“What are the best books about Country Living?” We looked at 13 articles and found 278 unique books to answer that very question.
Rural and country living covers a wide range of books. There are farming books, homestead books, books about leading a nomadic life, history of farming books, instructional agriculture books, and so much more. There is fiction, non-fiction, biography, history, and recipe books. We found 278 total books, 12 of which appeared on multiple lists. We included images, links, and a summary for those below and a list of the remaining 266 books, along with the sources, at the bottom of the page.
And if for some reason you click on this article and are more of a city person, or simply curious on what that list looks like, you can read our City Living article from earlier in the week.
Happy Scrolling!
Newton Peck weaves a story of a Vermont boyhood that is part fiction, part memoir. The result is a moving coming-of-age story that still resonates with teens today.
Nearly 25 years after Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America’s heart. In the words ofKirkus, it is a novel “as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.” Gilead tells the story of America and will break your heart.
Each life has its place, and every variation ripples the surface of the tiny alpine village called Rosenau. Be it a mysteriously misaddressed love letter or a girl’s careless delivery of two helpless relatives into Nazi hands, the town’s balance is ever tested, and ever tender. Here is a novel spanning eighty years — years that bring factories and wars, store-bought cheese and city-trained teachers — weaving the fates of the wives, mothers, and daughters in this remote corner of Austria.
“Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.”
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
On just a quarter-acre of land, you can produce fresh, organic food for a family of four — year-round! This comprehensive guide to homesteading provides all the information you need to grow and preserve a sustainable harvest of grains and vegetables; raise animals for meat, eggs, and dairy; and keep honey bees for your sweeter days. With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long.
Michael Perry (Coop, Truck: A Love Story) meets David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) in this follow-up to Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s beloved New York Times bestselling debut memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days—another riotous, moving, and entirely unique story of his attempt to tackle the next phase of life with his partner… on a goat farm in upstate New York.
Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season—complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn.
Barbara Kingsolver’s fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel’s intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.
This how-to, user-friendly guide teaches self-sufficiency-covering all of life’s essentials: shelter; alternative energy sources; growing and preserving food; home crafts; directions for making herbal remedies; and even home-grown entertainment.
When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent
The bestselling resource for modern homesteading, growing and preserving foods, and raising chickens, The Encyclopedia of Country Living includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more. This comprehensive resource is the most authoritative guide available to a sustainable lifestyle and living off of the land.
| A Box of Matches | Nicholson Baker | Library Book Lists |
| A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net | John Jackson | Library Book Lists |
| A Buzzard Is My Best Friend | Margaret Anne Barnes | Library Book Lists |
| A Country Life | William S. Morse | Library Book Lists |
| A Country Wife Farms Families and Other Foolhardy Adventures: Memoir. Pig keeping, cake baking and lamb rearing in the lush Dorset countryside, where Lucy settled as a newlywed 30 years ago. | Lucy Pinney | Library Book Lists |
| A Countryman’s Journal: Views of Life and Nature from a Maine Coastal Farm | Roy Barrette | Library Book Lists |
| A Farm of Our Own: A Spiritual Journey Running a Smallholding | Graham R. Irwin and Ken Ashton | Library Book Lists |
| A Maine Hamlet | Lura Beam | Library Book Lists |
| A Maine Man in the Making | Franklin F. Gould | Library Book Lists |
| A Measure of My Days | David Loxterkamp, M.D. | Library Book Lists |
| A Place in the Country | Laura Shaine Cunningham | Library Book Lists |
| A Place in the Woods | Helen and Adrian Hoover | Library Book Lists |
| A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence | Eco Books | |
| A Separate Place: A Family, a Cabin in the Woods, and a Journey of Love and Spirit | David Brill | Library Book Lists |
| A Simpler Way | Eco Books | |
| A Small Farm in Maine: How One Couple Built a Self-Sustaining Life in the Country | Terry Silber | Library Book Lists |
| A Thousand Acres | Jane Smiley | Library Book Lists |
| A Time to Recall: The Delights of a Maine Childhood | Helen V. Taylor | Library Book Lists |
| A Very Small Farm | William Paul Winchester | Library Book Lists |
| A White Heron — A Story of Maine | Sarah Orne Jewett | Library Book Lists |
| A Year in the Maine Woods | Bernd Heinrich | Library Book Lists |
| Acres and Pains, a Guide to Country Loafing | S.J. Perelman | Library Book Lists |
| Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic | Eco Books | |
| All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! | Mel Bartholomew (Paperback – Feb 1, 2006) | Countryfarm Lifestyles |
| American House | Virginia Chase Perkins | Library Book Lists |
| American Salvage | Bonnie Jo Campbell | The Daily Beast |
| American Utopias | Eco Books | |
| Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business | Eco Books | |
| An Unseemly Wife | E.B. Moore | Electric Lit |
| And I Shall Have Some Peace There | Margaret Roach | Library Book Lists |
| Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life | Barbara Kingsolver | Library Book Lists |
| As the Earth Turns | Gladys Hasty Carroll | Library Book Lists |
| At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream | Wade Rouse | The Christian Science Monitor |
| Backyard Meat Production : How to Grow.All the Meat Your Need in Your Back Yard | Anita Evangelista | Just Peace |
| Bean Blossom Dreams: A City Family’s Search for a Simple Country Life | Sallyann Murphey | Library Book Lists |
| Big Tractors with Casey and Friends” and “Combines with Casey and Friends | Holly Dufek | Agrinews |
| Blood-Lust Chickens and Renegade Sheep: A First-Timer’s Guide to Country Living. | Anita Evangelista | Just Peace |
| Cache Lake Country | John J. Rowlands | Library Book Lists |
| Carrying Water as a Way of Life: A Homesteader’s History | Linda Tatelbaum | Library Book Lists |
| Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution/Social Questions | Eco Books | |
| Cheap Gossip | Sanford Phippen | Library Book Lists |
| Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World | Eco Books | |
| Cold Times | Elizabeth Jordan Moore | Library Book Lists |
| Comments on the Society of the Spectable | Eco Books | |
| Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler | Eco Books | |
| Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living | Eco Books | |
| Community Technology | Karl Hess | Just Peace |
| Cooking With the Sun : How to Build and Use Solar Cookers | Beth and Don Halacy | Just Peace |
| Coop: A Family, a Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg aka Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting | Michael Perry | Library Book Lists |
| Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse | Michael Korda | Library Book Lists |
| Country Neighborhood | Elizabeth Coatsworth | Library Book Lists |
| Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life | Eco Books | |
| Cream Hill: Discoveries of a Weekend Countryman | Lewis Gannett | Library Book Lists |
| Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge–And Why We Must | Eco Books | |
| Danny and the Boys | Robert Traver | Library Book Lists |
| DIY Projects for the Self-Sufficient Homeowner: 25 Ways to Build a Self-Reliant Lifestyle | Critical Cactus | |
| Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm | Jon Katz | Library Book Lists |
| Driftless | David Rhodes | The Daily Beast |
| Earth-Sheltered Houses: How To Build An Affordable Underground Home | Rob Roy | Critical Cactus |
| Earthship: How to Build Your Own | Critical Cactus | |
| Eden Springs | Laura Kasischke | The Daily Beast |
| Eighty-Eight Years on a Maine Farm | Will and Minnie Penney | Library Book Lists |
| Enslaved by Ducks: How One Man Went from Head of the Household to Bottom of the Pecking Order | Bob Tarte | Library Book Lists |
| Epicurean Simplicity | Eco Books | |
| Falling to Earth | Kate Southwood | Electric Lit |
| Farm City | Novella Carpenter | The Christian Science Monitor |
| Farm on Nippersink Creek: A Midwestern Boyhood | Jim May | Library Book Lists |
| Farmer Takes a Wife | John Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Feed a Family of Four for As Low As $10 per Week and Enjoy a Nibble of Independence. | Just Peace | |
| Fetched-Up Yankee: A New England Boyhood Remembered | Lewis Hill | Library Book Lists |
| Fields of Home | Ralph Moody | Library Book Lists |
| Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm | Jeanne Marie Laskas | Library Book Lists |
| Fireweed | Mildred Walker | Library Book Lists |
| First Person Rural, Essays of a Sometime Farmer | Noel Perrin | Library Book Lists |
| Five Acres and Independence : A Handbook for Small Farm Management | Maurice Grenville Kains | Just Peace |
| Foster | Claire Keegan | The Guardian |
| Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television | Eco Books | |
| Freeman: The Agriculture Years | Rodney Leonard | Agrinews |
| From A Limestone Ledge | John Graves | Library Book Lists |
| From the Orange Mailbox: Notes from A Few Country Acres | A. Carman Clark | Library Book Lists |
| Getting a Life: Strategies for Simple Living, Based on the Revolutionary Program for Financial Freedom, Your Money or Your Life | Eco Books | |
| Goat Song | Brad Kessler | The Christian Science Monitor |
| God’s Own Country | Ross Raisin | The Guardian |
| Grace Butterfield Dow’s Diary of a Week at the Lake | Grace Butterfield Dow | Library Book Lists |
| Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple Living | Eco Books | |
| Grandfather’s Broadaxe and Other Stories of a Maine Farm Family | C.A. Stephens | Library Book Lists |
| Green Mountain Farm | Elliott Merrick | Library Book Lists |
| Green Wood and Chloroform: How A Young English Doctor Settled in Rural Maine | Anthony Betts | Library Book Lists |
| Greener Pastures: Life in the North Country | Marnie Reed Crowell | Library Book Lists |
| Grow All You Can Eat in 3 Square Feet: Inventive Ideas for Growing Food in a Small Space | Fourth & Sycamore | |
| Guerrilla Furniture Design: How to Build Lean, Modern Furniture with Salvaged Materials | Will Holman | Fourth & Sycamore |
| Happy the Land | Louise Dickinson Rich | Library Book Lists |
| Haps and Mishaps at the Old Farm | C.A. Stephens | Library Book Lists |
| Hard Times in Paradise: An American Family’s Struggle to Carve Out a Homestead in California’s Redwood Mountains | David Colfax | Library Book Lists |
| Hardscrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land | John Graves | Library Book Lists |
| Hattie Big Sky | Kirby Larson | Modern Farmer |
| Here I Stay: A Maine Novel | Elizabeth Coatsworth | Library Book Lists |
| Hill Country Harvest | Hal Borland | Library Book Lists |
| Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn | Catherine Friend | Library Book Lists |
| Hooper’s Pasture from Maine to Vermont | John S. Hooper | Library Book Lists |
| How to Develop a Low-Cost Family Food Storage System | Anita Evangelista | Just Peace |
| How to Grow More Vegetables : Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops. | John Jeavons | Just Peace |
| How to Live Without Electricity & Like It | Anita Evangelista | Just Peace |
| How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter, and Self-Preservation That Makes Starvation in the Wilderness Next to Impossible | Eco Books | |
| How to Survive Without a Salary: Learning How to Live the Conserver Lifestyle | Eco Books | |
| In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods | Matt Bell | Electric Lit |
| International Harvester Trucks: The Complete History | Patrick Foster | Agrinews |
| It Takes A Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life | Jim Mullen | Library Book Lists |
| It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the | Keith Stewart | Library Book Lists |
| Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There | Philip P. Hallie | NPR |
| Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | James Agee and Walker Evans | The Guardian |
| Letters from Applehurst | G.W. Hinckley | Library Book Lists |
| Letters from Wingfield Farm | Dan Needles | Library Book Lists |
| Living Cheaply with Style: Live Better and Spend Less | Eco Books | |
| Living on Less: An Authoritative Guide to Affordable Food, Fuel, and Shelter | Eco Books | |
| Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle | Eco Books | |
| Living Well on a Shoestring: 1,821 Ways to Live Frugally, Efficiently and Masterfully Without Being a Miser | Eco Books | |
| Lost Paradise: A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm | Robert P. Tristram Coffin | Library Book Lists |
| Love Medicine | Louise Erdrich | The Daily Beast |
| Loving and Leaving the Good Life | Helen Nearing | Library Book Lists |
| Maine Farm: A Year of Country Life | Stanley Joseph and Lynn Karlin | Library Book Lists |
| Maine Memories | Elizabeth Coatsworth | Library Book Lists |
| Maine Ways | Elizabeth Coatsworth | Library Book Lists |
| Maine’s Golden Road: A Memoir | John Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Making a Living Without a Job: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love | Eco Books | |
| Malabar Farm series | Louis Bromfield | Library Book Lists |
| Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in the Woods | Max Alexander | Library Book Lists |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | The Daily Beast |
| Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre | Brett L. Markham | Critical Cactus |
| Minnesota Weather Almanac: Second Edition, Completely Updated for the New Normals | Mark Seeley | Agrinews |
| Moonshine!: Recipes * Tall Tales * Drinking Songs * | Countryfarm Lifestyles | |
| Moose in the Water, Bamboo on the Bench: A Journal and a Journey | Kathy Scott | Library Book Lists |
| More-With-Less Cookbook | Doris Longacre | Just Peace |
| Mother Earth News Alcohol Fuel Handboo | Just Peace | |
| Mountain of My Dreams: The Early Years | Richard T. Antony | Library Book Lists |
| Mountain of My Dreams: The Middle Years | Richard T. Antony | Library Book Lists |
| Mountainman Crafts and Skills: A Fully Illustrated Guide to Wilderness Living and Survival | Eco Books | |
| Mrs. Fytton’s Country Life | Mavis Cheek | Library Book Lists |
| My Life in the North Woods | Robert Smith | Library Book Lists |
| Native American Crafts and Skills: A Fully Illustrated Guide to Wilderness Living and Survival | Eco Books | |
| Native Son | Richard Wright | The Daily Beast |
| Neighborly Relations: And Other Stories of Bygone Times on a Saltwater Farm | Edwin D. Merry | Library Book Lists |
| Neither Hay Nor Grass | John Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Nine Mile Bridge | Helen Hamlin | Library Book Lists |
| No LOGO: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies | Eco Books | |
| North of Now: A Celebration of Country and the Soon to Be Gone | W. D. Wetherell | Library Book Lists |
| North Woods Walkabout | Nan Turner Waldron | Library Book Lists |
| Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine | Henry Beston | Library Book Lists |
| O Pioneers! | Willa Cather | The Guardian |
| Off Grid Living: 25 Lessons on How to Live off The Grid and Survive in the Wild | Kevin Evans | Critical Cactus |
| Once Upon a Farm: Stories about the Farm on Thompson Hill in Mexico, Maine | Crossland, Lloyd, and Gail Parent, Fern Stearns, Joyce Morgan | Library Book Lists |
| One Circle : How to Grow a Complete Diet in Less Than 1000 sq. ft. | Just Peace | |
| One Crow, Two Crow | Virginia Chase Perkins | Library Book Lists |
| One Man’s Meat | E.B. White | Library Book Lists |
| One-Horse Farm | Robert P. Tristram Coffin | Library Book Lists |
| Onions in the Stew | Betty MacDonald | Library Book Lists |
| Only Parent | Louise Dickinson Rich | Library Book Lists |
| Our Way Down East | Elinor Graham | Library Book Lists |
| Pages from a Journal | Joyce Butler | Library Book Lists |
| Papa was a Farmer | Brenda Weisberg Meckler | Library Book Lists |
| Participating in Nature: Thomas J. Elpel’s Field Guide to Primitive Living Skills | Eco Books | |
| Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life | Barbara Drake | Library Book Lists |
| Pie for Breakfast | Lawrence and Marion Averill | Library Book Lists |
| Plainsong | Kent Haruf | Electric Lit |
| Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills | Eco Books | |
| Putting Food by | Just Peace | |
| Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth | Eco Books | |
| Re-Told Tales of the Hills and Shores of Maine | Mrs. H.G. Rowe | Library Book Lists |
| Red Combines 1915-2015: The Authoritative Guide to International Harvester and Case IH Harvesting Equipment | Lee Klancher | Agrinews |
| Remembering Laughter | Wallace Stegner | Library Book Lists |
| Ridge-Runner: The Story of a Maine Woodsman | Gerald Averill | Library Book Lists |
| Right as Rain | Bernice Richmond | Library Book Lists |
| Road Song: A Memoir | Natalie Kusz | Library Book Lists |
| Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits | Eco Books | |
| Roughing It Easy/a Unique Ideabook for Camping and Cooking | Just Peace | |
| Sailing on the Ice: And Other Stories from the Old Squire’s Farm | C.A. Stephens | Library Book Lists |
| Salvage the Bones | Jesmyn Ward | Electric Lit |
| Sanctuary: A Finding of Life | E.W. Paisley | Library Book Lists |
| Save Every Lamb: Rich and Memorable Tales of a Lifetime with the Animals of the Hills and Farms of Kentucky | Jesse Stuart | Library Book Lists |
| See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America | Logan Ward | Library Book Lists |
| Sign of the Beaver | Elizabeth George Speare | Library Book Lists |
| Sister Carrie | Theodore Dreiser | The Daily Beast |
| Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea | Catherine Goldhammer | Library Book Lists |
| Stillmeadow Seasons | Gladys Taber | Library Book Lists |
| Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life | Eco Books | |
| Successful Calamity: A Writer’s Follies on a Vermont Farm | Edmund Fuller | Library Book Lists |
| Surrendering the Reins | Les Graham | Agrinews |
| Survival Skills of the North American Indians | Eco Books | |
| Sylvia’s Farm: The Journal of an Improbable Shepherd | Sylvia Jorrin | Library Book Lists |
| Tales of Cedar River | William M. Clark | Library Book Lists |
| Tales of the Maine Woods: Two Forest and Stream Essays | Fanny Pearson Eckstorm | Library Book Lists |
| Tarry Flynn | Patrick Kavanagh | The Guardian |
| Tasha Tudor’s Garden | Tovah Martin (Hardcover – Oct 5, 1994) | Countryfarm Lifestyles |
| Technology and the Good Life? | Eco Books | |
| That They May Face The Rising Sun | John McGahern | The Guardian |
| The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost his Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden | William Alexander | Library Book Lists |
| The Affluent Society | Eco Books | |
| The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd | Mary Rose O’Reilley | Library Book Lists |
| The Big-Little World of Doc Pritham | Dorothy Clarke Wilson | Library Book Lists |
| The Birchwood Café Cookbook: Good Real Food | Tracy Singleton and Marshall Paulsen with Beth Dooley | Agrinews |
| The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison | The Daily Beast |
| The Bones of Plenty | Lois Phillips Hudson | Library Book Lists |
| The Cheechakoes: The True Story of the Remarkable Adventures of an American Family Who Moved to Alaska and Lived Like Pioneers | Wayne Short | Library Book Lists |
| The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life | Eco Books | |
| The Coast of Chicago | Stuart Dybek | The Daily Beast |
| The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing and Sausage Making | Philip Hasheider | Countryfarm Lifestyles |
| The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism | Eco Books | |
| The Consumer Society Reader | Eco Books | |
| The Country Doctor | Sarah Orne Jewett | Library Book Lists |
| The Country Life | Rachel Cusk | Library Book Lists |
| The Country of the Pointed Firs | Sarah Orne Jewett | Library Book Lists |
| The Cows are Out! Two Decades on a Maine Dairy Farm | Trudy Chambers Price | Library Book Lists |
| The Dairy Good Cookbook: Everyday Comfort Food from America’s Dairy Farm | Lisa Kingsley | Agrinews |
| The Dark Well: Coming of Age on a Maine Farm | Brenda Shaw | Library Book Lists |
| The Dog From Nowhere | Elizabeth Coatsworth | Library Book Lists |
| The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure With Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me | Jon Katz | Library Book Lists |
| The Egg and I | Betty MacDonald | Library Book Lists |
| The Experience of Place | Eco Books | |
| The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning | Ana Micka | Countryfarm Lifestyles |
| The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living | Eco Books | |
| The Hardscrabble Chronicles | Laurie Bogart Morrow | Library Book Lists |
| The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed, and Overworked | Eco Books | |
| The Jungle | Upton Sinclair | The Daily Beast |
| The Known World | Edward P. Jones | Electric Lit |
| The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey: Memories from the Farm of My Youth | Alan Guebert | Agrinews |
| The Little House book series | Laura Ingalls Wilder | Modern Farmer |
| The Long Man | Amy Greene | Electric Lit |
| The Maine Woods | Henry David Thoreau | Library Book Lists |
| The Mountain | Alice Beal Parsons | Library Book Lists |
| The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers | Countryfarm Lifestyles | |
| The New Laurel’s Kitchen : A Handbook… | Just Peace | |
| The Old Ashburn Place | Margaret Flint | Library Book Lists |
| The Orchardist | Amanda Coplin | Electric Lit |
| The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer | Eco Books | |
| The Peninsula | Louise Dickinson Rich | Library Book Lists |
| The Quality of Life Report | Meghan Daum | Library Book Lists |
| The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies | Eco Books | |
| The Secrets of Building an Alcohol Producing Still | Vincent R. Gingery (Paperback – Jul 1994) | Countryfarm Lifestyles |
| The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living | Eco Books | |
| The Society of the Spectacle | Eco Books | |
| The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling | Daniel D. Chiras | Critical Cactus |
| The Summer of Ordinary Ways | Nicole Helget | Library Book Lists |
| The Sustainable Vegetable Garden : A Backyard Guide to Healthy Soil & Higher Yields. | Just Peace | |
| The Theory of the Leisure Class | Eco Books | |
| The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class | Eco Books | |
| The Twin | Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer | The Guardian |
| The Widow Down by the Brook: A Memoir of a Time Gone By | Mary MacNeill | Library Book Lists |
| The Woods and the Sea, Wilderness and Seacoast Adventures in the State of Maine | Dudley Cammett Lunt | Library Book Lists |
| The World Around the Mountain | Alice Beal Parsons | Library Book Lists |
| The Years of the Forest | Helen and Adrian Hoover | Library Book Lists |
| them | Joyce Carol Oates | The Daily Beast |
| This Hill, This Valley | Hal Borland | Library Book Lists |
| This Trifling Distinction: Reminiscences from Down East | John Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Thousand Acre Marsh, A Span of Remembrance | Dudley Cammett Lunt | Library Book Lists |
| To School Through the Fields | Alice Taylor | Library Book Lists |
| Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream | William Powers | Critical Cactus |
| Upcountry: Reflections from a Rural Life | Robert Kimber | Library Book Lists |
| Vital Ties | Karen Kringle | Library Book Lists |
| Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living | Eco Books | |
| Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich | Eco Books | |
| We Didn’t Have Much, But We Sure Had Plenty: Rural Women in Their Own Words | Sherry Thomas | Library Book Lists |
| We Have All Gone Away | Curtis Harnack | Library Book Lists |
| We Summer in Maine | Nathaniel J. Hasenfus | Library Book Lists |
| We Took to the Woods | Louise Dickinson Rich | Library Book Lists |
| When Life was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine | C.A. Stephens | Library Book Lists |
| Where There is No Doctor | David Werner, Carol Thuman, Jane Maxwell | Just Peace |
| Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home | Janisse Ray | Library Book Lists |
| Wilderness Journey: Life, Living, Contentment in the Allagash Woods of Maine | Dorothy Boone Kidney | Library Book Lists |
| Wilderness Survival | Eco Books | |
| Winesburg, Ohio | Sherwood Anderson | The Daily Beast |
| Winter’s Bone | Daniel Woodrell | Electric Lit |
| Woodswoman | Anne LaBastille | Library Book Lists |
| Yankee Boyhood: My Adventures on a Maine Farm Seventy Years Ago | R.E. Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Yankee Drummer | R.E. Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Yankee Storekeeper | R.E. Gould | Library Book Lists |
| Year of the Cornflake | Faith Addis | Library Book Lists |
| Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence | Eco Books | |
| Source | Article |
| Agrinews | Try giving your favorite farmer a book this year |
| Countryfarm Lifestyles | Best Homesteading Books; Farming, Homesteading, Country Living with Reviews |
| Critical Cactus | Top 9 Most Popular Off Grid Living Books |
| Eco Books | Books on Simple Living |
| Electric Lit | 10 Great Novels of the Rural: A Reading List by Michelle Hoover, Author of Bottomland |
| Fourth & Sycamore | DIY: Two New Books Full of Ideas for Urban/Rural Living |
| Just Peace | A Cyberstore of Books on the Practicalities of Sustainable, Simple, and Frugal living |
| Library Book Lists | Back to the Land: Tales of Rural Life |
| Modern Farmer | 6 Great Farm Reads for Young Adults |
| NPR | Country Cousins: 3 Books About Rural Living |
| The Christian Science Monitor | 5 books about chucking it all for country living |
| The Daily Beast | Respect the Midwest! |
| The Guardian | Belinda McKeon’s top 10 farming novels |
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