In the olden days — before I wrote this blog full time — I was a regular at the wonderful AskMetafilter, a collaborative site for answering reader questions. I don’t have as much time to hang out there anymore, as evidenced by the fact that it took a reader to point me to yesterday’s question about frugality books. Catch wrote:
I’d like to read some good books, preferably autobiographical, about managing a household in hard times. For purposes of ‘professional development’ and generally cheering myself up about being the housewife in a single-income family, I have a craving to read good books about successful living on low resources. Please recommend some! First-hand accounts preferred — depression-era, wartime, or just circumstantial modern hard-times.
I love this question. Recently at our monthly book group, I talked about how some of my favorite books seem built around a similar template. They follow a child as he or she grows to adulthood in a poor family. Four of my favorites are:
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (which I wrote about last year)
- Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
- How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (truly great)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I love these books because they remind me of the struggles my own family had to make ends meet when I was a boy. I feel like these are stories I can relate to, as if the authors understand me. Other suggestions from AskMetafilter readers include:
- The work of Betty MacDonald, including: The Egg and I (which I’ve added to my library list), Anybody Can Do Anything, and Onions in the Stew.
- The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (I’ve never heard of this)
- The Orchard by Adele Crockett Robinson
- The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan (which I’ve started but never finished)
The thread at AskMetafilter has many other great suggestions. Aside from The Egg and I, the other book I’d like to read is We Survived — and Thrived, which is a collection of anecdotes from people who lived through the Great Depression. (Much of this book is available online at Google book search.)
I read a lot of personal finance books. They’re educational. I get a lot out of them. But honestly, I get a lot more from reading how real-life people have dealt with real-life hardship. Their stories make me realize my own challenges are trivial, that I’m fortunate — and that true wealth isn’t about money.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for a trip to the public library. The Egg and I is calling my name.
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Hi J.D,
Thanks for the wonderful blog. I am a regular visitor. One of my favorite book is The complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. Lots of tips. Definitely worth checking out.
Nav
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Check out “Little Heathens”. Autobiographical piece about growing up in depression era Iowa. They didn’t really want for much, yet the only things boughten were coffee, sugar, sometimes flour.
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Mama Bank Account was made into the the movie “I Remember Mama”… a little Hollywood sentimentalized… but still good for portraying family frugality.
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As a librarian…I LOVE THIS POST! Here are some suggestions – (some non-fiction and fiction included)
*Down & out in the Great Depression : letters from the forgotten man / edited by Robert S. McElvaine
*The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck
*Daily life in the United States, 1920-1939 : decades of promise and pain / David E. Kyvig
*I capture the castle / by Dodie Smith.
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@Kate
I Capture the Castle is great. I love that book. I don’t know if it fits this theme necessarily, but I don’t care. More people should read it. (And more people should read 101 Dalmatians by the same author, Dodie Smith. It’s much, much better than any of the movie incarnations.)
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is my favorite book ever. I read it at least once a year. I would also like to recommend Buying a Year by Leslie Golding Mastroianni. It is a self published novel about a woman who decides not to work for a year by living very frugally off of her divorce settlement.
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A little off-topic perhaps, but growing up it seems like I was constantly reading books set in the depression. Lois Lenski was a favorite; I wish I could remember all of the authors though!
For those of you with kids, I highly recommend looking up Lois Lenski’s series of books about children in different regions of America.
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I read “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” because of J.D.’s post last year and loved it! I was touched by how much work the poor did just to stay afloat. Yet they had hope that things could get better if they worked hard and save as much from the little they earned as they could save. I still remember the tin can (their savings) that they nailed in the closet everyplace they lived. I recommend “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
(P.S. Thanks J.D. for recommending it!)
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I really enjoyed The Glass Castle and it has been incredibly popular in the last year.
Nav mentioned the Tightwad’s Gazette which is actually a really good read (especially if you have kids). I got some ideas out of it, but it’s definitely more of a reference book (and I would recommend to get it from the library because some of it is pretty dated from the early 90s before computers).
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Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel is another book filled with anecdotes from the Great Depression like these:
“I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released…I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows. Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity…
We thought American business was the Rock of Gibraltar. We were the prosperous nation, and nothing could stop us now…There was a feeling of continuity. If you made it, it was there forever. Suddenly the big dream exploded. The impact was unbelievable.”
“Here were all these people living in old, rusted-out car bodies. I mean that was their home. There were people living in shacks made of orange crates. One family with a whole lot of kids were living in a piano box. This wasn’t just a little section, this was maybe ten-miles wide and ten-miles long. People were living in whatever they could junk together.”
It’s an old book but I was able to check out a copy from my local library. I would highly recommend it.
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The library? whats that?
Just kidding. Those are some great suggestions and there is no question in my mind why some of those are required reading in school. They teach one how to survive and show just what you stated, true wealth is not about money and there are others worse off than one’s self.
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J.D., I must thank you for mentioning Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis. I just finished it last night and it was remarkable.
My recommendation is Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell. This book made me eternally grateful for every meal. Orwell weathered hard times successfully only in the sense that remaining alive is successful.
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@slowth
I actually have in front of me my notes from the book group discussion of Main Street. I really believe this discussion is worthy of a post, but I can’t figure out how to make it work. We talked a lot about social capital and class mobility. Maybe it would work as part of our “third stage” exploration…
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“Joy in the morning”, also by Betty Smith, is a great read. It’s about a young couple’s first year of marriage in the years just before the Depression. He is a student and they are very poor.
“I capture the castle” is absolutely wonderful, one of my favourite books. I found a copy at a fete book stall years ago and I was thrilled when it was re-published and available to a wider audience again.
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Maybe I don’t understand the question, but it seems she is looking for true books, or biographies wrapped in a tasty (but thin) fictional shell. Almost all of the books listed that I have read are fictional. Hard times, but not real people.
I liked Barbara Corcoran’s autobiography. Looking at how she grew up, though now insanely rich herself, with pluck and determination to succeed.
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“Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression” by Studs Terkel is a fascinating collection of interviews with people who lived through the depression. The audio version of the interviews are amazing if you ever get a chance to listen. “This American Life” radio show aired a few of the segments on the episode #368. Really powerful stuff.
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Hi J.D., I think it would be an ideal discussion for the “third stage” of finance because Carrie was within this financial realm for the entire book.
Social capital and class mobility are excellent themes. Despite her relative wealth, she never could attain sufficient social capital to transform the town to her liking. She really had vague ‘artistic’ goals and desires, aside from revitalizing the town, but when James Blausser arrived to do just that, she was wholly unsatisfied.
Maybe she was mired in “third stage” discontent. Without definite goals for this higher plane of personal finance, she became increasingly dissatisfied. It’s possible she spent too much energy attempting to make herself happy when she could have achieved happiness through less self-serving means. I suppose I’d call this diminishing personal finance returns.
While grinding through the lower stages of finance can bring immense happiness, what happens when you’ve reached the penthouse? I guess you throw down a rope or build an elevator to help others reach the top. I believe this warrants a more meaningful discussion than I can provide, and I’m sure you’ll do it great justice.
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_Hannah Coulter_ by Wendell Berry addresses thrift and stewardship as it weaves the story of a WWII widow. Great read!
Some quotes here:
http://poiemaportfolio.blogspot.com/2009/01/thrift-as-strategy-for-pleasure.html
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The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. Has some modest living and poverty in 1% or so of it.
Have you heard of Creature from Jekyll Island?
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I second Little Heathens.
Also, the whole Little House on the Prairie series. The first one, Little House in the Big Woods has lots of detailed info on living self sufficiently.
The Long Winter has lots on leaving on almost nothing.
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The Prizewinner of Defiance Ohio was an excellent film. I saw it in the movie theater, but want to put it on my netflix list. I only read the book after. i recently pulled out my worn copies of the tightwad gazette. They are fun reads. It helped that she lived down the road.
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haha, I hope you didn’t try to go to the library today like I did (it’s closed).
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“How to Cook A Wolf” by M.F.K. Fisher has lots of stories on how to eat well on a very low budget. This is a collection of essays, but the particular essay, “How to Cook a Wolf” is not only funny and instructive, but also quite poignant.
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Amy Dacyczyn was self imposed frugality to provide a life style.
The depression was a whole other ballgame. Fear and hunger are painful, saving a few dollars here and there doesn’t compare.
My mother was one of seven sisters growing up during the depression. Her father took her to work in the timber. Other sisters were sent off to work and live with other people or family to ease the burden. School didn’t always happen, sometimes they just didn’t have decent clothing. She lived in WV and didn’t see her first deer alive until she visited a deer park (anything edible didn’t stay alive long). A friend told me she didn’t realize how affected her mother had been, until after her death, she found an enormous amount of canned food hidden all over the house. I guess maybe she never wanted to be that hungry again.
I agree with the quote that the less possessions (money), the more creativity.
You’ll learn more trying to solve a problem without money as a option.
A more recent life experience account would be what Catch would want to read for useful ideas, the depression era would only make her grateful for how good she has it.
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The “I Remember Mama” version of “Mama’s Bank Account” is also a musical play — my high school did it. Might be worth poking around to see if a school near you is performing it this year. (Frugality-themed cheap entertainment!)
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Kelle, my MIL was from WV and her family couldn’t afford to feed her and her sister so they were given to the nuns to be raised. I think that want affected a whole generation as the MIL wasted no food the rest of her life. She could clean a piece of meat down to the bare bone. Do to poor diet (eating too much) she died of congestive heart failure.
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Another vote for The Glass Castle. It’s difficult to make optimism and creativity heartbreaking, but this book does it.
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The worst Hard time. Is a good one about struggles during the dust bowl. Also My new favorite which may or may not fit what you are looking for is ” Team of Rivals” about Abraham Lincolns and how he became a political genius.
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radical simplicity from dan price
true hobo living free
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Simplicity-Dan-Price/dp/0762424923/ref=pd_sim_b_6
amazing quest for true freedom throught voluntary simplicity
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Good suggestions. Have you heard of the Horatio Alger series of books? They focus on hard work, determination, and achieving success despite adversity . . .
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M.F.K. Fisher wrote a cookbook during the Great Depression called ‘How to Cook a wolf’ great humor on how to eat and host dinners with little resources. Chapters include ‘how to be cheerful though starving,’ ‘How to Keep Alive,’ ‘How to Rise up like New Bread’, and ‘How to Practice True Economy’.
She is also a great writer.
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“Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton” is one of those books I will remember (and reread) for a long time to come. It’s set in the late 1800s, in rural Arkansas and Mississippi. What that woman had to endure to scratch out a living, raise children and survive floods! There’s hardship at every turn, but, by golly, she prevails because she has to. Boy, do we have it easy today.
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I second the votes for The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio and the Laura Ingalls books.
They are both family-oriented books about people with a positive, can-do outlook on life even when facing very hard times.
While they don’t really have the practical tips of something like The Tightwad Gazette, they definitely provide encouragement and affirmation of frugal living!
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I second “Hard Times” by Studs Terkel. Also, “Working” by Mr. Terkel.
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Dangit, I was going to say “Grapes of Wrath”.
How about “Light in August” by William Faulkner. I prefer non-fiction, but Faulkner’s stories stand out and the imagery of life is vivid throughout.
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“Bombers and Mash: The Domestic Front 1939-45″ by Ranes Minns about Britain during WWII. There is a chapter about food being “a munition of war.” I recall a passage about the continued rationing after the war and the still substantial food shortages they faced in which a woman describes several families passing a whole onion from soup-pot to soup-pot for a special flavoring treat.
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There’s a relatively new book out call “Austerity Britian” by David Kynaston about Great Britain after WWII. It’s a social history about the years 1945-1951 when Britain was still recovering from WWII. I haven’t read it but it sounds interesting.
An excerpt from Publisher’s Weekly’s review:
“an extraordinary panorama of Britain as it emerged from the tumult of war with a broken empire, a bankrupt economy and an ostensibly socialist government. Britain between 1945 and 1951 is an alien place. No washing machines, no highways, no supermarkets. Everything was heavy, from coins and suitcases to coats and shoes. Everything edible was rationed: tea, meat, butter, cheese, jam, eggs, candy.”
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Oh I have to say Angela’s Ashes is a tough on for me. It was a hard read, being Irish and my mother being from Limerick!
I wouldn’t say its my favorite book to curl up and relax with, you really should read the sequel “‘Tis” it gives you some of the happy ending you crave after the damp, the illnesses and drunken stupidity.
Another trimuph over adversity that I love would be (a series actually) “Twopence to Cross the Mersey”, “Liverpool Miss”, “By the Waters of Liverpool” and “Lime Street at Two” all by Helen Forrester set in Liverpool pre and during WWII. Powerful stuff. And parents who get into debt and drag their families into it could stand to read these books.
Personally on a frugal/self sufficent buzz, “Little Women” does it for me too.
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I second The Worst Hard Time. Amazing book. Grapes of Wrath is a fictional account of people who fled the dust bowl, and The Worst Hard Time is a nonfiction account of the experiences of the people who stayed. Very powerful.
Not to pick nits, but was To Kill A Mockingbird really about growing up in poverty? Atticus Finch was an attorney, as I recall.
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“To Kill a Mockingbird” is about growing up during economic hard times. The Finch’s were relatively well off but the community wasn’t. Atticus often got paid in food and it was mentioned that the payment wasn’t always at the time of service but some time later when the people had something. He also was working for the government when he defended Tom at the expense of his own practice. Scout headed off the lynching when she o so innocently mentioned that if they all pulled together they, the community, would get through these hard times. Economic hardship and the way it affects people’s behavior was the context of the whole book.
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I suggest “Weeds” by Edith Summers Kelley. It’s a novel about a young woman growing up in brutally poor tenant farmer’s family in rural Kentucky in the early 20th century. It’s has some similarities to the other fictional works mentioned here, like “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Main Street” (interestingly, Kelley was briefly engaged to Sinclair Lewis, and he continued to be one of her biggest supporters), but as good as those others are, I like “Weeds” better; it rings so true that it feels like a fictionalized autobiography (but it definitely isn’t!).
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There are so many great books out there, but I would suggest, in addition to the others previously mentioned, the entire Little House on the Prairie series. Pretty much any book set prior to about 1960 is going to be representative of a much simpler — and more self-sufficient — time.
Isn’t it so interesting that the more “advanced” our society has become, the more incapable we, the individual members of that society, are at meeting our own basic needs. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, how many people were needed in order to grow, transport, manufacture, and prepare the commodities, food and otherwise, that I use in a day.
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I’d favorited that MeFi thread, and am glad that because of your mention here, additional titles have been suggested. Many of these books have been helpful to me.
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