Found this at Goodwill for the What’s my Name October Release Challenge.

This book was published in 1954, and has an interesting, almost fabric-like cover.

Released on Friday, October 29, 2004 at about 6:00:00 PM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at Curves for Women at Hampden/Wadsworth in Lakewood, Colorado USA.

RELEASE NOTES:

Left in the CurvyZoneOBCZ, the bookshelves at the back of Curves.

This is release #58 in the Release Challenge.

If you are new to BookCrossing and find this book and this site; welcome! Enjoy the site, the book and hopefully the BookCrossing community. I hope you'll join BookCrossing (doesn't cost anything to join!) and if you do, please consider using any previous reader of this book, or me, Antof9, as the member who referred you. If you are an old hand at BookCrossing, thanks for picking up the book! Either way, I hope you'll journal so all the previous and future readers can track this book's journey. Thanks, and Happy Crossing!

OK -- I had a conversation with a BXer who sent me a book. . . .and I promised this in return. When I went back to the CurvyZone, it wasn't there. But I said I'd keep an eye out for it :) And it was there tonight when I worked out. YAY! Now. To find that BXer. . .

I'm very bad about writing journal entries, so although I read this quite a while ago, it's still here at my house. . . . (insert heavy sigh here)

I really liked this book! It had a little of the Little House feel, with some other "immigrant" books thrown in. I read "Oh, Henry" a million years ago -- can't remember a thing of it -- but had no idea how much I'd like this one!

One of the fun things that happened with this book after I "rescued" it from the OBCZ was I took it with me over "Christmas break" so I could read it before sending it on. My 13 year old niece was reading it too, and read my copy when she was upstairs and her copy when she was downstairs :) That really tickled me. Plus, I love that she's turning into a reader like her aunt!

There is something beautiful about the simplicity of the time in this book. Here's a passage I particularly liked, describing a typical Christmas: ". . . when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just coming in from their morning chores -- the horses and pigs always had their breakfast before we did. Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday coat. Morning prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from Saint Matthew about the birth of Christ, and as we listened, it all seemed like something that had happened lately, and near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the Lord for the first Christmas, and for all that it had meant to the world ever since. He gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the poor and destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder than it wa here with us. Grandfather's prayers were often very interesting. He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use."

I just love this description! What powerful things it says about the grandfather's character, what was important to him, etc.

Here's another beautiful description about Lena, and girls in general: "When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter than before. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited and appreciative -- gave a favourable interpretation to everything. It came over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girls like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. This revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it might suddenly vanish."

Charming, no?

As the book started, I wasn't sure who the "Bohemians" were. I thought for a time they might be Poles, as many of the references and names reminded me of things I've discussed with my Polish sister-in-law. It's very interesting to me to think about an immigrant's life through a book like this, as my father came to the U.S. from Holland at age 21 (1955), and the things I know about his life are different, and yet the same, as those described in this book.

I'm so glad I ran across this book -- and to think that I originally picked it up because the fabric of the cover was so interesting -- and I hope it is enjoyed by many more readers.

Have fun crossing this off your wish list, jenvince! Take your time reading it, and do whatever you like with it when you're done :)

Thank you for this book! It's one I've always wanted to read.

Am sending as a RABCK to underskinshanti - mailed 11/30.

I asked for this book when I saw it was being offered as a RABACK... and recently received it in the mail... and it absolutely made my day. Thank you jenvince! I'm so excited to read it!

CAUGHT IN PHILADELPHIA PA USA

Somehow I was listed as an anonymous finder, but I'm not. The last post was mine. :)

This was my first book actually received from a stranger on book-crossing, in response to my request for it, in order to join Laura's mother's book club. (Convoluted, no?) But receiving it was a very exciting experience. I was delighted, even though the book club has long since moved on to other things.

I was also curious to see how I would like the book, and what it is about. I am always interested in Willa Cather, since she wrote one of my absolute favorite short stories, "Paul's Case," (I have such an enduring love for that tale) and also The Song of the Lark, which I read in my Performing the Female Voice CSem and quite enjoyed. However, at some point I tried to read Death Comes for the Archbishop, and got nowhere with it, for some reason. And I've never read O Pioneers. So, anyway...

I enjoyed My Antonia. The characters, both major characters like Jim and Antonia, but also minor characters like Jim's grandparents and the hired men and Peter and Antonia's father, were very interesting, and it was scenically lovely. There are many images and incidents that I think will stick in my mind for some time, like the story about the wedding party and the wolves, or Antonia's father at the Christmas tree, or the plow against the sun. I was also intrigued by some insight into this particular historical time: which groups of immigrants were esteemed, etc. I think the way the novel shows us women and men from different social brackets, and showed the options that were available to them, is interesting and strange. Strange, in that much of the book takes place during the childhood and young adulthood of Jim and Antonia, and abruptly skips twenty years before showing more concretely what happened to them. Therefore, everything in between must be intuited and understood obliquely. Actually, I think this is a very subtle and symbolic novel, and there's a lot that I'm not sure I've grasped about it. It may be that I have not experienced certain life events (or even just a longer life) which would make it possible for me to identify with the book in a more precise way.

I'm not sure what I think about Jim and Antonia. Jim is, for all that he tells the story, a presence that seems to get vaguer and vaguer. Or, I think his own sense of himself is vague, cut out of the particularities he feels so at home with. For example, as a smart young man, he studies in college and eventually becomes a lawyer, but it is never clear (to me, anyway) that he has any great interest in this--or, in fact, in his own domestic life. His wife is described only by the anonymous friend who receives Jim's story, and we are never given a glimpse of what his ordinary, non-Antonia life actually consists of, and what his feelings are about it.

Antonia, on the other hand, is full of vibrancy and particular color, but the way that Jim portrays her constantly slides away from actually engaging that vibrant person, more so as they get older. She also seems to hold Jim off, but I think I am more suspicious of his perception of what is happening between them than convinced that Antonia actually ever rejects him. But even the "love story" that may or may not be between them is very oblique... they never have anything resembling an "official" romantic relationship.

Apparently I'm left with a lot of questions about this book and what its saying. It's the kind of book I think I would get more out of if I studied it. Perhaps the book club will prove useful. Anyone else want to read it?