skopia
Forty-nine Suffolk villagers talk about horse teams, hunger and the Great War. Blythe caught a rural England that machinery was erasing as he wrote, and English country life has had no better witness.
Eighteen years of hired labor buy Bjartur a stretch of Icelandic moorland, and he defends his independence against weather, debt, and his own family. Laxness makes stubbornness heroic and ruinous at once.
Three hundred and five songs from ancient China about courtship, harvest, soldiers on campaign, and bad government. Confucius taught from them, and every Chinese poet since has written with them in earshot.
Chaos comes first, then gods who overthrow their fathers in turn until Zeus wins and holds. Hesiod then turns to his idle brother to explain when to plow and why work is holy.
Anna leaves her husband for a young officer while, in the other half of the book, Levin farms and marries and worries about God. Tolstoy gives both lives the same total sympathy.