next i need to find something on combines

here's the soundtrack for this post. or, more literally, this.

i just finished reading a book whose title was custom-made for my enjoyment:

i was sold on the strength of the title alone, since at a closer look the premise:

A wise, tender, deeply funny novel about an eccentric elderly Ukrainian widower in England and the struggles of his two feuding daughters to thwart the voluptuous young gold-digger from the old country who sweeps him off his feet.

didn't even appeal to me that much. but i'm glad i trusted the excellence of that title because, really, i thoroughly enjoyed the book as a whole [warning, lengthy enumeration coming up]: there's poignant bits and pieces of a family's history, struggles and suffering under first soviet/communist then german/nazi occupation during wwii in the ukraine, experiences in various war camps and finally as immigrants in the uk, there's slapstick comedy (that's not too annoying), there's a main character who identifies as feminist (and has been to greenham common), there's a bit of gender and class analysis combined with a nuanced - if not extremely subtle - exploration of modern immigrant issues, there's various political conflicts of yesterday and today, there's family feuding, there's a relationship between two sisters in the foreground, there's issues of caring for the elderly, there's the question of "what is 'crazy,'" there's even post-communism vs. neoliberalism... but connected to all of that there's the book-within-a-book on the subject of tractors... not in ukrainian, and super-interesting!

some of the links listed in the back of the book, as acknowledgements for the technical research:
http://members.tripod.com/~Rainbeau/deere.html
http://www.ytmag.com/articles/artint262.htm
http://www.gooch.org.uk/steam/history
http://derela.republika.pl/index.htm
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/people.html
http://www.vintagetractors.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.wwiivehicles.com
(these being the ones working currently; the list in the book is longer)

fun fact: lewycka's father actually wrote a book on the history of tractors.