The Way Back Machine – Best Sellers 2004

It may not seem like it, but 2004 was more than eight(!) years ago. And even though it doesn’t seem like things have changed too much, just remember, Lance Armstrong won his 6th Tour de France that year.

What else happened in 2004?

• In August, Edvard Munch’s The Scream is stolen in Oslo, Norway. It was recovered two years later.
• In October, the Boston Red Sox broke “The Curse of the Bambino” and won the 100th World Series.
• In December, a tsunami devastated Southeast Asia resulting in the loss of over 200,000 people.

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Do you remember what you were reading that year? Listed below are the New York Times Bestsellers for the week of January 25, 2004:

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FICTION:

1. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

2. The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

3. New Spring: The Novel – Robert Jordan

4. Retreat, Hell! – W. E. B. Griffin

5. The Amateur Marriage – Anne Tyler

6. The Big Bad Wolf – James Patterson

7. Emma’s Secret – Barbara Taylor Bradford

8. Trojan Odyssey – Clive Cussler

9. The Lady and the Unicorn – Tracy Chevalier

10. Bleachers – John Grisham

11. Odd Thomas – Dean Koontz

12. Pompeii – Robert Harris

13. Angels & Demons – Dan Brown

14. Blow Fly – Patricia Cornwell

15. The Murder Room – P. D. James

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NONFICTION:

1. My Prison Without Bars – Pete Rose with Rick Hill

2. Dude, Where’s My Country? – Michael Moore

3. Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) – Al Franken

4. Who’s Looking Out For You? – Bill O’Reilly

5. American Dynasty – Kevin Phillips

6. The Privilege of Youth – Dave Pelzer

7. Flyboys – James Bradley

8. The Enemy Within – Michael Savage

9. Perfectly Legal – David Cay Johnston

10. A Royal Duty – Paul Burrell

11. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

12. Broken Music – Sting

13. Benjamin Franklin – Walter Isaacson

14. Franklin and Winston – Jon Meacham

15. An End to Evil – David Frum and Richard Perle

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Is Your Checkbook Feeling Low?

January is Financial Wellness Month, so it’s the perfect time to get your budget reined in and everything organized by April 15 (you remember that date, right?). Whether you need to recoup from Christmas, or want to save up for something special, there’s great advice available. Of course, it’s not always easy to start a “diet”, but here are a dozen resources that will help trim the fat while getting you geared up to face the rest of 2013.

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BOOKS:

Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity – edited by James D. Gwartney

Financial Recovery: Developing A Healthy Relationship with Money – Karen McCall and John Bradshaw

The Handy Personal Finance Book – Paul A. Tucci

Lighten Up: Love What You Have, Have What You Need, Be Happier with Less – Peter Walsh

Managing Your Money All-In-One for Dummies – Ted Benna

Master Your Debt: Slash Your Monthly Payments and Become Debt-Free – Jordan E. Goodman with Bill Westrom

Piggybanking: Preparing Your Financial Life for Kids and Your Kids for a Financial Life – Jeff. D. Opdyke

The Real Cost of Living: Making the Best Choices for You, Your Life, and Your Money – Carmen Wong Ulrich

Suze Orman’s Action Plan: Keeping Your Money Safe and Sound – Suze Orman

Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security – Charles Farrell

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WEBSITES:

betterinvesting.org

mymoney.gov

F is for Farm

Most of us in Southern Idaho probably know a farmer or two – after all, we’re right in the heart of the state’s prime agricultural area (they don’t call it the Magic Valley for nothing…). And while I’d venture to say that a good number of us have actually been on a farm, that’s not true of a majority of Americans. Sounds weird, doesn’t it?

In the last few years, there’s been a movement for urbanites to reconnect with the land – either to relax or to get their hands dirty by doing more than just gardening. And, of course, that’s sparked an interest in writing about the whole experience of going back to the country. The following books – some hilarious and some serious – show us what it’s like for some of the clueless (which may or may not include a few of us Idahoans!) to tackle the “farm life”.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life – Barbara Kingsolver

• Follows the author’s family’s efforts to live on locally- and home-grown foods, an endeavor through which they learned lighthearted truths about food production and the connection between health and diet.

And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading in the Fast Lane for My Own Dirt Road – Margaret Roach

• Follows the journey of a woman who leaves her big city corporate life to find solitude and authenticity in nature.

Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One’s Own – Jenna Woginrich

• Whether they’re about raising chickens or herding sheep, the tales of Jenna Woginrich have caught the imagination of thousands of young homesteaders. As she learns traditional farming skills by trial and error, Woginrich records her offbeat observations and poignant moments with honesty, humility, and humor.

Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl – Susan McCorkindale

• In a hilarious memoir, a one-time New York career woman and mother describes her family’s move from the suburbs to a five-hundred-head beef farm in the South, whimsically chronicling the struggle of a city girl to love–or at least tolerate–country life while dealing with the culture shock of a world without Starbucks.

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting – Michael Perry

• In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, Perry gives us a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country.

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love – Kristin Kimball

• After interviewing Mark, a dynamic young farmer, 30-something Harvard-graduate Kristin Kimball goes from being an unmarried journalist in Manhattan to a farming partner in the Adirondacks. The two fall in love and embark on a huge adventure: creating a sustainable farm on a co-op model using draft horses instead of tractors.

Enslaved by Ducks – Bob Tarte

• Describes the author’s move from the Michigan suburbs to the country and the unruly menagerie he and hs wife accumulated along the way.

Fifty Acres and a Poodle: Farm Lessons in Life, Love, and Livestock – Jeanne Marie Laskas

• A columnist and urban refugee describes her odyssey from city life to rural bliss and from single to married in an account of her first year on a fifty-acre farm in western Pennsylvania.

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live off the Land – Kurt Timmermeister

• A former Seattle urbanite and restaurateur describes the realities of establishing a profitable farm on Vashon Island, his growing awareness of the relationship between food and its sources, and the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs.

Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn – Catherine Friend

• Describes how an urban bookworm and children’s book author, along with her partner, set out to fulfill a lifelong dream of owning a working farm in Minnesota, offering a humorous take on their crash course in living off and living with the land.

Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in the Woods – Max Alexander

• A former high-ranking editor with Variety and People and a long-time urban dweller describes his disenchantment with urban life and his and his family’s move to a farm in rural Maine, in a whimsical memoir of small-town New England life.

Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea– Catherine Goldhammer

• In a poignant, often humorous memoir, the author recounts a year of transition in her life, as she starts over after her divorce by moving from an affluent New England suburb to a rustic house near the sea, and raises both her twelve-year-old daughter and six baby chicks.

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Downton Abbey Fever

Some of us have waited a year for the return of DA – and those of you we’ve nagged to watch it over the past 12 months are probably just as addicted. Season 3 starts this Sunday on PBS (they’ve even got a countdown clock), so our wait is over. At least, until we have to wait until Season 4 in 2014!

Oh, well. In case you want a Downton Abbey fix year round, here are some books and DVDs that might help. Most are set during the time period (early 1900s into the 1920s) and more than a few draw on the relationships involving the upper and lower classes. They might not have the zing of the Dowager Countess, the evil-plotting of Thomas and O’Brien, or the will-they-or-won’t-they of Matthew and Mary, but they just might intrigue you in other ways.

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FICTION

The American Heiress – Daisy Goodwin

• Presents the story of vivacious Cora Cash, whose early twentieth-century marriage to England’s most eligible duke is overshadowed by his secretive nature and the traps and betrayals of London’s social scene.

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

• After loving and losing a French woman from Amiens, Stephen Wraysford serves in the French army during World War I.

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

• Set in 1920’s England, the story examines the wealthy Flyte family through the eyes of Sebastian Flyte’s less wealthy school friend Charles Ryder, who is eventually tempted into an extramarital affair with Sebastian’s sister, Lady Julia. The novel is a story of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world.

The Buccaneers – Edith Wharton

• The story of five wealthy and beautiful American girls who sail to England and marry into the aristocracy after being denied a place in New York Society.

Habits of the House – Fay Weldon

• The award-winning writer for Upstairs Downstairs presents a first entry in a new trilogy about the shared lives of masters and servants at the turn of the 20th century, tracing the family life of Cabinet hopeful Lord Robert, who hopes to alleviate financial woes by marrying his son to a disgraced Chicago heiress.

The Fall of Giants – Ken Follett

• Follows the fates of five interrelated families–American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh–as they move through the dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.

Glamorous Illusions – Lisa Tawn Bergren

• After Cora learns she is the illegitimate child of a copper king, she travels with her new family, facing the hardships as well as the privileges of the family name and embarking on a journey of self-discovery. First in a series.

A Good Woman – Danielle Steel

• Her life and family changed forever by the sinking of the Titanic, Annabelle Worthington flees New York for war-torn France, where, in a field hospital run by women in the midst of World War I, she finds her true calling in medicine.

The House at Tyneford – Natasha Solomons

• To escape 1938 Vienna, Elise Landau, a Jew, accepts employment as a domestic servant at Tyneford, a family estate in England, where her involvement with the son of the master of the house changes her life in unexpected ways.

The House at Riverton – Kate Morton

• Living out her final days in a nursing home, ninety-eight-year-old Grace remembers the secrets surrounding the 1924 suicide of a young poet during a glittering society party hosted by Grace’s English aristocrat employers, a family that is shattered by war.

Maid to Match – Deeanne Gist

• When Tillie Reese is enlisted to help tame the behavior of mountain man Mack Danvers who now works as a footman at Biltmore Estates, the pair becomes attracted to each other while being entangled in a cover-up at the town orphanage. They could both lose their jobs–and their hearts.

No Angel – Penny Vincenzi

• An overwhelming love for Oliver Lytton leads Lady Celia Beckenham to leave the confines of her upper-crust social strata and marry, according to her family, below her station. Nonetheless, the children that her marriage produces and the rare access she has to the publishing world through her husband, bring Celia enormous satisfaction. However, when Oliver returns from WWI, Celia finds that her marriage has changed drastically, and she must look for fulfillment elsewhere.

Park Lane – Frances Osborne

• When Grace Carlisle arrives in London, she takes a job as a housemaid where she becomes caught up in the lives of its inhabitants–in particular, those of its privileged son and daughter.

The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

• When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself.

The Pursuit of Lucy Banning – Olivia Newport

• Lucy Banning shakes up social norms by secretly attending university and trying to avoid marrying the rich banker that her family has picked, instead setting her sights on a young architect who is working on plans for the 1893 World’s Fair.

Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

• Stevens, an elderly butler, hopes to rise to the top of his profession, and he remains stoic and unemotional at his father’s death and neglects the opportunity to pursue a relationship with a former housekeeper.

She Walks in Beauty – Siri Mitchell

• As Clara Carter prepares to make her debut on the city’s social scene just before the turn of the century, she wonders if the celebrity spotlight is truly what she wants when she meets a man who seems to love her simply for who she is. First in a series.

The Uninvited Guests – Sadie Jones

• While fighting to save their family home, Charlotte prepares for an elaborate birthday celebration for her daughter Emerald, an event that unexpectedly turns into a dramatic evening that forever changes all of their lives.

An Unlikely Suitor – Nancy Moser

• When dressmaker Lucy Scarpelli befriends socialite Rowena Langdon, she visits the Langdon mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and falls for a high-society man, while Rowena struggles with her upcoming arranged marriage.

The Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse

• Traveling through the French Pyrenees to process the horrors of World War I, Freddie meets a lovely young woman also in mourning with whom he exchanges stories that unravel a centuries-old mystery.

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NONFICTION

Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey – Margaret Powell

• Chronicles the experiences of a 1920s maid working in the great houses of England, detailing the disparate lives of the upper class and their servants, the class struggles inherent in the relationship, and daily life as a servant.

The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War – Peter Englund

• A narrative history of World War I explores its impact on everyday men and women, drawing on diaries and letters by twenty individuals from various countries to present an international mosaic of perspectives.

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle – The Countess of Carnarvon

• Tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration for the hit PBS show Downton Abbey, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon and the basis of the fictional character Lady Cora Crawley.

The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm – Juliet Nicholson

• Chronicling four months during 1911, an evocative portrait of an English society on the brink of turbulent change describes such milestones as the crowning of a new king, strikes that paralyzed British industry, and the first London appearance of the Ballets Russes, from the viewpoints of a debutante, a suffragette, a trade unionist, a butler, a politician, the queen, and others.

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family – Mary S. Lovell

• A portrait of the Mitford sisters follows Jessica, a communist; Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy, a best-selling novelist; Diana, who was the most hated woman in England; and Unity, who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler.

The Titled Americans: Three American Sisters and the British Aristocratic World into Which They Married – Elisabeth Kehoe

• Set against the backdrop of Victorian and Edwardian society, a portrait of the three Jerome sisters–Jennie, Clara, and Leonie, American heiresses who married into the heights of British society–spans three generations, from their parents through their children, including Jennie’s son, Winston Churchill.

The World of Downton Abbey – Jessica Fellowes

• A companion book to the popular British series about the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants offers insights into the story and characters and background information on British society in the early years of the twentieth century.

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DVDs

The Forsyte Saga (also a book by John Galsworthy)

• Drama of the family life and loves of an upper-middle-class Victorian family.

Gosford Park

• Drama set at the country estate of Sir William McCordle in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guests and downstairs servants at a hunting party weekend when one of the group is murdered. (Written by DA scribe Julian Fellowes.)

Secrets of the Manor House: Inside British Country Homes in the Early 1900s

• Secrets of the Manor House looks beyond the fiction to the truth of how life was in these ancient British houses, and how mounting financial, political and social pressures were about to bring momentous changes to both the wealthy and their servants.

Titanic

• Brought to life by a stellar, award-winning ensemble cast and featuring stunning visual effects, Titanic is an extraordinary retelling of the doomed voyage that follows the destinies of the Titanic’s victims and survivors as their stories of passion, betrayal, and hope unfold amidst the tragic events of the ship’s final hours. (Written by DA scribe Julian Fellowes.)

Upstairs, Downstairs

• It’s 1936, and six years since parlor maid Rose left 165 Eaton Place, when fate brings her back as housekeeper to its new owners: Sir Hallam, his wife Lady Agnes, and Maud, Lady Holland, his mother. Rose soon finds she has her work cut out as she recruits a new ‘downstairs’ family to help run the elegance and finery of the ‘upstairs’ world.

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The DVD annotations are from the TFPL Catalog.