This Week’s Library Haul

Friends, I am ashamed to say, I have been over-spending on books for far too long.

I hadn’t been to the library since I was in Nursing school. This is most likely because even the smell of the place triggers repressed memories of scantrons, 1,000 slide presentations crammed into 3-ring binders as big as a pizza box and test questions pulled from the footnotes of random medical journals. I should probably talk to my therapist about all that, but I think I have happy memories of the library somewhere deep in my subconscious?

I do remember what it was like when I got my first library card. A gateway to the world! You can just walk in, take as many books as you can carry and leave with them. It’s truly a miracle. I am still unclear on why people don’t do this more often? Are we lazy?

I am lazy. For years - decades even - I have used the excuse that it’s easier to just amazon prime the book I want to read than to find it at a local library and go pick it up. Because I was just sure that the library had nothing of substance to offer me. Or how about the excuse that I would just download it to my e-reader… until they gave us e-books too!

There really is something about the experience of the library though, isn’t there? I love the way the plastic cover crinkles and pops as I hold it in my hands.

So, I decided to give the library another chance over the weekend and I was aghast at how many titles I found that I wanted to read and was interested in. Y’all! Why have I been so dumb?

Here’s what I picked up:

Heiresses

This one was on my summer reading list and in my Amazon cart! I felt like I won the lottery when I saw it sitting pretty on the shelf. I just started it a few days ago, so I will report back about it’s contents.

The Season

This book has been delightful in the most weird and oppressive ways. Debutante balls were all the rage in England and in the early years of America up until the 1950s. They’ve slowly evolved over the years into Cotillions and other social gatherings, however, one cannot ignore their massive influence on the history of courtship and marriage.

Women of Colonial America

Clearly Women’s History was the theme of this haul.

This book was a short and easy read. Thirteen stories of famous women who braved everything and all odds to begin a new life in America. I am a sucker for “how things were done back then” from how they cooked and cleaned to the way they influenced society and culture from under the thumb of patriarchy.

Diaries of Women

I didn’t get a chance to make it all the way through this one before I had to return it, but I will check it out again and (!) probably just end up purchasing it for myself.

Reading the actual words of women, which to be honest, is very rare as their publishers and editors heavily edited their words back then, was so honest and raw. This is not the Anne Frank you read in the fourth grade.

Women in the World of Frederick Douglass

I haven’t had the chance to dive into this one yet but cannot wait.

Like I said above about the words of women being edited and sanitized, so much of black and brown women’s histories will never and have never been told because they would never have been given a voice to do so.

Pastoral Song

To be honest, this didn’t read like I thought it would. I didn’t love it and didn’t get caught up in it like I wanted to, so I didn’t finish it. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting? I am a huge fan of the British series, “All Creatures Great & Small” so I had similar expectations. I may give it another chance sometime.