Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Ella Cheever Thayer’s Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes, which is a delight from start to finish. I love the telegraphic romance, I love the part where a clumsy fellow accidentally proposes to the wrong girl and then just… doesn’t break the engagement (peak nineteenth century moment right there), I love the bohemian dinner that Cyn and Nattie throw using every single dish they can find in their apartments including the soap dish.

However, the book also broke my heart because I was dead set on Cyn getting together with the Bohemian Jo (despite the lack of a final e, he’s a boy Jo), and then Jo confessed his love to Cyn! And Cyn explains that she can never loved him! Because she loved once before, but the man involved broke her heart, and that means that her heart is no longer whole and she can never love again!!!!!!!

Now it’s possible that Cyn was just letting Jo down easy, but I think she really means it and my heart is crushed. You can get over that perfidious first love, Cyn! Love is still within your grasp even after your heart has been once broken!!!!

So I’ve decided that after ten years or so, when Cyn is established as a singer and Jo as a painter, Cyn will realize that in fact she’s 100% over Lover #1 and she does love Jo! Who of course has been faithful in his heart for all these years!!! And because he’s a Bohemian he’s 100% okay with Cyn continuing her singing career as long as she wants after they marry!!!! HAPPY ENDINGS FOR EVERYONE.



What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls as my third stab at “a book outside my genre comfort zone,” and I feel tentatively positive about this one! I’m three chapters in and no one has stumbled on a dead body or been raped. Moreover, the main character is an old lady looking back on her youth and telling her life story with wit, occasional sarcasm, and pleasure in both the happiness and the foibles of her youth, so no matter what happens I think it is clear that she will come out all right in the end.

I’ve also been zooming through Cokie Roberts’ Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, which pairs interestingly with another book that I've been dipping into, Mary Beth Norton's Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. Norton argues that, contrary to popular belief (I'm not sure if this was popular in general or just among historians), women in the eighteenth century in fact rarely acted as their husbands' full partners in business. They often had little idea about their husbands' business affairs at all.

It's clear from Roberts' book, however, that many prominent men of the time (Ben Franklin, John Adams) relied heavily on their wives to run their business affairs, which (1) may explain why the popular view is that women took an active role in their husbands' work; the prominent examples are what stuck in people's minds, and (2) probably is what freed up those men to be prominent statesmen in the first place. They didn't just rely on their wives to run the house and take care of the children; their wives were also taking care of the business affairs that were normally the province of the husband, which freed up their men for the full-time job of statesmanship.

And I’ve finally gotten back into gear on Kristin Lavransdatter! I finished part one of book three, which might be called The Misery of Simon Darre. Kristin’s former betrothed is still carrying a torch for her, even though she’s been married to Erlend for something like fifteen years at this point AND Simon himself is married to Kristin’s younger sister Ramborg, who - just to make the circle of misery complete! - has noticed that Simon is in love with her big sister, and has been since before he married Ramborg, and feels crushed. CRUSHED. As you would!

What I Plan to Read Next

The library finally got The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club! I’ll be going away this weekend for yet another wedding, which has been expanded into a short trip (we’ll be staying a state park close to Bloomington, in order to efficaciously combine hiking and seeing movies at the IU cinema: Agnes Varda’s La Pointe Courte AND Dorothy Arzner’s Christopher Strong). I’m saving this latest installment of Peter Wimsey for the trip.

Comments

[kore]

It is pretty amazing how many "Renaissance men" or Great Leaders had the help of at least two or three women, including wives, plus of course domestic staff (women) and so on. Kind of like Great Auteurs in modern cinema depending on editors, casting directors, costumers, cinematographers, &c &c....

[osprey_archer]

And these women do so much work to give their men the space to be Great! It's not just taking care of the domestic details; they take care of all the money stuff, they facilitate their men's relationships with the other Great Statesmen, they do an utterly enormous amount of scaffolding work to basically prop up all the other aspects of their menfolks' lives. John Adams at least acknowledges his absolute dependence on Abigail.

[kore]

It's just pretty amazing how the whole "But should women WORK??" debate actually turns out to have been based on a fairly small population of women....who themselves were doing a lot of ignored labour anyway.

[evelyn_b]

Oh, Simon. :(

I love how everyone acts with their own particular blind spots. Simon is much more sympathetic (to me) than Erlend, but he still seems to have talked himself into believing that he'd "made things right" with Lavrans and datters, when actually he just sowed some more thorns. Damn it! I find Ramsborg very believably angry in this part (if it's the one I'm remembering).

I hope City of Girls stays good to the end!

[osprey_archer]

I felt so bad for Ramsborg! None of this is her fault in the slightest, but nonetheless she's stuck with a husband who is eternally pining away for her sister. Maybe Simon will start to get over it now that he's cut ties with Erlend? But probably not though.

[troisoiseaux]

Oh gosh, I read Founding Mothers during my 5th grade American Revolution phase— I remember being particularly fascinated by Peggy Arnold, of all people.

I actually ended up meeting Cokie Roberts shortly after! She was doing some sort of book or lecture tour that brought her to my town, so my mom and I went, and allegedly - I don't remember this myself, but my mom loves to tell the story - at the book signing afterwards, Cokie Roberts started talking to my mom instead of me or joking that she hoped I wasn't too bored or something, and my mom was like "...oh no, it was her idea to come" and then I whipped out a list of questions I'd prepared ahead of time. :P

[osprey_archer]

Peggy Arnold is such an interesting person! What drove her to it? Was the money that good? Was she swept up by the romantic aspects of spying? Had she secretly been a deeply committed Loyalist all this time? There's really no way to know.

And I love the fact that you had a whole list of questions for Cokie Roberts.

[troisoiseaux]

I just remember being fascinated by her really dramatic - and successful! - attempt to cover up her knowledge of her husband's activities/his escape.

Side note: did you ever read Washington's Spies, by Alexander Rose?

And I love the fact that you had a whole list of questions for Cokie Roberts.

Ha, or so family legend has it, anyway. I definitely had at least a question!

[osprey_archer]

Peggy Arnold's "hysterics" following her husband's escape are an A++ example of weaponized femininity. If only she had put her skills to use for a better cause!

I haven't read Washington's Spies; in general I probably haven't read as much about the Revolutionary War as I should. There's just so MUCH history that it's hard to learn as much as I would like about everything...