Six Degrees of Separation - From The Proud Way to Little Women

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where one ends up.   This month’s starting point is Rodham: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, in which the author reimagines Hillary’s life if she hadn’t married Bill.  My sisters liked her book Prep but I have no interest in reading this book which sounds so invasive. Leave Hillary alone!

However, it somehow reminded me of my first book, The Proud Way by Shirley Seifert (1948), a historical novel about Varina Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy, married to Jefferson Davis.  Varina came from a slave-owning family in Mississippi but received a better education than most women of her class and, perhaps influenced by Northern relatives, did not approve of slavery.  Her birthplace, The Briers, is now a B&B, if I ever make it to Natchez.  This book belonged to my mother.

Bookshelf Traveling - July 25, 2020

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which is being hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.   

After traveling with Eva Ibbotson last week, I reread her Magic Flutes and then decided I had never read The Star of Kazan so began that one.  Do you know sometimes you are so familiar with an author or genre so well that you recognize what is going to happen and then you think, wait, have I already read this?   It happens to me with Elizabeth Cadell and D.E. Stevenson’s books, most but not all of which I read years ago, and is definitely happening with The Star of Kazan.   We’ll see if I am right.  As it is an audiobook, I now realize I should have been pronouncing Eva as “Ava.”

Law and Disorder (Book Review)

Title: Law and Disorder, Book 1, The Finnegan Connection
Author: Heather Graham
Publication: Harlequin Intrigue, paperback, January 2017
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Plot: Kidnapped while visiting her family home in Florida, Dakota “Kody” Cameron has no one to turn to – except the unexpectedly attractive man holding a gun. Outnumbered and trapped in the deadly Everglades, she has little recourse, but something in this captor’s eyes make her believe he is not as evil as the other men threatening her. Does she dare trust him?