Customer Reviews

A Country Year: Living the Questions

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When Sue Hubbell's long-term marriage fell apart, and she found herself in mid-life living alone as a beekeeper on a farm in the Ozarks. Her book is ostensibly set within a single year, but that's only the framework for the series of essays that form a beautiful chronicle of the seasons of one's life, the seasons of nature, the seasons of tame and wild animals, and the seasons of living on a farm.
Her inquiring mind constantly asks "Why?" questions, and the essays are her attempts to answer them. She's a former librarian, so she's articulate, academic, intellectual - but also quietly hilarious, such as her description of trying to think like a chicken in order to coax her hens to sleep inside the coop instead of perched on the trees.
Buy a copy for yourself, and buy one for your best woman friend who is heading into her middle years and may also be Living the Questions.

Sue Hubble is an excellent writer; you can feel the hot Ozark sun and hear the hypnotic murmur of her bees, the bright slash of a bunting's song and share her wonder at the joys and challenges in country life.

If you aspire to memoir writing, this is a fine example of the craft. If you want walk in someone else's footsteps for a few hundred pages, learn how they live and how they think and feel about everyday things and about nature, this is for you.

I love this book.

I almost didn't buy the audiocassette of this book because of the reviewer who said Sue Hubbell's reading was monotonous. I bought it anyway, and am thrilled to say both the content and the reading were outstanding. To my mind, the author's voice, in any tone, beats an inauthentic performance. This is one of the best works on contemporary nonfiction by women - and one of the best books on tape - I have come across in a long while. I recommend it highly, for anyone interested in how the human mind makes connections between her immediate surroundings and the larger questions of living in the world. The "bee" theme, like Thoreau's ants and Annie Dillard's creek creatures, is simply a fascinating and concrete set of phenomena through which Hubbell examines the mystical world around her, and around us all. (One last note of interest: the audiocassette - comprised of only one tape - includes a second tape on which Gary Snyder reads from his work on nature and the problem of logging in the northwest of the U.S.).

This is a slow book, but following Sue Hubbel through her days was a gift. As one rater laments, "much of the book is just a reflection of life on a small bee farm"... which is precisely what I loved about it. Like much of agriculture, horticulture, and allied disciplines, beekeeping is hard and complicated while at the same time being a model of simplicity. This I learned watching my father, a commercial beekeeper. I am thankful to Sue Hubbel for writing about that life and the beauty of coutry living without attempting to romanticize it.

I am not sure what in my life is drawing me towards books about women and beekeeping, but here is another wonderful book about both.

Sue Hubbell has an easy style of writing that drew me through this book in just over a day. While she talks about her time as a commercial beekeeper, she also writes about the simple qualities and hard realities of living close to the land and close to poverty in rural Missouri. Her observant style brings back memories of my own small town upbringing. This is just the right book for curling up on a cold Winter day or lounging in the hammock trying to escape the heat of Summer.

Sue Hubbell's voice is true. She shares great sadness so matter-of-factly that whole years are communicated in short paragraphs. 'Lyrical' almost applies, but does not, which in this case is a beautiful thing.

I came upon this book belated, more than 20 years after it was published, in the discard bin at my library. That is a shame, because this book is a gift, both in the pleasure it provides the reader and the way it so effortlessly connects us to the natural world.

Half way through, I googled Sue Hubbell to see if some lucky man had found her, and sure enough, he had. I hope he deserves her and has made her blissfully happy.

Then I googled 'farms for sale' and 'dogs for adoption'. I will probably continue my urban life, but when I surrender to sweet dreams of farm and country, Sue Hubbell's voice will be telling the story.

Everyone should read this book. It's lovely, and at the end, you will know some Latin names for plants and animals you did not know before. (You may interrupt your spouse to ask if he knew that some snakes are so evolutionarily advanced they do not lay eggs but give live birth to their young.)

Sue Hubbell's A Country Year: Living the Questions is a classic nature/autobiography.

Written by a remarkable woman - a fifty-year-old ex-librarian and survivor of an unsettling divorce, a beekeeper and self-taught naturalist living alone in the Missouri Ozarks - this magical book is elegant and lovely. In essays as fresh and entrancing as the wilderness they describe, Hubbell testifies to the wholeness and serenity available to those who live 'in an untrimmed state.'

This book was an inspiration to me before I moved to the Ozarks. The frankness in which Sue Hubbell writes is very much the way she is in real life. I have had the pleasure of meeting Sue since I lived in the same small town as she did. It saddens me that she has since moved away and her cabin has been torn down and the land reverted back to nature. A small piece of history has left the area and is hidden in the woods forever. I miss her and her lifestyle. As far as her voice being monotonous, I was thrilled to see the audio book on sale since she is such a good story teller. I will buy that selection for my own mother who moved to this area 10 years ago and is a real country woman.

I was visiting my future in-laws 5 years ago and I was feeling nervous and somewhat introspective. My soon to be mother-in-law suggested I read a new book she had received from a friend. A Country Year, by Sue Hubbell, was just the thing I needed. I was immediately at peace with myself and the world. I have since read all Sue Hubbell's books and can't wait for the next one to come out. I have even taken a beekeeping class! Her books help me appreciate the natural world around me. She also inspires me to slow down in this fast-paced world we live in. The simple things in life are forgotten quite a bit these days and Sue Hubbell takes the time to remind us of what we're missing out on.

A poetic collection of prose about living in the Ozarks. The author manages to capture how it feels to live in such a magical place--makes one feel that this is still one of our national treasures--the book taps into the enjoyment of small things, of every day life, of some of the cultural nuances of the region, and of Nature's rhythms. The book is a real feel good read.