Book 10 of 13 of 2013: Diary of an Early American Boy 1805, by Eric Sloane

I haven't been reading or writing as much as I was hoping to so far this year, but here's where I stand:

1. Born Standing Up

2. The Snowman

3. Hindusim A very Short Introduction
4. Borders of Infinity
5. The Coma
6. Buddhism A Concise Introduction
7. Child 44
8. The Emigrants II Unto a Good Land
9. Vagabond Volume 1 (French Translation of a Japanese Manga Comic)
10. Diary of an Early American Boy 1805
11. Never Coming Back: A Novel (My first Kindle loan from my mom)
12. The Kite Runner

Now onto this book!

Did you read "My side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George when you were in elementary school?  I did, and I loved it.  That book is about a young boy who goes to live in the Catskills on his in own the wild.  He builds a shelter in a tree, hunts and fishes, captures and trains a Peregrine Falcon, and generally is a boy-scout-bad-ass.  The story contains wonderful details on how he creates his life in the woods, and to a boy who would eventually grow up to be an engineer, this was heaven.  The "how-to" aspect of the details easily engages a child who wants to know how everything works.

"Diary of an Early American Boy" contains many of the same details.  In fact, that's what most of the book is: a detailed description of how a farmer in New England would have lived shortly after the revolutionary war.  It's a History Channel special in book form and I would have loved it as a kid.

Eric Sloane makes the comment in the story that "in those days" people took pride in making their own belongings and fixing something that was broken rather than running out and buying something new: because often they couldn't.  This comment struck a chord with me: mass consumerism irritates me, even though I know I participate as much as anyone else. 

I have an electric tea kettle that my sister got for me as a Christmas gift back when I was attending grad school.  Since growing in to a coffee snob, I started using it several times a day, when the mechanism that switches off the heating element once the water is boiling stopped working, I started to jump at the opportuniy to spend $100 on a new kettle with a built in thermometer and a spout specially designed for pour-over coffee brewing but I had just finished Sloane's book at the time and I took his words to heart...also, it was a gift from my sister.

So...it's working again now and I'm $100 richer in savings :-)