Biography – Carol's Notebook

Mailbox Monday – 4/15

April 15, 2019January 6, 2020 by Carol13 Comments

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. Tell us about your new arrivals by adding your Mailbox Monday post to the linky at mailboxmonday.wordpress.com. I received Blood Money from the author. And I picked up my Amazon First Read book for the month. ...

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

December 6, 2018November 14, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

I was looking for one last non-fiction book for the year to make it an even 12—a lot for me, and I've been in the mood for Christmas reading, if you haven't noticed from my last few posts. Which led me to The Man Who Invented Christmas. No, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas, but he did help re-popularize it and shape it as a holiday about family and charity and giving. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a point where he was almost flat-broke. He self-published the book, supervising everything from the illustrations to the printing. The story provides a lot of information about how books were published and marketed during the Victorian Era, along with how many were pirated and resold under various guises or made into plays without the author/publisher's consent. While A Christmas Carol didn't make him the money he had hoped, it did become a perennial favorite. It helped shape how we celebrate Christmas and the values we think...

American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson

August 16, 2018August 15, 2018 by Carol5 Comments

I have to thank Katie at Doing Dewey and her Nonfiction Reading Challenge for encouraging me to read more non-fiction this year. This is the 9th non-fiction book I've read this year, which is the most since Amber was little and I'd read aloud to her. We used to read a lot of animal, science, and history books but, in general, I don't tend to pick them up on my own, so it's been nice to do a bit of learning with my reading lately. American Eden is the story of David Hosack (August 31, 1769 – December 22, 1835), a botanist and doctor in New York City in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. I admit, I was drawn to the book at first because he was the doctor at the duel between Hamilton and Burr. (I have not seen Hamilton the musical yet, but it's coming to Pittsburgh in January if anyone wants to buy me tickets.) Turns out he...