Tuesday, January 26, 2016
The book I want to read ...
- Is published in a pleasing, not-too-small font. I don't want to get a headache reading the book I want to read.
- Has no Prologue, Epilogue, or Author's Note. It starts and ends, definitively.
- Is set in the past. Sometime between 1900 and 1950, which is when everything went to sh*t, book-character-wise.
- Features a family who is living in poverty but is very, very happy, with lots of descriptions of how they "made do", ala The Waltons.
- They're very poor, but nobody gets seriously ill or, God forbid, dies.
- Likewise for their pets and/or farm animals. There are lots of charming anecdotes involving the animals, all of whom are happy and well and apparently live forever.
- Nothing horrifying happens. Nothing scary happens. Nothing that could be remotely considered scary happens. Everything is fine, with lots of whimsical stories about silly misunderstandings between the children and detailed descriptions of lovingly-prepared meals. There isn't a lot of food, but nobody cares, because they are rich in other things.
- The main characters will be the Mother and Father, who met in school, fell in love, stayed in love, never strayed from each other, and are still happily married at the end of the book.
- This could probably go without saying, but there are no sex scenes. None. We all know how the kids got there; we don't need it described to us.
- Nobody ages. Okay, maybe Mother and Father can age a little bit, but not the kids. The children all stay the same age. Like The Simpsons. That show's a million years old, but the kids are still kids. Like that.
- In the last chapter, either Mother or Father wins the lottery/inherits money from a long-lost uncle/had previously invented something which totally out of the blue merits a sudden windfall. The family decides to move into more spacious and comfortable lodging, taking the pets and farm animals with them, and the money ensures that all the children get solid educations.
- The last words are, "And we all lived happily for the rest of our lives."
So, basically, it's like Dickens without the bad parts. Yep, that's it.
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7 comments:
... doesn't exist.
Good grief. Write it yourself. You have the talent! Other people want to read that sort of thing too. We'll all be working on a pen name for you in the meantime.......
Try A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. It's not quite as rural as you're looking for but it reminds me of To Kill A Mockingbird, so far as the dad is concerned. He is not particularly educated, but he is wise.
~~Silk, don't tell me that!
Ginny, sure, I'll write it myself. In my spare time. Ha.
Becs, I read "A Girl Named Zippy" and loved it! The sequel, not so much.
Didn't know there was a sequel. You might want to try the "Miss Read" books, starting with "Village School". A pale imitation of these lovely lyrical books are the books by Jan Karon. I won't say nothing bad happens, but it won't traumatize you for life.
The sequel was "She Got Up Off The Couch", about her mom, and to me, it just didn't have the same zing as the original.
Part of the charm of the first book was that her mom was on the couch all the te, reading science fiction. Everything else was incidental to her. I think she had her priorities straight -Becs
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