Comments (15)

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Jan 05, 2021mikey69 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
THE EGG AND I is Betty MacDonald's account of raising chickens in a hostile rural environment. Based on her own experience, the story went on to serve as the basis for Hollywood's Maw and Pa Kettle franchise. To this day, there is a road…
Jun 06, 2020
The virulent racism against Native Americas in this book is jaw-dropping. It teaches us something about 20th century America that a writer who was so intelligent, self-aware and incisive could also be so incurious: She sticks up her nose…
Mar 23, 2020phyllis94941 rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
The book I read was a lovingly worn, hardcover library copy which was published in 1945. The pages were yellowed and it had the musty, nostalgic smell of a book that had survived the shelves for 75 years. This humorous collection of Betty…
Nov 20, 2019maiki69 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
"Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband." - Shakespeare With that anti-feminist quote, Betty MacDonald begins her tale of taming the wild frontier of Washington's majestic Olympic Peninsula.…
Jul 03, 2018CabotMama rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
Well said by one commenter: I found her negative tone tiresome. I couldn't finish the book. I didn't see much humor - perhaps because her style of writing seems like one complaint after another. I've read other books/memoirs about great…
Jul 23, 2017aafleming rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Wow, just wow!! I am amazed by some of the comments here from people who apparently know nothing about history. This book was written in the 1940s. They did not have political correctness then. If you met members of another race or…
Feb 17, 2017miaone rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Not clean, or funny, or politically only incorrect, but racist, negative, and ugly. I read it as a 7th grader in the mid 1950's in southern Indiana and learned the phrase "son of a *itch" from it. My mother was appalled. I thought the…
Feb 15, 2017brigpa1 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
brigpa1 Feb 15, 2017 Although B MacD was not particularly likable as a character, she can be excused because she was just plain unhappy. She was miserable, but, like women of her generation, she had been indoctrinated to think that her…
May 15, 2016WendyLC rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
I found this incredibly offensive. Classist, self-absorbed, an unlikable writer. I read later that the neighbors she insulted won a lawsuit against her for defamation of character and thought, "good for them!"
Oct 22, 2015howiecat rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
One of the great book about the Pacific NW. It tells about a naïve girl who lived in Seattle getting married and moving to a chicken farm near Port Angeles in the 1920's. Betty McDonald is unique in a class of writers. She makes me…
Jul 24, 2015janedough rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
I truly enjoyed this book; it was laugh-out-loud hilarious in spots. The racism is shocking, by today's standards to be sure, but the colorful depictions of her neighbors and the situations in which she finds herself counterbalance the…
Jul 22, 2013fritzieford rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
MacDonald, famous for her Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books for children, writes amusing memoirs about homesteading and chicken farming in the Pacific Northwest. Since the book was published in 1945, it does contain some references that we would…
mrsh600
Oct 16, 2012
Great book! Very refreshing to read a "clean" book, full of humor and great depiction of a city girl trying to make it on a chicken farm...much like Lisa from Green Acres! FYI a movie of it was made in the 1940's starring Claudette…
Aug 26, 2012lsmarkova rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Funny, moving account of life on a chicken ranch in rural Washington in the 1920s. Warning, though, part of it is *very dated* and *very racist.*
May 08, 2011Jennmro rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
The author seemed to relate much more frustration than joy, and didn't seem to like living on a poultry farm much, stating over and over agan her hatred for chickens and baby chicks, and her desire to leave it all behind for running water…