Dropping the Ball

I knew this would happen. I was going to post at least once a week since I started this blog back in January, but.... I felt better after I checked a niece's blog and saw that she hasn't posted in over a month. OK, so she has a toddler and an infant, but still!

Meanwhile, my reading list grows longer, the next title on my Lincoln biography list has arrived from the Carlinville Public Library (where's Carlinville?), and my garden is starting to require regular upkeep.

I must tell about the lovely book, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. I am enthralled - and if I weren't so dang tired every night, I'd be able to read more than 1 or 2 chapters before the "yawn/tears" syndrome makes me give up. I started this book after enjoying the recent Masterpiece program, "Cranford," adapted from her book by the same title. Both books follow life in English country towns just before and during the coming of the railroad which changed rural life forever. Sort of like Jane Austen during the Industrial Revolution. Women still have to marry to survive, but the heroines possess a bright inner spirit that leads them to difficult personal decisions. I marvel at the author's ability to show weak women and mean women with her words.

I did think that I already knew about all the great English women authors, but Elizabeth Gaskell escaped me! How great to find a book written in 1866 that has so much truth about human relations.