I Visit Two (Very Different) Farms

What I Read Last Week Last week was one of those fabulous reading weeks where you feel like a Higher Power is mysteriously and mischieviously guiding one's book choices. First, this book arrived in the mail from the publisher for review: It's Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer by Antonia Murphy. Murphy and her husband move to New Zealand and gradually and oddly become farmers. I don't know if New Zealand animals are strangely more...well, let's call it "zestful" than American animals, but the goats, sheep, cows, llamas, and chickens that Murphy takes into her farm family are the most shockingly nasty animals I've ever seen. Some spit, in crude and barbarous ways, often right into the faces of their owners. All of them excrete, of course, and it always seems to occur in plain sight of their human farmer friends, occasionally on the carpets and couches of said friends, and in ways that are quite vile. And all of them reproduce, most of them in horrifying ways that, were they humans, would get them long prison sentences. It's all quite terrifying and shocking to this citified reader. What do I read next? How is this for weird? I learn that my online reading group, 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, has Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder next on its slate. I obtain a copy from my library.  Farmer Boy. You probably know of it. Farmer Boy is the true story of the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder (she of Little House on the Prairie fame). Almonzo Wilder grows up on a farm in upstate New York in the 1800's.  It's quite another world from the alarming animal world of Dirty Chick. Almonzo's family raises the same animals as the family in Dirty Chick. (Maybe I should say that again, with emphasis this time: Almonzo's family raises the same animals.) But these are not the manic, passion-filled wild things from Dirty Chick; oh no, these animals are calm, gentle creatures who willingly submit to sharing milk from their bodies and giving up their lives to their beloved human owners. If the animals of Farmer Boy defecate or reproduce, they must do so quietly and placidly, perhaps behind a discrete fence or in a remote pasture somewhere.   This leaves me with many questions. Could it be that farm animals of the past were much more disciplined than our contemporary farm animals? Or are the farm animals of New Zealand somehow temperamentally more passionate than the staid farm animals of America? It's quite mysterious. And, oddly, I loved loved loved both of these very different takes on farm life.

A question, my friends:

I've got this week off.  :-)

I have four books ready to go: 
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman
Florence Gordon by Brian Morton
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum

Any thoughts about which book to take on first?

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The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.