The Egg and I Audiobook (Free)

“The Egg and I” took 1st America by storm in 1945, selling over 1,000,000 within ten a few months of it’s primary publication. Betty MacDonald’s initial book about her ventures as a wife on the chicken farm over the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state was a breath of fresh air to a world that, in the wake of WWII, sorely needed it. Betty resided with her first spouse near Chimacum, Washington – a newlywed carrying out her better to adjust to and help operate their small chicken farm, from 1927 to 1931..Browse Even more on the subject of The Egg and We MacDonald was an enthusiastic observer of the people around her, and she phone calls a spade a spade, “and there were a plenty of spades.”

The Egg and I was adapted for stage, radio and screen, using the film version starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. The film version also released the world to Ma and Pa Kettle, the eccentric country bumpkins portrayed with the inimitable Marjorie Primary and Percy Kilbride, who had been so popular a string of spin-off films was produced about their ventures. Betty MacDonald composed three other memoirs, as well as the still well-known Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series for children, and it is identified by many as an important America humorist. In her MA thesis, The Egg and Us: Contextualization and Historicization (2014), Samantha Hoekstra writes:

“Some scholars credit MacDonald with having inspired Shirley Jackson, Erma Bombeck, and other purveyors of domestic humor, but possibly the most appropriate inheritor from the MacDonald tradition is the modern writer David Sedaris. … One of the most significant similarities is definitely that the lack of conventionality in both family members is presented as normal and worth respect. Even as they make fun of their families’ foibles, the writers convey an undeniable comfort, affection, and acceptance. In a way, they challenge the very notion of the ‘normal’ American family members.”

This is why MacDonald’s writing continues to be relevant and funny today.