MobileRead Discussion: The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald (spoliers)

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by Verencat

Sheesh, don't believe that, and don't let people make you believe that! Since I read Lene's comments before I read the book, I just dived in looking for an answer. No intelligence, I just had the clue.

Good idea - will do that too in future. Still makes you smarter

Originally Posted by Verencat

Yes, yes it does! I'm the same!

Hmm - wonder if you get the same trouble than me sometimes

Originally Posted by Verencat

Thanks, I will! It's fun to be sharing a common reading experience with people.

Yep - you got it right. Although not all books voted appeal to me and some I downright struggle with. Couldn't for the life of me finish 'Gone with the Wind'

[Verencat]

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

Hmm - wonder if you get the same trouble than me sometimes

Not so much, I'm a know airhead, anyway...

Yep - you got it right. Although not all books voted appeal to me and some I downright struggle with. Couldn't for the life of me finish 'Gone with the Wind'

Funny, I read it about once a year, for some obscure reason. It's the kind of book that gives you a peaceful ride, entertaining, not too shaky, and with the perferct pace for me - it does't make me fall asleep in less than 30 min and it won't keep me up late because I can't let it go either.

Anyway, I think that any book needs to be read at the good moment. There is a chemistry between me an a book that is completely unexplainable - it clicks or it doesn't, but I never force the relationship. Quite often, the books that are not a match with me at a given moment will be perfect a year or two after. So I won't force my participation in the club, I'll just navigate alongside of it...

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by Verencat

Not so much, I'm a know airhead, anyway...



Funny, I read it about once a year, for some obscure reason. It's the kind of book that gives you a peaceful ride, entertaining, not too shaky, and with the perferct pace for me - it does't make me fall asleep in less than 30 min and it won't keep me up late because I can't let it go either.

Anyway, I think that any book needs to be read at the good moment. There is a chemistry between me an a book that is completely unexplainable - it clicks or it doesn't, but I never force the relationship. Quite often, the books that are not a match with me at a given moment will be perfect a year or two after. So I won't force my participation in the club, I'll just navigate alongside of it...

Yeah connections with books are weird. I know a lot of people love GWTW - and I just can't find a connection with it. I have tried and tried and still don't like it. But then again - that's a good thing. How could we talk about books if we all like it the same?

[lilac_jive]

I'm late into the game, but I figured I'd post since I'm 4/5ths of the way through.

This book makes me wish (oddly) that I had a garden and fresh seafood. Yum!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by lilac_jive

I'm late into the game, but I figured I'd post since I'm 4/5ths of the way through.

This book makes me wish (oddly) that I had a garden and fresh seafood. Yum!

Makes me wish I had a few chickens and a rooster so I could have a steady supply of fresh eggs!

[ziegl027]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Makes me wish I had a few chickens and a rooster so I could have a steady supply of fresh eggs!

Umm, you can skip the rooster. You only need a rooster if you want baby chickens. In the book, they had to wait until the cocks started crowing, then they'd split them out and put them in pen to raise for meat. These days, the poultry industry actually employs a large cadre of what my husband describes as "elderly Oriental men" as chick sexers. They look at day-old chicks and put the hens aside to be shipped to the layer facilities. The males, sadly, are discarded--they don't grow out well enough to make them profitable as meat birds. Why Oriental or why men, I dunno, but the elderly is largely explained by it taking years to learn how to accurately sex the buggers--DH has never learned and he's been working professionally with chicken parts for almost 20 years. There are some gender feather differences between chickens bred for meat, though, so no special skills are required (they are still seperated because the boys and the girls grow at different rates). As the wife of a poultry pathologist, it was of at least a little interest to me to see how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Biggest things then and now in success with poultry boils down to management-mostly ventilation and hygiene.

Other than the little flashes of the actual poultry industry, I was struck with the frank discussion of pregnancy and abortion. My Mom was born in '43 and she recalls growing up thinking that her parents must have been strange because they slept in the same bed--all couples on TV slept in twin beds, and often in seperate rooms. I think I read somewhere that the word "pregnant" was never used on I Love Lucy, even when Lucy clearly was, and a baby showed up on the show. The racism was certainly more typical for the era, seesawing between the "Noble Savage" image vs. the drunk layabout. I'm also not sure just how desperate I'd have to be to leave my baby with a moonshiner in order to go out and see a movie....