A Country Year: Living the Questions

by Sue Hubbell

Book Overview

When her thirty-year marriage broke up, Sue Hubbell found herself alone and broke on a small Ozarks farm. Keeping bees, she found solace in the natural world. She began to write, challenging herself to tell the absolute truth about her life and the things that she cared about. The result is one of the best-loved books ever written about life on the land, about a woman finding her way in middle age.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060970863
• ISBN13: 9780060970864
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Sue Hubbell is my soul mate.

All women desiring to becoming a wiser woman should read this book...

A quiet, thoughtful, and often very funny book

When Sue Hubbell's long-term marriage fell apart, and she found herself in mid-life living alone as a beekeeper on a farm in the Ozarks. Her book is ostensibly set within a single year, but that's only the framework for the series of essays that form a beautiful chronicle of the seasons of one's life, the seasons of nature, the seasons of tame and wild animals, and the seasons of living on a farm. Her inquiring mind constantly asks "Why?" questions, and the essays are her attempts to answer them. She's a former librarian, so she's articulate, academic, intellectual - but also quietly hilarious, such as her description of trying to think like a chicken in order to coax her hens to sleep inside the coop instead of perched on the trees. Buy a copy for yourself, and buy one for your best woman friend who is heading into her middle years and may also be Living the Questions.

Slow moving but beautiful... just like a country day

This is a slow book, but following Sue Hubbel through her days was a gift. As one rater laments, "much of the book is just a reflection of life on a small bee farm"... which is precisely what I loved about it. Like much of agriculture, horticulture, and allied disciplines, beekeeping is hard and complicated while at the same time being a model of simplicity. This I learned watching my father, a commercial beekeeper. I am thankful to Sue Hubbel for writing about that life and the beauty of coutry living without attempting to romanticize it.

A lyrically written memoir about country life and its charms

Sue Hubble is an excellent writer; you can feel the hot Ozark sun and hear the hypnotic murmur of her bees, the bright slash of a bunting's song and share her wonder at the joys and challenges in country life.If you aspire to memoir writing, this is a fine example of the craft. If you want walk in someone else's footsteps for a few hundred pages, learn how they live and how they think and feel about everyday things and about nature, this is for you.I love this book.

Bee-keeper tells all, and tells it well.

I almost didn't buy the audiocassette of this book because of the reviewer who said Sue Hubbell's reading was monotonous. I bought it anyway, and am thrilled to say both the content and the reading were outstanding. To my mind, the author's voice, in any tone, beats an inauthentic performance. This is one of the best works on contemporary nonfiction by women - and one of the best books on tape - I have come across in a long while. I recommend it highly, for anyone interested in how the human mind makes connections between her immediate surroundings and the larger questions of living in the world. The "bee" theme, like Thoreau's ants and Annie Dillard's creek creatures, is simply a fascinating and concrete set of phenomena through which Hubbell examines the mystical world around her, and around us all. (One last note of interest: the audiocassette - comprised of only one tape - includes a second tape on which Gary Snyder reads from his work on nature and the problem of logging in the northwest of the U.S.).

An inspiration to live the simple life!

I was visiting my future in-laws 5 years ago and I was feeling nervous and somewhat introspective. My soon to be mother-in-law suggested I read a new book she had received from a friend. A Country Year, by Sue Hubbell, was just the thing I needed. I was immediately at peace with myself and the world. I have since read all Sue Hubbell's books and can't wait for the next one to come out. I have even taken a beekeeping class! Her books help me appreciate the natural world around me. She also inspires me to slow down in this fast-paced world we live in. The simple things in life are forgotten quite a bit these days and Sue Hubbell takes the time to remind us of what we're missing out on.