PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.
1. What are you currently reading? Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist by MC Beaton. Our heroine, the redoubtable Aggie, is on a solo holiday in Cypress. She surrounds herself with other British tourists and is as fascinated/amused by them as she is of the Mediterranean. Then one of them gets dead. Will Agatha's sleuthing skills translate overseas?
This is lighter than air but it's just what I needed after 500+ pages with Mrs. Lincoln.
2. What did you recently finish reading? Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage by Ruth Painter Randall. This is a comprehensive, fair and very readable look at Mary Lincoln's life. I enjoyed it, but it was not an easy read. The lady had a staggering amount of pain in her 63 years. She buried three children, and the only one who survived to adulthood had her declared insane. (Let that sink in.) During the Civil War, her siblings took up arms against the Union, and Mary's husband. Don't think that won't cause a rift. The national press routinely attacked her as a boorish Westerner (Illinois was considered the rural West in those days) and a Southern sympathizer (her Kentuckian father was a slave owner). Neither was true: Mary was an elegant, educated lady who spoke fluent French, quoted Shakespeare and was staunchly anti-slave. Her husband was shot while holding her hand. She felt the bullet in the paroxysm of his hand even before she heard it. Not something you ever recover from.
The woman on these pages is warm, loving and more sinned against than sinning. She's also shown to be sharp-tongued and quick-tempered and often unable to get out of her own way.
Ms. Randall puts us in the 19th century. You can smell the biscuits and gravy! But if you pick this volume up, be warned: it was written in the 1950s. Some of the word choices were a little squirmy. This is no longer how we talk about people of color, little people, or those with speech impediments. After I cringed, I realized it's important that we know who we were as a nation.
3. What will you read next? I don't know.
That book about Mary Lincoln sounds so interesting. I agree with you. History gives Mary Lincoln a bad rap. You always read such interesting things.
ReplyDeleteI just love your out look on life!
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