Last week we said goodbye to one of my aunties. She spent her whole life living on farms and in the countryside, so it got me thinking about books set in farms or in the countryside, so that’s what I’m theming today’s Recommendsday around.
Firstly I’m going to mention an Enid Blyton book, The Children of Willow Farm, because when I read this as a child, it was how I imagined life on the farm my aunties lived on was like when they were little. I’m going to admit I haven’t read it as an adult, and I know that a lot of people say Blyton doesn’t stand up when you go back to it as an adult, but I don’t care.
Also in the same sort of era in terms of when they were written are the James Heriot books – that’s spawned the tv series All Creatures Great and Small. I’ve read or listened to a few of them and they are a glimpse into a Yorkshire of times gone by. Do note if you’ve seen the most recent TV series that it’s based on the characters not the plots once you get past the first couple of seasons.
You could also have Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm from this era – I really loved it – and it’s got a great TV movie adaptation featuring young Rufus Sewell in it that’s just been repeated on BBC Four and should be on the iPlayer if you want a dose of Sexy Seth. Even older is Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, which has as its heroine a lady farmer. I read it back in my school days when I was assigned extra reading by by English teacher and I found it much less annoying than a lot of the rest of that list.
A few years before that particular bout of assigned reading I read Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy which are all about country life at the end of the nineteenth century – and set not that far away from where the actual bits of my family who were farmers really were.
If you want countryside-set murder mysteries, then I’ve written a whole post about the Lady Hardcastle series – and I think we’re due another one in the not too distant future too. If you want romance, there are a good few of the older Katie Fforde’s and Trisha Ashley’s set in various parts of the English countryside – Ashley is usually Lancashire and Fforde the Cotswolds.
And that’s all I’ve got. But I’ve enjoyed thinking about options for this and it made me smile too which I needed
Happy Wednesday everyone.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
You have mentioned some great farm books, Verity. Don’t forget, for example, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Farm Boy” and her “Little House” sequence of autobiographical novels.
And read Enid Blyton again. She tells good stories well, even when aspects of her “world” seem old-fashioned now. Contrary to the many critics of Blyton, I think she deserves to be remembered and enjoyed!
Sorry for your loss x.