family experienced. I could empathize with Ma’s long nights alone when Pa had to make the four-day trip back and forth to the nearest town.

And in this book we meet dear Mr. Edwards, one of my favorite characters, and have one of my favorite parts of the series during the Christmas he makes a trip at great hardship to himself so the girls can have Christmas — and they are so thrilled with the little gifts they receive.

There are a few remarks about Indians that we would consider racist today, but I think they were primarily motivated by fear. Pa tried to keep the peace and calm other neighbors’ excited feelings against the Indians. Other books I have been reading debate the controversy of settlers encroaching on Indian territory, but I don’t think most of the settlers had the big picture we do today in retrospect: most of them weren’t personally trying to run the Indians out: they just knew the government said there was land to be homesteaded.

Little House on the Prairie is a fascinating account of what I imagine many pioneer families dealt with in traveling in covered wagons and settling new territory. But even more than the historical interest, the warmth of the family and their character makes this book one of the most special children’s books written.

Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series. My set has the same Garth Williams illustration shown on the left, only my books have a blue background. I think his illustrations are wonderful and add a lot to the stories.

In this opening book, Laura is portrayed as five years old, but according to Wikipedia she was actually three: the publishers changed her age in the stories “because it seemed unrealistic for a three-year-old to have specific memories such as she wrote about.” And I had thought these pretty remarkable memories even for a five year old!

Of course, much of what she wrote about were probably activities that were repeated throughout her life, such as butchering and smoking a hog, making maple syrup and sugar, laying up food for the winter, planting and harvest, etc., so I suppose the details were imprinted on her mind almost without effort. Sprinkled throughout are family stories handed down, songs that Pa played on his fiddle on winter evenings, customs and proverbs of the day.

But even though this is all fascinating historically, it doesn’t read like a history lesson: it reads like a warm family story with old-fashioned but always ever needed “family values”: love of family, respect for parents, obedience, industriousness, thrift, and so on.

There were several things that were amazing to me: that Laura and Mary had not seen a town or a store or even two houses together yet in their young lives (their first trip to town is a major event later in the book); that they used every bit of their resources, even to roasting a pig’s tail and using its bladder for a ball; the sheer amount of knowledge, skill, and energy it took to live in those times; contentment with what we would think of today as very little. Laura plays with an old corn cob as a doll named Susan, and even when she got a new doll, she didn’t want to make “Susan” jealous.

Even the children were expected to work hard and not to complain. Yet they didn’t seem to resent it: they just took it as a matter of course.

And Paul’s twinkling eyes and good humor and Ma’s gentleness, Christmas celebrations and get-togethers with extended family all smoothed some of the rough edges of life.

I so enjoyed revisiting with the Ingalls family a bit for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. It’s easy to see why these books are beloved children’s classics, and I hope they will be for a many years to come. Yet even though they are written for children, they are beloved and read by adults as well.

Little House in the Ozarks: the Rediscovered Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Stephen Hines, is a collection of newspaper columns and magazine articles Laura wrote between 1911 and 1925 before she wrote the Little House books. I have looked at bits and pieces of this but I’ve never read it all the way through, and I wanted to do so for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge this month.

There are over 140 articles or columns arranged by topic, and the topics range from WWI, women’s progress, and “the greatness and goodness of God,” but most are just observations drawn from everyday life.

Laura was very opinionated, especially in preferring farm or country life over town life. But in other ways she was very broad-minded. She was remarkably well read for having only two terms of high school: she quotes from several authors. She had a natural innate curiosity about the world around her and never wanted to stop learning about it. And for being a farmer’s wife tucked away in Mansfield, Missouri, she kept up on politics and current events quite well. There is even a section on fairies. But she valued a woman’s role in her home above all else.

She also reflected on her upbringing a lot and mentions several incidents that showed up in her later books.

One of my favorite columns is from January 1920, titled “The Man of the Place,” which was what Laura called Almanzo in these columns. She records their grumbling over the amount of work on their shoulders and the lack of time to get it all done, then they both recalled that their parents worked long into the night spinning, sewing, sorting their produce, while they themselves had club work and magazines to read in the evenings. They reminisced that their parents did enjoy their lives, though they were so busy. “If we expect to enjoy life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals…or when we have nothing else to do” (p. 66). Then they concluded they weren’t really having such a hard time after all.

Another is titled “The Old Dash Churn.” Her husband had bought her a new butter churn that was supposed to make butter in three minutes. But it was supposed to connect to a motor, and they had none, so she had to hold it steady in a certain position with one hand and turn the handle with the other. Plus the blades were sharp and frequently cut her hands. She gave it a good try because her husband had bought it to please her and make her work easier, but it was making it more troublesome instead. She told him the problems she was having and asked him several times to bring back the old dash church, but he just said, “Oh, this one is so much better: you can churn in three minutes…” One day when the churn was being “particularly annoying” she picked up the whole thing and threw it as far as she could. When she told her husband, he said, “I wish I had known that you did not want to use it. I would like to have the wheels and shaft, but they’re ruined now.” I’m not telling it as she did, but it just struck me so funny because she HAD told him repeatedly. But she didn’t generally make a habit of throwing things when she was aggravated. 🙂

A few favorite quotes:

“Let’s be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger. Let us be as careful that our homes are furnished with pleasant and happy thoughts as we are that the rugs are the right color and texture and the furniture comfortable and beautiful” (p. 37).

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all” (p. 52).

Quoting a friend who was “home schooling” and had a daughter who was not as academic as her brothers, preferring sewing to studying: “I know what her talent is, but she has to have her books, too: and she will sew all the better for having ‘book learning'” (p. 54).

“So much depends upon the homemakers. I sometimes wonder if they are so busy now with other things that they are forgetting the importance of this special work….Because of their importance, we must not neglect our homes in the rapid changes of the present day. For when tests of character come in later years, strength to the good will not come from the modern improvements or amusements few may have enjoyed but from the quiet moments and the ‘still small voices’ of the old home. Nothing ever can take the place of this early home influence; and as it does not depend upon externals, it may be the possession of the poor as well as of the rich” (p. 64).

“Now it isn’t enough in any garden to cut down the weeds….cultivating the garden plants is just as necessary. If we want vegetables, we must make them grow, not leave the ground barren where we have destroyed the weeds. Just so, we must give much of our attention to the improvements we want, not all to the abuses we would like to correct” (p. 94).

“We are coming, I think, to depend too much on being shown and told and taught instead of using our own eyes and brains and inventive faculties” (p. 122).

“It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt to take us at our own valuation” (p. 130).

“Just as a little thread of gold, running through a fabric, brightens the whole garment, so women’s work at home, while only the doing of little things, is like the golden gleam of sunlight that runs through and brightens all the fabric of civilization” (p. 207).

“Here and there one sees a criticism of Christianity because of the things that have happened [during WWI]….’Christianity has not prevented these things, therefore it is a failure’ some say. But this is a calling of things by the wrong names. It is rather the lack of Christianity that has brought us where we are. Not a lack of churches or religious forms but of the real thing in our hearts” (p. 265).

In a column about how pies were invented, “Its originator was truly an artist, as though she had written a poem or painted a picture, for she had used her creative instinct and imagination with a fine technique” (p. 282).

I enjoyed so much getting to know Laura better through these columns.

After I got my iPhone and got ready to find some audiobooks, I opened a trial account at Audible.com. Looking around for my first book to try, I happened upon The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I’d seen it mentioned and highly recommended, so I bought it.

For some reason it didn’t even occur to me that with this being modern secular fiction, there would likely be some bad language. I hadn’t recalled any of the bloggers I’d read mentioning it (for the record I do very much appreciate when reviewers mention these things so readers can take this into account.) By this reviewer’s count (which I hadn’t seen before listening to the book) there are about two dozen expletives, several of them taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Now, I am not naive. I grew up in an unsaved home and public schools, so I know people use such language. I really don’t hear it by and large in everyday life now, but my oldest son, who works with the general public (when they’re having computer problems and therefore upset) says he hears it all the time. But I don’t like to read or listen to it and fill my mind with it so that the next time I am frustrated, one of those words come flying into my thoughts. And I especially don’t like hearing the dearest name in the world brought down to such a level. Yet if I set out to purge every source of such words from my life I’d have to avoid some members of my extended family forever (as it is I have to delete about every other Facebook post from some of them). We live in a fallen world, so we’re going to encounter those things. Yet there is a difference between being unable to avoid it in some cases and voluntarily bringing it in for entertainment in others. I don’t think there is ever a case where it is really needed to make the story realistic. I don’t know if anyone ever gets to the end of a book and thinks, “You know, that was really good except it needed a few bad words.”

So…I wrestle with that. I really do. That’s one reason why I usually read Christian fiction and avoid modern secular work. In some cases the work itself supersedes these kinds of flaws, yet the flaws of such language may be enough to avoid it. I’m still working on that, but I wanted to put this at the forefront.

As for the rest of the book: it is excellent. The story is told from the viewpoint of three different women in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s:

Aibileen is a maid for Elizabeth Leefolt and looks after her daughter, Mae Mobley, who is the seventeenth white child Aibileen has helped raise. Mrs. Leefolt is considerably lacking in the maternal affection department, and Aibileen tries to make up for it by often telling Mae Mobley, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” Aibileen is the voice of calmness, common sense, and what spirituality is in the book, being noted for her prayer list.

Miss Skeeter is a friend of Elizabeth’s who often comes over to play bridge. Her family’s maid, whom she was closer to than her own mother, disappeared some time earlier, and Skeeter is hurt and mystified over where she went, why she left, and why no one will tell her anything. Skeeter, more than the other white ladies, seems to see and treat “the help” as real people. She’s finished college at Ole Miss and wants to be a writer.

Minnie is feisty, keeps losing jobs because of her tendency to mouth off, but is known for her exceptional cooking. There are only two people Minnie can’t face down: her drunken, abusive husband, and Hilly Holbrook.

Hilly is the self-appointed leader of her circle of friends and the president of the League. She decides to promote a bathroom initiative requiring every white household to build a separate bathroom for the colored help so that they don’t catch diseases from each other. Hilly is the ultimate control freak. Anyone dissenting from her viewpoint is not merely disagreeable. They must be crushed and ruined.

One other major character is Celia Foote, “white trash” who married up, pathetically trying to break into the community of white ladies and not understanding why none of them returns her calls.

Skeeter lands a job at the newspaper, writing a Miss Myrna column of housecleaning tips. She’s thrilled to have a writing job but has never cleaned anything in her life, so she asks Elizabeth if she can talk to Aibileen from time to time to ask her questions for her column. In the friendship that develops, Skeeter gets an idea: writing a book from the point of view of the help. I don’t recall if it was stated whether she just thinks this is a good angle for a book or if she is motivated in the beginning by any altruistic desire (one disadvantage of an audiobook is not being able to flip back through pages to try to find out), but it is not long before her eyes are opened and she sees this as more than just a project. She contacts an editor in New York who tells her to give it a try “before this civil rights thing blows over.”

It’s dangerous, both for Skeeter and Aibileen. Skeeter could be ruined socially and Aibileen could be harmed physically, as well as lose her job (and any job in the town). They meet secretly to work on the book. Then Skeeter’s editor tells her she needs to interview a dozen maids. No one else is willing to talk to her…until a tragedy in their midst convinces them they need to tell their stories. But another tragedy, the murder of Medgar Evers in the maids’ neighborhood, heightens the danger.

As the project continues, warmth and understanding unfolds on both sides — for there is prejudice on both sides (a colored doctor refusing to operate on a white boy’s hand when he loses his fingers is one example). There is even more to poor Celia than initially meets the eye.

The story was wonderfully told with both humor and pathos. The voices, the vernacular were right on.

The production values of the audiobook version were fantastic. Four actresses read the different sections, but at no point did I have the feeling someone was reading a book to me. At one point when I was recalling a particular scene, it was so vivid in my mind I had to remind myself I didn’t actually see it. It was enjoyable to hear the accents as well: one of my pet peeves is fake Southern accents, but for the most part these were genuine.

Overall, except for the instances of bad language and a couple of cases of vulgarity, I loved the book. I mentioned another review above: both it and the comments are very insightful.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

I got the audiobook version of Vicious Cycle by Terri Blackstock when someone posted on Facebook that it was free at GoBible.com for a limited time (it is no longer free at this time). I’ve enjoyed many of Terri’s books and hadn’t read anything by her in a while, so I snapped it up.

This is the second book in her Intervention series . The first book, also titled Intervention, was written several year’s after Terri’s own daughter was trapped in and then delivered from drug addiction. I had not read that one, but there were enough references in this book that I felt I had a basic enough understanding of the points of reference connecting the books.

In this book, Emily Covington is about to finish a year of treatment in a drug rehab facility. One of her friends there, Jordan, leaves the facility, goes home, unexpectedly goes into labor and gets high on meth to handle the pain. She doesn’t go to the hospital partially because she waited too late but partially because her own drug-crazed mother won’t take her. When Jordan wakes up and comes to her senses, she discovers her mother has plans to sell the baby. When Emily’s brother, Lance, comes to Jordan’s house to try to talk her into going back into treatment, Jordan desperately hides the baby in his car to get her away from her mother. Lance doesn’t realize she has done this until he leaves, then, he decides to take the baby home, thinking Jordan will come for her soon. But it is obvious something is wrong with the baby. Just as he decides to take the baby to the hospital, his car is surrounded by police and Lance is arrested for kidnapping.

Lance’s mother, Barbara, calls the detective who helped in her daughter’s case, Kent, and together they try to clear Lance, decide what’s best for the baby, and help Jordan to understand that though she has so many strikes available, a new life is possible with God’s help. When they discover evidence of a baby-trafficking ring, they realize that Jordan’s baby as well as others are in more serious danger than they had thought.

People who accuse Christian fiction of being too pristine to be realistic have not read Terri Blackstock. Somehow she portrays the gritty realism of drug addiction without making us feel we’ve been dragged through the gutter. There is enough there to be convincing without overdoing it.

My husband and I have had family members on both sides who have gotten involved with drugs, sadly, and we recognized the pattern of their behavior in Jordan and her mother. Emily, in the first book, had come from a good family. Jordan’s family is part of her problem rather than a solution or a support. Yet both girls had to realize where true help comes from and be willing to lay hold on it.

I very much enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next one, Downfall, which, incidentally, can be pre-ordered in a e-book version for $4.99 before the end of February. I have my order in!

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

I’ve listened to one and a half audiobooks now and thought I’d pass along my thoughts on them. Several years ago we also listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theater productions of Chronicles of Narnia and Les Miserables, but I think those were dramatizations rather than readings.

In general I would still prefer actual books. I just prefer reading that way and I like being able to mark specific passages, to linger over some spots or reread them, or trip a little more lightly through others. Plus I can read with other people around and still be available to them: with an audiobook, I either have ear buds in or am in another room, so I tend to listen to them when alone. That’s not really a problem unless it’s a really exciting part of the book and I’d love to listen to a few pages but can’t!

However, audiobooks have helped immensely with driving time. It’s about a 20-minute drive to my mother-in-law’s place and to a few other destinations, and I’m hardly aware of the time going by, whereas beforehand I was chafing at the time in the car not accomplishing anything except moving from one destination to another. I’ve also started listening to them while getting ready in the mornings and want to incorporate them while exercising or house-cleaning.

I don’t think I could listen to a non-fiction book that way that wasn’t in story form. Those kinds of books take a little more concentration, anyway, and I tend to mark passages, place sticky tabs all over to try to help me retain information from them. I could listen to them and glean something, I’m sure, but I just wouldn’t get the full benefit of them just by listening. That might be a good way to review a book I’ve already read, though, or preview one I plan to read.

I am more of a visual learner. A few times just when my attention has lagged or I’ve forgotten something in the audiobook that I can’t then go back and look up (without listening to significant portions again), I’ve wondered how difficult it must have been for people to retain Scripture when they primarily heard it, when they didn’t have written portions for everyone, when the Colossians got a letter from Paul that was read at their assembly. I don’t know how easy it would have been to make copies. They were probably more trained to really listen then than we are now, but I am still glad to have lived in an era of the written word.

But I find I am enjoying audiobooks immensely at times when I can’t get into a paper book.

I started a trial subscription on Audible.com that is $7-something a month for the first three months, and you’re able to get one credit (which usually gets you one book) each month. After that trial period it goes up to the regular $14-something a month, which seems pretty high to me. If I am going to pay that much I’d rather get the actual book. I’m not sure why they’re that expensive: I know the author needs to be paid royalties and the reader and producers need to be paid, but it seems if you’re making one file that multiples of people can download, that would be less expensive than making multiple copies of the actual book. So I may drop the Audible account after that, I’m not sure.

I have discovered some good resources in learnoutloud.com and http://gobible.com/. They’re regular prices seem expensive but they do have good sales or occasional free downloads.

How about you: do you know of any good resources for audiobooks? Do you enjoy them? What is your experience?