Henry David Thoreau is the author of the 1854 book Walden: or, Life in the Woods, a reflection on simple living in natural surroundings, and now a pillar of classic American literature. The author famously lived in a woodland cabin
Henry David Thoreau is the author of the 1854 book Walden: or, Life in the Woods, a reflection on simple living in natural surroundings, and now a pillar of classic American literature.
The author famously lived in a woodland cabin in rural Massachusetts for two years, removing himself from society in order to gain a more objective understanding of it.
His book interweaves natural observation, personal experience, historical lore and rhetoric with a poetic sensibility and a love of practical detail. He was interested in the idea of simplifying life to discover its essential needs. Thoreau’s Walden experiment and literary style have been modeled ever since.
A spate of recent non-fiction books chronicle modern-day Thoreaus escaping the city to live a simpler life closer to nature. Funny or thoughtful, these tales examine the human attraction to getting away from it all and simplifying in order to enrich one’s life.
Happy reading!
Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver
641.0973 Ki
Hang on for the ride. With characteristic poetry and pluck, bestselling author Kingsolver and family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields many discoveries. Part memoir and part journalistic investigation this book makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.
Confessions of a
Counterfeit Farm Girl
By Susan McCorkindale
975.5043 Mc
A big city suburban mom and career woman leaves her friends and moves with husband and two young sons to a five-hundred acre beef-cattle farm in rural Virginia. As McCorkindale adapts to a world without Starbucks and plans bright orange wardrobes for her kids so they won’t get shot on their own property, she learns the hard way that Manolos and manure just don’t mix and in a sharp, smart and delightful voice she reveals life in the sticks and provides a cautionary tale for those ready to leave city life behind.
The Dirty Life: On
Farming, Food and Love
By Kristin Kimball
631.584 Ki
Manhattan journalist Kimball chucked city life to start a cooperative farm in upstate New York with a self-taught farmer she had interviewed for a story and later married. The 30-something Harvard-educated author and husband, also college educated and resolved to live outside the river of consumption, acquired a farm on the shores of Lake Champlain. Using draft horses rather than tractors to plow the five acres of vegetables, raise dairy cows and cattle, pigs and hens for slaughter they eventually produced a cooperative on the CSA model in which members buy a fully rounded diet. In this candid chronicle by season Kimball writes of learning to shed her urban inhibitions to slop pigs and slaughter chickens as the family members lose their hearts to the Adirondack farm.
Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in
Andalucia
By Chris Stewart
946.8 St
At seventeen, Chris Stewart, the first drummer for the rock group Genesis, left the band and launched a career that included stints as a sailor, a sheep shearer, and a travel writer. He has no regrets about his decision because he was able to move with his wife to a mountain farm in Andalucia, Spain, studded with olive, almond and lemon groves-but no access road, water supply, or electricity. He forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful neighbor Domingo, had adventures of hilarious disaster and blissful serendipity. His book describes all this and the satisfying complexity of a simple life.
Farm City: The
Education of an Urban Farmer
By Novella Carpenter
630.91732 Ca
Amidst a variety of modern-day urban scenes and a cadre of colorful locals, Carpenter put down roots in Oakland, California turning a vacant lot into a mini working farm raising vegetables and herbs, poultry, rabbits, ducks, pigs and bees. Carpenter’s beguiling book of missteps and victories, including recipes, will charm even readers without the slightest inclination to get up close and personal with their future meals.
Women, Animals and Vegetables
By Maxine Kumin
818.5408 Ku
This collection of essays and stories by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Kumin concentrates on nature. The tales are set in locales as far-flung as Alaska. Loving the planet and all its inhabitants like family the poet reminds us that we are in fact all family.
Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live off the Land
By Kurt Timmermeister
630.92 Ti
Farming may not be easy but just do it is the message of successful baker, chef and restauranteur Timmermeister who made a monumental leap from food preparer to working farmer and food producer. As he set out to transform his acreage on Washington’s Vashon Island into a viable farm, raising vegetables, fruit, livestock, and even bees, the author found he had more will than wisdom and modestly recounts his failures. He demonstrates how his hodgepodge of animals and equipment combined with the kindness of strangers make it all work to supply paying customers while successfully feeding his soul.
Still Life with
Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea
By Catherine Goldhammer
974.4043 Goldhammer Go
Goldhammer’s life slowly shifts from chaos to grace in this memoir of moving from a posh suburb to a rural town where houses rub elbows and everyone knows everything. She did not have a year in Provence, a villa under the Tuscan sun or a farm in Africa, but a run-down cottage by the sea in a honky-tonk town where live bait is sold from vending machines. Against all logic, the newly divorced mother and her twelve-year-old daughter purchase six baby chickens, which pull the duo into their new life and a new definition of home.
The One Straw
Revolution
By Masanobu Fukuoka
631.58 Fu
Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming,” Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative “do nothing” system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. At once practical and philosophical it’s an inspiring, necessary book about farming because it is not just about farming.
• Carolyn Larson, head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library, brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
