My lightest haul yet!

For the first time ever, I left the library book sale with a modest stack. I brought a tiny tote bag, which almost never works. This time, I had to be somewhere by a certain time. I guess that’s a trick I need to remember for next time.

6 new books:

Behold the Dreamers
by Imbolo Mbue 

The cover drew me in. I did the quickest of skims on this book and saw a reference to Lehman brothers. The book sale was impossibly claustrophobic and I needed to make some quick decisions.

Spending more time reading the back cover now — yeah, this looks like it’s going to be fantastic.

Somewhere I have a Lehman-related doodle that I wanted to include here. For the life of me, I can’t remember which sketchbook it might be in.

Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters
by Jennifer Chiaverini

This jumped out at me because I just learned from Alexis Coe that we need to stop calling her Mary Todd Lincoln. She never referred to herself this way. The “Todd” wasn’t necessary to differentiate her from her daughter-in-law Mary. It was a way for William H. Herndon to tie her forever to her southern roots and question her loyalty.

In the maddening book I just finished reading, it mentioned that Mary “gained greater control over her emotions” 🙄because of her half-sister’s problems being worse…needing to pass through the Union to return to Kentucky after her husband Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm was killed in battle. They tried to keep tit a secret, but still got push back. When told “you should not have that rebel in your house”, Lincoln responded “General Sickles, my wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests. We do not need from our friends either advice or assistance in the matter.”

In any case, I’m interested to read a woman’s take on Mary.

Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald

This guy General Sickles?

I wasn’t familiar with him previously, but he’s also in the book I’m currently reading and put down long enough to go buy more books and slap together this post: The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen L. Carter. I’m going to need to dig into him more because he’s one of these are-you-freaking-kidding me characters. He lost a leg during the Civil War (which itself sounds like an interesting story I’m going to get into here). He murdered his wife’s lover, son of Francis Scott Key (the elder Key being the one who wrote The Star Spangled Banner). Across the street from the White House! While he was a freaking congressman!

The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood

Right off the bat, this has something in common with the previous book: a suicidal sister. Unlike the other two books I’ve read by Atwood, this one doesn’t seem to be a dystopian hellscape. Wondering if any unexpected people will pop in like last time.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson

I learned a little about the migration while reading about FDR / Civil Rights earlier this year. Looking forward to learning more. This book was specifically called out as being exceptional when I paid for my purchases.

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
by Cokie Roberts

Dang, I wish I read this one already. In the next issue of The POTUS Notice, historian Rebecca Grawl is coming back to talk about the women of the Revolution. I’m sure this book will inspire doodles that would be perfect to include with the upcoming guest appearance.

This book also includes recipes and for a second I considered maybe making one… but they start with things like “boil the head till the Tongue will Peal” so probably not.

1776
by David McCullough

Our birthday is coming up so I really had no choice but to add this to the pile.

Also, I knew Knox — the guy who decided to trek 300 miles in the dead of winter dragging ~120,000 pounds of artillery — but I did not know he was a 25-year-old bookseller.

A bookseller!

For reasons I can’t quite articulate, that makes him even more of a badass in my book. No pun intended.

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch 

NOTE: the ✔️indicates that I’ve read the book. (Not yet. I just bought these! Gimme a minute.)

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PS If you’d rather hear about books that I actually did read, here are a few:

PPS Here’s my collection of library book sale hauls, past and present.