March 2017 - Meeting Madness

The topic I've chosen was inspired by this year's Old Farmer's Almanac which asked the participants in this year's essay contest to identify the historical figure they'd like to meet and tell why. For March, therefore, I thought it would be fun for each of us to pick an historical character, nonfiction or fiction, that we would like to meet and visit or revisit them by reading a book about this person. The person you visit is completely up to you. You could smile your way through a meeting with someone you love or attempt to understand someone you despise. You could orbit the earth with John Glenn or spend time ruling with Queen Victoria. You could drop by to visit Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables or marvel at the mind of Sherlock Holmes. You could read Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and see what all the fuss is about on Broadway. Why you've chosen to read about your character may be shared with us or not, but I'm looking forward to seeing whom we all meet with this month. Happy visiting!

This is a fun one! I am looking forward to pawing through my books and deciding on who I would like to spend some time with.

What a great idea for a topic. I too am going to rummage in the TBR and see who's waiting for me there.

This will fit right in with my ongoing President's challenge. I will certainly read about Thomas Jefferson---I have 2 books, I probably won't read either book in it's entirety, but will read enough to constitute as 1 book. (I don't like biographies!).

Right now I'm thinking I'll probably read Jane Austen: A Life.

I'll probably be doing something on my namesake – very likely The Brontës: A Life in Letters edited and annotated by the premier Brontë biographer, Juliet Barker.

ETA: I've also got that new biography by Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, around somewhere if I can find it in all these piles.

I'll probably read Moriarty since I find him a most interesting fellow!

I enjoyed seeing what everyone has planned. I still haven't made my final selection. I keep coming across more and more interesting people.

Since I also belong to a presidential read, I'm going to be reading about Thomas Jefferson. I guess I would like to meet him, I'm a history teacher. I'm going to be reading from 2 different sources:
Original documents contained at the Library of Congress: particularly a series between him and Madison concerning the U.S. Constitution. Also his annotated copy of the Federalist papers and his letters against the U.S. Bill of Rights. I will then read the appropriate section in America's First Families (HC): An Inside View of 200 Years of Private Life in the White House hopefully to get something more in the way of a personal nature. From a very quick perusal the pages number about 145-150.

>9 Tess_W: Sounds very interesting. Quite a person to meet. I've been intrigued by Jefferson ever since I saw the movie 1776 as a young person.

>5 cbl_tn: Say Hi for me. Jane Austen is one of my favorites.

>6 CurrerBell: It would be fun to drop in on the Brontes for an afternoon. I'd like to be a fly on the wall.

>7 majkia: Most interesting. Love to know his view of Sherlock Holmes.

I opened the year with a re-read of Little Women and totally fell back under the spell of the March sisters, especially Jo, so I think I will spend some more time with her and continue on with the next book Little Men.

This will be an interesting one. There are so many historical figures that I would love to meet. Imagine coming face to face with some Vikings, or King Arthur. I'll be giving Henry VIII a wide berth for March, I definitely would not want to meet him.

>14 DeltaQueen50: Louisa May Alcott is one of my favorites. My Mom gave her Louisa May Alcott collection to my sister and me when we were younger and we read and reread those books. By the way, my parents named my sister Amy. Enjoy!

>15 Roro8: Love the Tudors. I'd be willing to meet Henry VIII, but it might be safer just to be part of the crowd watching him pass by.
Love to see which historical character you end up meeting.

>16 cbfiske: Thanks. I grew up loving Little Women and all the sequels as well. I am enjoying my return visit to these books.

>14 DeltaQueen50: Be sure to check out Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother Not only is it a fascinating look at how she developed her characters and stories, but more important how her father's work managed to impoverish the family, and how little recourse and support her mother and sisters were able to find to just live, let alone thrive. Also shows how the fight for abolition meshed with the fight for women's rights. Very well written, well researched, highly recommended to any Alcott fan (of which Ive been one for several decades!)

I was always fascinated by Mary Todd Lincoln since I discovered her when I was a kid. I've read a few books about her as an adult and think I'll either do a bit more, or reread Emancipator's Wife by Barbara Hambly. Its been a while. Or....someone else, mmmm it might take me the whole month to decide!

This is a tough one. I'll have to think about it for a while.

I've decided on King Arthur and his Knights. Myth, legend or history? I think a short travel through time to the Arthurian court would be amazing, all those heroic, gallant knights.....
My book is not romance based though - Bernard Cornwell's Enemy of God.

>21 Roro8: Enjoy your visit to Camelot!

I really enjoyed my re-read of Little Men and the time I got to spend with Jo March Bhaer. Although this was a very different Jo than the one in Little Women. Over the course of 10 years, much of her high spirits have given way to her motherly and domestic ways. But occasionally we were able to see flashes of the old Jo.

I have another re-read scheduled this month with The Hearth and the Eagle by Anya Seton and I look forward to some time spend with Hesper Honeywood, the main character of that book.

The Brontës: A Life in Letters (4****), edited by noted Brontë biographer Juliet Barker. Not a book to be read as a first Brontë biography or you may get confused as to some of the dramatis personae, but Barker does include a helpful if not 100% complete "List of Correspondents" as an appendix. (It's a shame that she didn't include such a biographical glossary in The English Kingdom of France, her history of the late Hundred Years War under Henry VI.)

Barker's book is something of a combination of biography and letter collection, but as a letter collection it shouldn't be considered a substitute for the three-volume Letters of Charlotte Brontë edited by Margaret Smith. (I'd love to get around to reading this one of these lifetimes, but the three volumes all-told come to about $700 on ABE.)

My Arthurian choice was perhaps not the best. It is taking me ages.

I finished a well-written biography of William the Silent who would have been a very interesting man to meet.

I have completed The Hearth and Eagle featuring the strong-willed, passionate Hesper Honeywood. This was a re-read of a book that I read many years ago and I don't think it stood up to the test of time as well as her other books have.

I have finally finished my Arthurian read Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell. Unfortunately this is not going to be remembered as one of my favourite Arthurian novels, only 2.5 stars for this one.

Had you read the first in the series? I really enjoyed it, and read the others as well. Think the first one was the best.

>30 cindydavid4:, yes, I had read the first one. I gave it 3.5 stars. It might just have been a case of the wrong book at the wrong time.

My meeting this month has been with the Duchess of Windsor through her book The Heart Has Its Reasons: The Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor. I had read the Duke of Windsor's autobiography,A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor earlier and couldn't resist picking his wife's memoirs up when I saw them at a used bookstore. It has sat on my bookshelf next to his book and I thought this might be a good month to get her perspective. Well worth it. I especially enjoyed reading about her early life growing up in Baltimore, about which I knew almost nothing before my reading. Definitely an interesting woman. Not sure if I like her or not, but she truly had quite a life with quite a bit going on around her even before her meeting with her royal husband.

>23 DeltaQueen50: Glad you enjoyed your reread of Little Men. Sometime I need to reread the March family saga. This gave me a push to make it sooner rather than later.

>24 CurrerBell: Letters can tell you so much about someone. I also liked the idea of the list of correspondents. I'm the kind of person who loves to be able to quickly look up information on someone I have a question about.

>27 MissWatson: I know almost nothing about William the Silent. You've given me a place to start. Thanks.

>28 DeltaQueen50: Sorry The Hearth and the Eagle hasn't stood the test of time as well as it could have. Thanks for reminding me about Anya Seaton though.

>29 Roro8: Sorry Enemy of God was disappointing. I'll at least have to read one of the books in Cornwell's series, however.

>33 cbfiske: The Little Women books are well worth re-reading, I loved every page! I would recommend either The Winthrop Woman or Katherine for excellent Anya Seton historical reads.

>27 MissWatson: : Birgit, I also chose William the Silent as the person I'd like to have met. I read William, by the Grace of God by Marjorie Bowen, the 2nd part of her work of historical fiction which began with Prince and Heretic, which I read last month. The first part was better written, though I'm glad to have read them both. I'm adding the biography to which you linked to my Wish List.

>35 countrylife: Oh, thank you for that tip! I've never heard of Marjorie Bowen before, but a novel about William seems promising. Somheow they stay in the mind much longer than biographies.

>23 DeltaQueen50: I almost love that book more than LW. Watching the children grow up and seeing our heros as adults, and how much love there still was in that school, that home, that family (and for those who insisted Jo had to marry Lawrence, this proves that Bahr was the man for her). plus I still remember the beautifully full color illustrated plates of some of the stories (the one where the little boy and girl were lost in the woods was my fav) and the story of the twins losing their father. Scenes permanetly etched into my brain. Oh and the description of the lovely little kitchen that Jo gives to Amy's daughter. I can still see that room and all the little tea cups and muffin tins...long before Easy Bake.

I just finished a second (see >24 CurrerBell:) Brontë-related book, Maria Frawley's English Authors Series: Anne Brontë, which I'll give 3½*** but only because it makes a significant contribution to Brontë studies in its subject, Anne being often overlooked elsewhere. The book is unfortunately written in "academese" with too much of a graduate-thesis tone – although in fairness to Frawley, I think this may be typical of the Twayne English Authors Series, so she was just giving the publishers what they expected.

This month the challenges were especially challenging. I think I am really participating in too many when it comes right down to it but should be able to keep up better by the end of the year when I no longer have that time stealer called a full time job.

For my meet-up character I chose Agatha Christie. I got her autobiography down from the shelf. It is very long. There was no way I could fit that into this month's reading but it just so happens that I have Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie. Not only is it a bio of Dame Agatha but it is also a graphic novel.

It covered the events of Agatha's life and, because of the genre, Poirot was even able to make an appearance. It is a real gem of a book.

I combined this month with my Presidential Reading and so read about Thomas Jefferson. Although the number of pages I read was small (about 65), much of the reading was very technical.

I read Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, a 10 page article written by Henry Wiencek for The Smithsonian Magazine (Oct. 2012), Jefferson’s Inaugural Address of 1801, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Thomas Jefferson on Politics, The Personal Papers (University of Virginia) and Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to William Short” (Jan 3, 1793), Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, Series 1, Reel 17

Since I teach briefly about Jefferson when I teach about the Declaration of Independence, I wanted to find out some other new, interesting material. I think I was most interested by the article in the Smithsonian, that tells the story of Jefferson either changing his mind or being beat down by popular culture in the time period between when he wrote the Declaration and the time he died. He was fiery in the Declaration about the notion of “all men created equal.” Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”(Wiencek, Smithsonian). This language was stricken from the Declaration as 6 southern States, including Georgia and South Carolina refused to accept the wording. Following this though, Jefferson seems to have been silent about slavery. When Washington died he freed his slaves. Jefferson only freed 1 slave, but failed to free his wife or 7 children. What made Jefferson change? Or, did he just get carried away by his own fiery writing? Good question to ask if I were to meet him!

This was a fun challenge, Carla! I've enjoyed reading about everyone's meet-ups via books.

>41 countrylife: Glad you enjoyed it, Cindy. I did, too.
>34 DeltaQueen50: Thanks for the idea of where to start with Anya Seton, Judy!
>38 CurrerBell: Sorry for your "academese" encounter, Mike.
>39 Familyhistorian: Agatha Christie would be fun to meet, Meg. I remember reading an autobiography of hers, Come, Tell Me How You Live, that I really enjoyed.
>40 Tess_W: Quite a man of contradictions, Tess.

One more meeting to add. I finished Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist. Started March meeting a real Duchess and finished it meeting someone who was a Princess for the Star Wars movies. I enjoyed reading what Carrie Fisher had to say about the filming of the first Star Wars movie including entries from a diary she kept at the time. She writes well and definitely kept me reading. I also found it interesting to learn about her life as Princess Leia after the movies became such hits, for example what it's like to go to the conventions and sign autographs for the people who are superfans. I'm glad she was able to share all this before her death.

>42 cbfiske: I have Come, Tell Me How You Live on the shelf. It's good to hear that you enjoyed it.

>40 Tess_W: I thought about your meeting with Thomas Jefferson. Later this month, my husband and I will be attending a history coffee hour at the Old State House in Dover, Delaware where Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the women in their lives will be discussed. This past week they covered George Washington and Martha.

>45 cbfiske: Sounds wonderful!

>46 Tess_W: We attended our history coffee hour on Thursday. Very well done. Among the books included in the Recommended Reading was one by Joseph Ellis titled American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. Sounded like an interesting one.