Books on country

While I was a the Hill of Content bookshop (which I call the Hill of Content, for obvious reasons, rather than the Hill of Content; the former interpretation is also appropriate because I always leave in a state of inexpressible discontent) today, I saw a current, as in newly released, book described as a modern, British Walden, about a dude who lived on a remote farm in Wales for a bit. It had great reviews but as books are so wildly overpriced in Oz, and owing to my HoC discontent, I failed to purchase it.

However, it made me recall some of the great books on country I've read. In putting together these links I found out, happily, that the more obscure of them aren't just garbage, as my overly lettered family would have me believe, and a sad epithet to the death of taste and refinement in my reading habits, but are in fact internationally lauded tomes.

In any case, I wanted to give you a little reading list, if you're that way inclined:

• The Fat of the Land, Self-Sufficiency, and I'm a Stranger Here Myself, by John Seymour: great books, practical and homely. It was these that taught me to kill and clean a hen and a rabbit.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, the highlight of this list if you have any errings toward modern sensibilities and like a dash of food industry scandal with your country tales.
• I Bought a Mountain, by Thomas Firbank, which Wikipedia recommends as an "international bestseller" in its time and my sister derided with a grimace the words "Alida, that sounds terrible." In it, a strapping young lad of 21 buys a 2400 acre farm comprising part of Welsh Snowdonia and runs sheep with his elfin bride Esme, to whom he proposes after spotting her in the high street of the local village, in the 1940s.
• Harvest of the Moor, and Spade Among the Rushes, by Margaret Leigh, who wowed the crowds in the 1940s by being a solo woman farmer and crofter. Again, these books are described as "popular classics" but my sister disdained them with naught but a withering look upon an attempted read, circa 2009.