Anybody Can Do Anything (Common Reader Editions) (Paperback)

by Betty MacDonald (Author), Macdonald (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Laurels to the lady who can make laughter for others and capital for herself of what many might term miseries, whether they be the misadventures of chicken ranching- combined with marriage to the wrong man, a term in a TB sanitarium, or- as in this latest, job sampling in the depression, a charming mother whose ideas of finances were, to put it mildly, erratic, and a sister who could rub her Aladdin's lantern and produce almost any thing for her sister to do, from blind dates to eccentric jobs. Mary and "My Sister Eil??" had many traits in common, but Mary had an imagination gifted in setting the pace- and facility in stopping out from under while Betty took the punishment. There's a beguiling first chapter which ties this book of adventures and misadventures in with the childhood background of a mining engineer's household. The author then skips the years recorded in The ?? and I tells of her hasty departure from the hated ranch, and then regales her readers with side splitting accounts of her job hunts, with Mary as arbiter. Told in dialogue and almost deadpan narrative, they make highly entertaining reading. The book is substantially longer than the samples which ran in the SEP as It All Happened To Me. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
You know how sometimes friendship blossoms in the Þrst few moments of meeting? “Something clicked,” we say. Well, that’s what discovering Betty MacDonald was like for me: I happened to read a couple of pages of one of her books and — click — knew right away that here was a vivacious writer whose friendly, funny, and Þery company I was really going to enjoy. Although MacDonald’s Þrst and most popular book, The Egg and I, has remained in print since its original publication, her three other volumes have been unavailable for decades. The Plague and I recounts MacDonald’s experiences in a Seattle sanitarium, where the author spent almost a year (1938-39) battling tuberculosis. The White Plague was no laughing matter, but MacDonald nonetheless makes a sprightly tale of her brush with something deadly. Anybody Can Do Anything is a high-spirited, hilarious celebration of how “the warmth and loyalty and laughter of a big family” brightened their weathering of The Great Depression. In Onions in the Stew, MacDonald is in unbuttonedly frolicsome form as she describes how, with husband and daughters, she set to work making a life on a rough-and-tumble island in Puget Sound, a ferry-ride from Seattle.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Joiner/Oriel Inc (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888173289
• ISBN-13: 978-1888173284
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #647,488 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Betty's Best Book, April 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Anybody Can Do Anything (Paperback)

This is a sweet, wonderful book about the a family living through the depression in a Seattle that bears little resemblance to the blandly affluent city that today bears its name. The writing is still fresh and entertaining even though the book is more than fifty years old.

This is a great book for kids, as it explains the realities of the depression in a way that is much more understandable than most historical accounts. I first read it in 1977 when I was 12, and it gave me a wonderful insight into the lives of my depression generation parents.

I would recommend that everyone search out Betty's books and read them over and over, especially if you are a resident of Seattle or its environs. They are marvelous books from a marvelous author.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars But Nobody Is Funnier Than Betty, February 26, 2002

By	Douglas Wilson "casadena" (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews

I discovered Betty MacDonald when I was about twelve years old, after checking The Egg and I out of the Carmichael Branch library here in Sacramento, about 22 years after it was first published. My parents had mentioned that the egg ranch Betty lived on with her first husband in the 1920s, which she writes about in The Egg and I, was located some miles from the place where we lived in Washington state, in the late 1950s. Furthermore, they had actually taken a day trip with friends to look at the old place, sometime after the book and the movie of the same name came out in the 1940s.

This familial connection, however faint, to an old, famous book and the movies it inspired, piqued my childish mind, and I eagerly started reading about life on a chicken ranch on the Olympic Penninsula. I fell in love with Betty's easy, friendly, hysterically funny, down-to-earth yet somehow elegant prose, and immediately checked out her other autobiographical books: The Plague and I, Anybody Can Do Anything, and Onions In The Stew.

In all of her autobiographical books save Onions In The Stew, Betty uses the first chapter to presage her theme by describing her experiences as a child in a large, boisterous family, in loving and extremely funny detail. In Anybody Can Do Anything, Betty describes life with her family and her two young daughters, Anne and Joan, in Seattle after she has left her husband and the egg ranch behind. The Depression is on, and Betty, now a single mother, struggles with her large and interesting clan to make ends meet, somehow finding a lot of laughs and funny adventures, often with her exuberant sister Mary, the inspiration for the book, along the way. Anyone who is interested in what life was like in Seattle in the 1930s, in witty character descriptions, and in a personal glimpse of how families coped with the "Great Depression", will find this book fascinating, not to mention frequently hilarious.

Betty, I miss you and the way you used to make me laugh out loud--I was sad when I finished reading Onions In The Stew for the first time and then realized it was the last autobiographical book you wrote: the tuberculosis finally caught up with you in 1958, when I was only four years old, still living in Washington, not far from your home on Vashon Island. I re-read your books many times as I grew up, even visited Vashon Island, and often wished I could have met you and your family. It's silly, but I've always felt a sense of loss at never having known you, because I am sure you must have been a marvelous friend. Your sense of humor had a profound effect on me, and inspired me in my earliest writing attempts. It's been many years since I've read your books, but I've never forgotten your irrepressible, bona-fide funniness. Wherever you are, thank you!

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Note to Amazon Staff (Not a Review), March 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Anybody Can Do Anything (Textbook Binding)

FYI: The Betty MacDonald Books are no longer out of print. They are now being published by Akadine Press. In fact AP is beginning to publish quite a collection of quality, formerly out of print titles by various authors. (I am a librarian, and recieve catalogs from various sources.) --Thought I would pass the info along. The phone # for Akadine Press is: 1-800-832-7323. They are located in Pleasantville, NY.