I read the Mrs. Astor Regrets book based on your list. Sucked. Skip it and read “The Last Mrs. Astor instead.” Mrs. Astor Regrets is the kind of book where you read half the book in an effort to decide if you actually want to read the whole thing, and then since you’d suffered through half, you just think screw it I’ll read the whole thing.
Charlotte´s last blog ..Yuck!

Here’s my list:

1. Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, and also the sequel, Peder Victorious. The story of Norwegian immigrants (and in the sequel, their children) who settled the Dakota prairie. I’ve finished the first book and am likely to start the second tonight or tomorrow.

2. Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. This is a collection of letters written to a friend from 1909-1913, the years she started homesteading in southwest Wyoming. I finished this last night. Loved it.

3. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier by Joanna L. Stratton. Letters, stories and diaries from, duh, the Kansas frontier.

4. Woman’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. More of the same. Since I need 15 minutes to pack the diaper bag appropriately just for a trip to the pancake house (and a DVD player to make it three hours to Up North), I’m fascinated by the fact that women with way more kids than me (and no birth control) spent months and months crossing the mountains and prairies in a covered wagon. I want to know how they did that, and what made it worth it.

5. Little House on the Prairie books (maybe). I got impatient waiting for my daughter to learn to read and get into the Little House books, so I bought her some of the picture books and she loves them. So for her birthday she’s getting the paper dolls, a book of Little House crafts (even though I am the least crafty person ever), and probably a Little House-type doll. I bought myself the Little House Cookbook, the Little House Guidebook (a tour guide of all their homes, none of which are far from us since we live in Wisconsin), and a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. My childhood obsession is coming roaring back. So I’m considering re-reading the actual Little House books.

6. LA Candy by Lauren Conrad. Yeah, okay, not really prairie-centric. But I’m really curious as to whether Lauren from The Hills actually has a brain or not.

I also still need to finish Dooce’s book. I got about halfway through it and then just couldn’t go any further. I have NEVER failed to finish a book (even The Corrections, which I HATED). I need to just bite the bullet and get it done.

And if I did this right, there will be real live hand-typed HTML tags in this comment, and Anna will be proud of me.
Kerry´s last blog ..10 Things That Don’t Belong on Your Resume