Summertime Doings: Reading & Action

This summer, reading has been a primary activity. This month I branched out with some targeted political action. BEACH READING The Ambassador’s Wife by Jennifer Steil Free spirited artist Miranda meets and marries Finn, an upstanding, conventional British career diplomat, and becomes an ambassador’s wife in a fictional Middle Eastern Muslim country.  Adjusting to the constraints of …

Summertime: Novels & Crime

NOVEL ADVENTURES WOMEN & MEDICINE Where the Light Enters by Sara Donati If you’re a historical novel junkie and you like medical minutiae, then the sequel to Donati’s earlier tome, The Gilded Hour, might be just the perfect diversion.  Set in the 1880’s in New York, specifically Greenwich Village and environs, it’s the continuing tale of two female …

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

READING FASCINATING WOMAN Lady First:  The World of First Lady Sarah Polk by Amy S. Greenberg History has not been kind to James Polk, the unpopular president known for his Manifest Destiny policy and the U.S.-Mexican War of the 1840’s.  He only served one term in office and his widow outlived him by more than 40 years.  Sarah Polk, …

Diversions: Other Lives on Screen & Page

RECENT READING EVOCATIVE MEMOIR The Farmer’s Son:  Calving Season on a Family Farm by John Connell I had read good reviews of this work and since we were originally going to Ireland this month, I was doubly attracted to it.  Connell’s account of the months from January to June working on his father’s farm in County Longford delivering …