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Reading Room:  West With The Night  |
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HiDez Gal
True Blue Farmgirl
122 Posts
Roberta
Joshua Tree,
CA
USA
122 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 05 2004 : 09:16:18 AM
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Hi,
Have any of you read this amazing book? It is the story of Beryl Markham a truly adventuresome woman. She was raised in East Africa in the early part of the 1900's where she grew up playing with native children. She later helped her father who raised race horses and then became a pilot - in 1936 she was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.
Here is what Ernest Hemmingway wrote to a friend about the book: "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, WEST WITH THE NIGHT? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of haing been there at the time and heard the other other people's stories, are absolutely true...I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody, wonderful book."
If you haven't read it yet hope this whets your appetite - my husband also considers this one of his most favorite reads. |
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Clare
True Blue Farmgirl
2173 Posts
NC WA State
USA
2173 Posts |
Posted - Apr 19 2004 : 06:29:48 AM
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Hello HiDez Gal... I do have this book and have gotten about half way through it and got sidetracked. Your reminder makes me want to pick it back up again and finish it. Thank you!
Gardener, Stitcher, Appreciator of all things Natural, & Spiritual Explorer |
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yarnbard
Farmgirl at Heart
1 Posts
Dick
Oakesdale
WA
1 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 10:18:57 AM
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| West With the Night has long been in my "Top 20" good reads. Other favorites include: Mister God, This is Anna, by Fynn; Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin; The Lives of a Cell; The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler; A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman; most books by Bill Bryson and anything by Eric Sloane. But Beryl Markham's book is near the top of the list. |
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Aunt Jenny
True Blue Farmgirl
11381 Posts
Jenny
middle of
Utah
USA
11381 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 11:06:53 AM
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ooooh..another book to put on my list of books to read this summer!! Thanks!
Jenny in Utah
Bloom where you are planted! |
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bramble
True Blue Farmgirl
2044 Posts
2044 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 11:08:40 AM
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HIDEZGAL, welcome back! Rumor has it you are in the new MJF magazine with your mule?! I loved this book and her adventures. She was fearless! It also reminded me to mention any Margaret Bourke White books; she was a photgrapher who took amazing pictures at a time when no women were out in this field.
Yardbard-- Bill Bryson and Eric Sloan are classics reads!
There is an book put out in Canada that I am waiting on about a woman who built an amazing garden at the early part of the last century
The gardens are now refurbished and open to the public. Any of you northern folk heard of Cougar Annie and her garden?
with a happy heart |
Edited by - bramble on May 13 2005 11:11:34 AM |
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MeadowLark
True Blue Farmgirl
2206 Posts
USA
2206 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 12:24:39 PM
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Welcome Back Roberta! Yes I have read West with the Night! Read it back in 1988! Loved it! She was friends with Karen Blixen, of Out of Africa fame! Loved these strong, brave elegant women. Such excellent role models!
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." Rumi, 13th century. |
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Aunt Jenny
True Blue Farmgirl
11381 Posts
Jenny
middle of
Utah
USA
11381 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 1:48:35 PM
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I forgot to welcome you back too, HiDezgal!!!!
Jenny in Utah
Bloom where you are planted! |
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MeadowLark
True Blue Farmgirl
2206 Posts
USA
2206 Posts |
Posted - May 13 2005 : 3:44:01 PM
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Yardbard, Mister God, this is Anna is a classic! I bought the paperback way back in the 70's and loved it. I will have to dig it out again and reread! I worked in a bookstore in college so I saw all the neat titles of the times coming in. There was another one I loved about a little screech owl that a man befriended and kept in his house in a coffee can with a twig for a perch. Cannot remember the name of it but it was really wonderful. Can't find it in my stash of old books, must have gotten lost.
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." Rumi, 13th century. |
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Eileen
True Blue Farmgirl
1199 Posts
Eileen
USA
1199 Posts |
Posted - May 14 2005 : 08:23:45 AM
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Meadowlark, I have a book like that. It is simply called "Owl" by William Service. There is another wonderful little book along those same lines called "Kinship with all Life" by J.Allen Boone that I just finished reading.
Eileen
songbird; singing joy to the earth |
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Reading Room: West With The Night |
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West With The Night
