Thoughts While Reading

These are my actual feelings and reactions while I’ve been reading books this week.  It isn’t as formal as a review but a little more structured than live tweeting.  Also these are real thoughts so it gets mouthy.

• Warren Harding is a dirtbag.  He has multiple mistresses.  The Republican National Committee had to send one mistress and her husband on an extended vacation because they were blackmailing him about the affair.  That’s the plot of Hamilton.
• I had the husband listening to this with me on a road trip.  It made him nutty.  He said it was worse than listening to baseball because the book is so detailed.  He just wanted them to vote and get it over with.
• He entertained himself by cheering whenever the anti-suffrage people made a point.
• Some anti-suffrage person stood up with a straight face and claimed that nowhere on Earth did the races get along as well as they always had in Tennessee.  I’m assuming “always” includes all that time you kept slaves?
• I got a little teary when it finally passed and really teary when they talked about visiting Susan B Anthony’s grave on Election Day 2016.
• There was a good section at the end about people who didn’t get the right to vote and the violence mostly in Florida when black women tried.

FINISHED

Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop

• I wanted to read this because I loved her later series.
• I have absolutely no patience right now for fistfuls of made up people names and place names.  Why do names in fantasy novels have to be so complex?  There was one paragraph where about every third word was a complex name.  
• Leaving this one for now.

Sad Desk Salad by Jessica Grose

• I had this on my TBR for so long that it finally got purged.  Then I got a copy.  
• Sometimes snarky chick lit is the only thing that hits the spot.
   

FINISHED

Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America by Catherine Kerrison

• This book already made me look up the Articles of Confederation because I couldn’t remember exactly who was in charge between the end of the Revolution and George Washington’s first term.  Answer – pretty much no one.
• I also didn’t know that Jefferson was Governor of Virginia during the Revolution.  Why didn’t I remember that? 
• All I actually remembered was the lyrics of Cabinet Battle 1 from Hamilton, “And another thing, Mr. Age of Enlightenment, Don’t lecture me about the war, you didn’t fight in it”.  Not exactly fair.  He did spend a lot of time running from the British who were trying to capture him.  

The Matrimonial Advertisement by Mimi Matthews

• It is amazing to me how you can tell in the first few pages if a book is going to be a good fit. A good historical romance feels like sinking into a warm and cozy bed.