Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

So the past couple of weeks I've been going down memory lane and re-reading all of the "Little House on the Prairie" books. If you've never read them, I recommend them.

It is the story of the Ingalls family moving from place to place during Laura's childhood. The main character is Laura, but her entire family is involved as well. There is one book about Almanzo Wilder's childhood, who eventually becomes Laura's husband.

They are very simply written and mostly what I think Mrs. Wilder is doing is displaying how hard life was then. I'm not sure that she ever saw a big city until she was MUCH older. Her family kept moving to more and more remote areas (or once back into a more civilized area) so all of the food they ate they basically had to make themselves.

Mrs. Wilder describes making cheese and bread (without so much as a pack of yeast!), going months without seeing milk, because they didn't have a milk cow, or theirs had dried up. The book that hit me was "The Long Winter" because they basically ran out of food when the trains couldn't get through the storms. They ate wheat that was ground in a coffee grinder and made into coarse biscuits. That was IT. I was amazed at this life style and how convenient everything is now days. If I run out of something I can just run to the store and get more.

These books are all about Farming too. Mrs. Wilder describes out the common farmer would put everything he had (including going into debt) into his harvest and sometimes the harvest would be bad. Two years in a row when they lived in Minnesota they lost their crops to grasshopper plagues. She talks about when she married her husband, Almanzo, how she didn't want to be dependent on a farm any more, so they had a deal that they could try farming for three years and if it didn't work out, Almanzo would do something else. It didn't work out and they barely were able to make ends meet and at the end of four years (she gave an extra year as a year of grace) their house was burned to the ground. They basically lost everything, but Laura still allowed her husband to farm. It was the chance that they might make enough money to pay for their equipment and house and for groceries and have some left over that kept them farming. It wasn't at all dependable.

Really these books show the true pioneering spirit, and willingness to make something out of nothing. They are inspirational in their own way, but I'll be honest. I still wouldn't want to be married to a farmer.

The Agency: The Body at the Tower by Y.S. Lee

I stumbled across this book in the "New" section of the YA literature section. It is about a dectective agency comprised completely of women who are governesses, servants, etc set in Victorian London. The series follows Mary Quinn, who is a half-Chinese, half-Irish girl who was orphaned at a young age and grew up on the streets until she was caught for steal and had the death penalty. Then some ladies from a boarding school found her and got her released, so they could train her to be a spy.

This is actually the second book in the series, I haven't actually gotten around to the first book yet. I think that would fill in some of the plot gaps. By the way, I HATE starting a series on the second book. I was even mad that the "Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe" was the second book (chronologically). Nothing would satisfy me until I read the first one.

This one, the heroine dresses up like a 12 year old boy who is helping out on a construction site. She has been called by the "Agency" to investigate the death of a man who fell from the top of the tower that holds "Big Ben". (Fact, Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the tower or the clock).

I liked it well enough, like I said though, I think I need to read the first book. I thought the details of Victorian England were accurate, but I thought the mystery was a little disjointed. Mysteries have to flow and reveal clues along the way, so by the end your swear that you know who the bad guy is, but you don't actually know. This one was like watching CSI or some kind of cop show. It told you what happened, but didn't build up to the climax very well, until the chapter or so right before the climax.

Oh, by the way. I hate historical fiction. Really, if you are going to write a book set in the past, make sure that it is an alternate universe, NOT the actual "real" place/time. Then you can ignore/excuse any mistakes. I hated the Work and the Glory (can I be Mormon and still say this??? :) )

Not that this book did that. I thought the "alternate" reality (meaning that an agency of spies completely made up of women in Victorian England) was well defined. Also, the author really had a very good grasp on customs and roles of people in Victorian England, so that helped.

I didn't really care for the romantic side of it. I thought the heroine and her romantic interest moved a little too fast...but then again, I haven't read it yet. It had a bit to much sex for a book that had absolutely no sex at all, but then again that is just me. Once again, I think I need to read the first book. It sounds like there was a lot of build up in the romance side of things.

Rating: Worth a read! Definitely start with the first book though. I think that would help with the flow of the story. I felt like I was missing things throughout the whole book...hence the reason I HATE starting with the second book.