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Showing posts from August, 2016

What're You Reading?

Jobs! Activities! Summer! They all combine to bring a person's reading rate down, down, down. BUT! That person still takes much joy in starting books she has not yet finished and therefore cannot blog about and therefore feels she CANNOT update her blog until she remembers she sometimes posts about books she hasn't finished yet. SO! In the midst of jobbing (*quickly googles if 'jobbing' is some weird sexual slang no it is not ok carry on*), being in tech week for a show (A SHOW THAT IS 1776 ), and gal palling around with my girlfriend, WHAT has been going on in Alice's Book World? All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation  by Rebecca Traister.  This was recommended by someone I work with at the Frances Willard Historical Association, and as of the first 60 pages, it is GREAT. It's mentioned Willard twice  already. And talks about women being more of an independent group in America than ever before, etc etc. If you need

16th C. Angsty French Siblings in History

It's Sunday and let's look at some history I read on French wikipedia, because as far as I can tell it's not on English Wikipedia and might as well put that Comp Lit degree in French lit to use somehow. Today "somehow" will be translating this paragraph about the DRAMATIC AND SAD LIVES of Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet. so many sad things Julien de Ravalet was born in France in 1582, and his sister Marguerite in 1586. They were the children of Jean III de Ravalet, lord of Tourlaville. Tourlaville is in northwestern France, and part of Normandy.  The article is a bit vague, but essentially, Julien and Marguerite were too close for their parents' liking (although the article uses "amour platonique," which totally has the same meaning here as there), so when Julien was 13, they sent him away. A few years later, when, according to the timeline here, Marguerite is 14 , they marry her to Jean Lefevre de Haupitois, who's 32 years older.