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louise278's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
amotisse's review against another edition
3.0
Dryly rich and richly dry like the land it describes.
The naivety and foolishness of men.
By the end, there was a numbing effect.
It was sadder and bleaker than I expected, though I guess the times might have predicted that, the 1930's.
How can science help?
Especially if you don't know the land well enough.
Sad realities of farmers hard hit with intolerable weather conditions and looming war.
How many fronts must they fight on?
Today, wars continue and economy takes its toll.
Perhaps we understand the land a little better, but we are still paying the price of our know all attitudes and experimentation.
In what is already a harsh country with extreme landscapes, the climatic unpredictability is even more rife with climate change taking over the world.
This story was simple and easy to read. Simple in it's rawness.
Country life is still hard for some.
What is easier or more complicated now, I'm not sure.
Being a farmers wife in the 30's must have been tough...no doubt still is, yet easier than it once was I hope.
I feel the writing reflected the dryness of the landscapes.
It didn't need to be elaborate and overly descriptive to create strong visuals-which it did.
It is unfortunate that the downward spiral dug in so firmly.
I didn't expect failure and helplessness to encompass them so completely, which I guess explains the sensation of numbness.
The naivety and foolishness of men.
By the end, there was a numbing effect.
It was sadder and bleaker than I expected, though I guess the times might have predicted that, the 1930's.
How can science help?
Especially if you don't know the land well enough.
Sad realities of farmers hard hit with intolerable weather conditions and looming war.
How many fronts must they fight on?
Today, wars continue and economy takes its toll.
Perhaps we understand the land a little better, but we are still paying the price of our know all attitudes and experimentation.
In what is already a harsh country with extreme landscapes, the climatic unpredictability is even more rife with climate change taking over the world.
This story was simple and easy to read. Simple in it's rawness.
Country life is still hard for some.
What is easier or more complicated now, I'm not sure.
Being a farmers wife in the 30's must have been tough...no doubt still is, yet easier than it once was I hope.
I feel the writing reflected the dryness of the landscapes.
It didn't need to be elaborate and overly descriptive to create strong visuals-which it did.
It is unfortunate that the downward spiral dug in so firmly.
I didn't expect failure and helplessness to encompass them so completely, which I guess explains the sensation of numbness.
andrea_c's review against another edition
3.0
Really lovely, bittersweet, short and self-contained. Not much else to say really. The whole story is melancholy, but never becomes overwrought or unbearable. Rather it is simply a tale of those who endured hardships, simple as that. Definitely recommended.
southofsirius's review against another edition
3.0
“These sorts of questions about science and sensuality are at the heart of Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living. They come from time spent with scientists and farmers and the simple and under-acknowledged act of noticing things. Art starts with noticing things, the way a man holds a shovel, how a soil cracks underfoot, the serendipity of arriving at a farmhouse to find a woman stitching on the porch while her husband is on the tractor sowing the paddocks around her.”
- Carrie Tiffany
- Carrie Tiffany
steph_84's review against another edition
3.0
This is an unusual book, told from the perspective of a young woman who is a sewing instructor but becomes a farmer in the Mallee.
For me the best thing about it was the snapshot it provided of rural life in Australia in the 1930s, particularly for women. It’s also interesting because in some ways it’s quite a dark book - with unhappiness and poverty, plus the impact of the drought and a world war looming - but the dark content is contrasted with the bright sun of the Mallee and the cheerful narration of the protagonist who, I only realised at the end, must have been so unhappy but had few ways to express it as a woman in 1930s. It made me wonder if we ever really got to know her at all or just the face she showed the world.
It’s not one of those “gripping thrill ride” type books, more of a quiet peak into the past, and a tragedy that slowly unfolds.
For me the best thing about it was the snapshot it provided of rural life in Australia in the 1930s, particularly for women. It’s also interesting because in some ways it’s quite a dark book - with unhappiness and poverty, plus the impact of the drought and a world war looming - but the dark content is contrasted with the bright sun of the Mallee and the cheerful narration of the protagonist who, I only realised at the end, must have been so unhappy but had few ways to express it as a woman in 1930s. It made me wonder if we ever really got to know her at all or just the face she showed the world.
It’s not one of those “gripping thrill ride” type books, more of a quiet peak into the past, and a tragedy that slowly unfolds.
happyhobbit1's review against another edition
3.0
For the writing 8/10 for the story/enjoyment of reading 6/10
nocto's review against another edition
3.0
Another surprise off the shelves off my local library, though this felt a little more removed from what I'd usually consider "my thing".
Jean Finnegan is a seamstress working on the "Better Farming Train" - touring round Australia in the 1930s telling the farmers, and their wives, what to do. She leaves the train to marry wheat scientist Robert and set up an experimental farm.
I liked the way the story just ambled about, never seeming to be very plotted, but it's got a plot in there all the same. Nice writing, not so nice happenings, well imagined people, a good read.
Jean Finnegan is a seamstress working on the "Better Farming Train" - touring round Australia in the 1930s telling the farmers, and their wives, what to do. She leaves the train to marry wheat scientist Robert and set up an experimental farm.
I liked the way the story just ambled about, never seeming to be very plotted, but it's got a plot in there all the same. Nice writing, not so nice happenings, well imagined people, a good read.
johannalm's review against another edition
4.0
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Carrie Tiffany
Jean Finnegan is traveling on the "Better-Farming Train" throughout Australia dispensing advice to wives as a sewing instructor. She and two other women give advice on cookery, mothering and domestic chores while the men on the train focus on animal husbandry and farming. It is on this train, full of livestock and odd characters, that Jean meets and fall in love with Robert Pettergree, a transplanted English scientist obsessed with soil and scientific ways to grow better crops. Even thought he seems singularly focused on science, there is also a strong sexual passion between him and Jean that draws them together.
Jean and Robert marry and purchase land to cultivate in a hardscrabble part of Australia called the Mellee. Their endless struggles as scientist farmers, and as husband and wife, carry them through the 30's and into the beginning of WWII. Mice infestation, drought, low crop growth and the struggles of friends and neighbors don't seem to deter Robert's mission to live life and grow crops scientifically. Nor do the continued setbacks deter Jean's desire to be the perfect scientific housewife.
Tiffany's prose starkly illuminates the terrifying beauty and brutality of Australia's landscape, and the struggle made by so many to turn sand to soil. There is true love for Australian in this novel. Jean is a woman to admire - courageous and adventurous. A woman of her time and beyond.
Jean Finnegan is traveling on the "Better-Farming Train" throughout Australia dispensing advice to wives as a sewing instructor. She and two other women give advice on cookery, mothering and domestic chores while the men on the train focus on animal husbandry and farming. It is on this train, full of livestock and odd characters, that Jean meets and fall in love with Robert Pettergree, a transplanted English scientist obsessed with soil and scientific ways to grow better crops. Even thought he seems singularly focused on science, there is also a strong sexual passion between him and Jean that draws them together.
Jean and Robert marry and purchase land to cultivate in a hardscrabble part of Australia called the Mellee. Their endless struggles as scientist farmers, and as husband and wife, carry them through the 30's and into the beginning of WWII. Mice infestation, drought, low crop growth and the struggles of friends and neighbors don't seem to deter Robert's mission to live life and grow crops scientifically. Nor do the continued setbacks deter Jean's desire to be the perfect scientific housewife.
Tiffany's prose starkly illuminates the terrifying beauty and brutality of Australia's landscape, and the struggle made by so many to turn sand to soil. There is true love for Australian in this novel. Jean is a woman to admire - courageous and adventurous. A woman of her time and beyond.
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