The Istoriaphile’s Corner

My mom used to divide her library into sections. Lots of space was dedicated to fiction and the sturdiest shelves held her coffee-table sized books on the movies.  But one special part of the library was devoted to chronicles of everyday life, virtually all of them written by women.  Some also wrote Kid Lit. or humor like Jean Kerr and Judith Viorst while others wrote novels or plays but every book on that shelf was what I called a “Domestic Chronicle”; an account of  everyday life.  If those books sounded boring, they weren’t.  All of them were clear-eyed observations on a  fascinating, multi-faceted worlds. usually recorded with dry wit.  These books had a remarkable effect on the reader. Novels might be read for excitement or entertainment and non-fiction for excitement or knowledge but domestic chronicles could appease the soul.  So my question is, where are the books of this genre today? According to my mom, the best writer in this genre was Gladys Taber, author of the Stillmeadow series.  In book after book, Ms. Taber recorded life at her New England farmhouse, Stillmeadow.  She was not a farmer or a New England Yankee from birth so her stories deal with…