Anybody Can Do Anything
10 best books like Anybody Can Do Anything (Betty MacDonald): One Pair of Hands, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s, Chicken Every Sunday: My Life with Mother's Boarders, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, My Own Two Feet, A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries, The Hills is Lonely, A Fine Old Conflict, The Beast: A Journey Through Depression, We Took to the Woods
| Author | Monica Dickens |
| ISBN | 0897333047 |
What does a young, well-off English woman do with herself when she's thrown out of acting school and is tired of being a debutante? Well, if you're Monica Dickens, you become a cook. She makes the plunge to a life "below the stairs," confident in her abilities to be a cook because she once took a course in...
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s
| Author | Cornelia Otis Skinner |
| ISBN | 1579124364 |
Actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and journalist Emily Kimbrough offer a lighthearted, hilarious memoir of their European tour in the 1920s, when they were fresh out of college from Bryn Mawr. Some of the more amusing anecdotes involve a pair of rabbit-skin capes that begin shedding at the most inopportune...
Chicken Every Sunday: My Life with Mother's Boarders
One of the boarders who ate Mother's chicken every Sunday summed it up when he said, "I was told that in your house I'd have good food and some fun." They all had fun, and they all became part of the family -- Jeffrey, who lost his front teeth and won his independence, Rita Vlasak, who loved anything in pants,...
| Author | Eric Hodgins |
| ISBN | 0743262328 |
The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious. Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in...
| Author | Beverly Cleary |
| ISBN | 0380727463 |
This second installment of the Newbery Medalist's autobiography (after A Girl from Yamhill) begins during the '30s, with the young Cleary leaving her home state of Oregon to attend junior college in California. The volume ends in 1949. Follows her through college years during the Depression; jobs...
| Author | Thomas Mallon |
| ISBN | 1886913021 |
Mallon has assembled a guide to the great diaries of literature -- from Samuel Pepys to Anais Nin. Mallon has written a new introduction for this edition which comments on the political consequences of keeping a journal, as in the former controversy involving Sen. Bob Packwood. A diarist himself, Mallon...
| Author | Lillian Beckwith |
| ISBN | 1888173424 |
The Hills is Lonely tells a simple tale: needing to recuperate from an illness, the author finds a suitable retreat on the Hebridean island of Bruach, whose inhabitants, routines, and rituals are as eccentric and entertaining as any reader could wish. Beckwith's narrative describing island life...
| Author | Jessica Mitford |
| ISBN | 0394726154 |
'A Fine Old Conflict' is the sequel to 'Hons and Rebels' the first part of Jessica Mitford's extraordinary life story. It tells of her experiences in the Communist Party which she joined in California during World War II and left in 1958, illustrating, with biting humour, a neglected chapter of American...
The Beast: A Journey Through Depression
| Author | Tracy Thompson |
| ISBN | 0452276950 |
To others, Tracy Thompson was an attractive woman and an outstanding journalist, with a rewarding career and a wealth of friends. But beyond that facade was a woman who struggled wit episodes of bleak depression. The Beast, as she later cam to call it, began stalking her during a girlhood spent in the...
| Author | Louise Dickinson Rich |
| ISBN | 0892727365 |
In her early thirties, Louise Dickinson Rich took to the woods of Maine with her husband. They found their livelihood and raised a family in the remote backcountry settlement of Middle Dam, in the Rangeley area. Rich made time after morning chores to write about their lives. We Took to the Woods is an adventure...
| Author | James Thurber |
| ISBN | 0060959711 |
From twentieth century humorist James Thurber, a celebrated and poignant memoir about his years at The New Yorker with the unforgettable Harold Ross.
Includes an introduction by Adam Gopnik, and illustrations by James Thurber
"If you get Ross down on paper," warned Wolcott...
A London Child of the 1870s
| Author | Molly Hughes |
| ISBN | 1903155517 |
The first in a series of three memoirs. Molly Hughes writes of her suburban London Victorian family in the 1870s. In this first book she describes her happy childhood, growing up with her 4 brothers. She describes outings in London and holidays with her mother's family in Cornwall. Hughes notes details...
| Author | Lenora Mattingly Weber |
| ISBN | 0963960741 |
Beany, sixteen, is instructed by her father to "look after" the Malone family when he travels to Arizona to convalesce following a case of pneumonia. With protective loyalty, Beany's attempts to shield her family from pain and disappointment by locking up their hearts from potential threats. Mary...
Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I
| Author | Paula J. Becker |
| ISBN | 0295999373 |
Betty Bard MacDonald (1907-1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington's Olympic...
| Author | Jean Kerr |
| ISBN | 0449240398 |
You know that thing in Wet Hot American Summer where the camp director keeps referencing Ruth Buzzi, and you are like, whodat? And maybe eventually you are like, okay, fine, I will look her up, and you find out she was a comic from the 70s and you are like, huh, what else has dropped off from pop culture without...
| Author | Gwen Raverat |
| ISBN | 0472064754 |
At the close of 1952, Bettrand Russell wrote to Gwen Raverat that he had been reading Period Piece “with the very greatest delight.” Raverat’s memories of childhood and coming of age during the final years of Victoria’s reign capture a young woman’s impressions of dons, eccentrics, and...
My Life with Groucho: A Son's Eye View
| Author | Arthur Marx |
| ISBN | 0942637453 |
Groucho Marx became world famous as the fast talking, wisecracking man with the moustache and the big cigar. That was his public image. but there was another Groucho--a warm, loving family man. This biography of one of America's most brilliant comedians is also the account of an intimate father-son...
The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It: Over the Edge and Back with My Dad, My Cat, and Me
| Author | Geneen Roth |
| ISBN | 1400083192 |
In this inspiring and joyous book, New York Times bestselling author Geneen Roth introduces her remarkable twenty-pound cat, Mister Blanche, and her beloved father, Bernard, as she takes readers deep into the story of how each finally taught her to love without reservation and accept that she might...
Return to Sodom & Gomorrah
| Author | Charles Pellegrino |
| ISBN | 0380726335 |
Unlock doors to the lost worlds of the Bible -- from the Garden of Eden to the ruins of Babylon
Did a volcano part the Red Sea? Have scientists found Eve? Was the pharaoh of the Oppression a woman? Did the Jordan River really cease flowing the day Jericho fell?
A brilliant author, scientist,...
Maude (1883-1993):She Grew Up with the country
| Author | Mardo Williams |
| ISBN | 0996501312 |
This new edition of Maude (1883-1993) has been updated by Mardo Williams’ daughters, adding historical details their dad wished to make, twice as many photos, and nine appendices not present in the 1996 hardcover (which won an Ohioana Library Award for its author).
During her 110-year...
| Author | Rumer Godden |
| ISBN | 0688086292 |
Reading Rumer Godden's fiction novels can often be enjoyable unto the sublime. Reading the non-fiction memoirs? They are interesting in the moves and constant changes but not in the same class of reading enjoyment for me. And the outlets that enabled her to keep writing instead of "getting a job" as...
| Author | Dominika Dery |
| ISBN | 1573222836 |
Long before she was born, Dominika first appeared to her mother in a dream, so when she came to be, she was welcomed with eager expectation and much love. Though her arrival was auspicious, as the child of recognized dissidents associated with the failed Prague Spring uprising, Dominika's life would...
| Author | Adele Crockett Robertson |
| ISBN | 0783816464 |
The Orchard is an exquisitely beautiful and poignant memoir of a young woman's single-handed struggle to save her New England farm in the depths of the Great Depression. Recently discovered by the author's daughter, it tells the story of Adele "Kitty" Robertson, young and energetic, but unprepared...
Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself
| Author | Maud Hart Lovelace |
| ISBN | 0061794694 |
Heaven to Betsy: Betsy Ray is loving every minute of freshman year at Deep Valley High-with new and old friends all around her...not to mention boys! But most intriguing of all is the one she and her best friend, Tacy, dub "the Tall Dark Stranger."
Betsy in Spite of Herself: Betsy is at the center of...
