Dixie! I loved The Lincoln Highway and I hope you do too! I have always been a fast reader, which actually makes it challenging for me to read things that are meant to be savored, like poetry or non-fiction that has a less narrative structure like theology or philosophy. I think I would benefit from training myself to slow down while reading. I have recently experienced the sensation of a WHOLE BOOK going missing from my memory bank, as in "I know I was reading a book last week, what was it??" It does not speak well of my comprehension . . .
As for what I am reading now, I have two that as a historian I think you'll like. First, I'm telling everyone about The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. It tells of year in the life of real-life colonial midwife Martha Ballard, who delivers babies and helps solve a murder while living her daily life as wife, mother, and sometime-matchmaker. Lawhon based this novel on the non-fiction book A Midwife's Tale, a Pulitzer Prize winner based on Martha's diary by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, which is now on my TBR list so I can learn more about the real Martha (I'm hoping the part where she tells off a Harvard-educated physician for dosing laboring women with laudanum is true!!)
Second, I also recently read Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote by Ellen Carol Du Bois. Very good history of the suffrage movement in the United States and how it impacted and was impacted by other social movements of the time (abolition, temperance, etc) I learned very little about suffrage in high school history and I really enjoyed a good book about it that helped fill in a few of the gaps in my understanding.
Ulrich's book is so wonderful! You will enjoy it. I had no idea someone had written a novel about Ballard -- I will admit that I feel a bit apprehensive that it could be as good as the real deal. But I will take your word for it and also put it on my TBR list!
I am familiar with that "missing book" feeling. This is an indication that we need to read more slowly, perhaps!
Dixie! I loved The Lincoln Highway and I hope you do too! I have always been a fast reader, which actually makes it challenging for me to read things that are meant to be savored, like poetry or non-fiction that has a less narrative structure like theology or philosophy. I think I would benefit from training myself to slow down while reading. I have recently experienced the sensation of a WHOLE BOOK going missing from my memory bank, as in "I know I was reading a book last week, what was it??" It does not speak well of my comprehension . . .
As for what I am reading now, I have two that as a historian I think you'll like. First, I'm telling everyone about The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. It tells of year in the life of real-life colonial midwife Martha Ballard, who delivers babies and helps solve a murder while living her daily life as wife, mother, and sometime-matchmaker. Lawhon based this novel on the non-fiction book A Midwife's Tale, a Pulitzer Prize winner based on Martha's diary by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, which is now on my TBR list so I can learn more about the real Martha (I'm hoping the part where she tells off a Harvard-educated physician for dosing laboring women with laudanum is true!!)
Second, I also recently read Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote by Ellen Carol Du Bois. Very good history of the suffrage movement in the United States and how it impacted and was impacted by other social movements of the time (abolition, temperance, etc) I learned very little about suffrage in high school history and I really enjoyed a good book about it that helped fill in a few of the gaps in my understanding.
Ulrich's book is so wonderful! You will enjoy it. I had no idea someone had written a novel about Ballard -- I will admit that I feel a bit apprehensive that it could be as good as the real deal. But I will take your word for it and also put it on my TBR list!
I am familiar with that "missing book" feeling. This is an indication that we need to read more slowly, perhaps!