The Quest of An Everyday Soccer Mom to Read the Modern Library's 100 Best Fiction Books of the 20th Century.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Update


You know you've been watching the Olympics for too long when curling starts to look like fun.

Angle of Repose is great so far. It's a very easy read. It became even more interesting to me when I discovered today that it is based on the life of a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, who was a writer and illustrator like Stegner's fictional Susan Burling Ward. Like Susan, Mary was also Eastern born, well bred and very literary, who married a miner and followed him to the wilds of California and Idaho. Her articles and illustrations of her experiences were published in magazines back East; they helped people visualize the unsettled and 'uncivilized' parts of the American West.

Here is a great link to learn more about Mary Hallock Foote, her husband Arthur and their Western life, and see some of her awesome illustrations.

http://www.idahohistory.net/prospector_feb04.pdf

2 comments:

  1. Angle of Repose is a beautiful book. I read it at a time in my life when it really touched me. I loved it. It is one of the few books I plan to re-read.

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  2. I used to live in the Bay Area (Santa Rosa) so this book is really bringing me back to those days and how much I loved California. It really is a wild kind of beauty you can't find anywhere else in the country.

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