A Secret Sisterhood

I've been reading my Christmas presents and watching Veep. I'm busy, and I need downtime, and Veep (recently discovered and loved by my kids, and thus by me) is funny, short, and addictive. And I can borrow it from the library. The books engage me, distract me, and bring me back to the world.

I love books that show how people's lives intersect, and that's what's going on in A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, by Emily Midorikawa & Emma Claire Sweeney. (Part of the fun of this book is that it was written by a literary friendship!) Turns out each of the writers in the subtitle had a special woman friend who tends to get ignored or overlooked in literary history, so these two writers have improved literary history. I knew about the "rivalry" part of the literary friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, but I did not really know how friendly they were. They were!

I've known that Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? by Alyssa Mastromonaco was on the bestseller list, and I keep watching for it to appear at the library. It hasn't yet, as it is available in electronic and audio forms. But I got it for Christmas, and I do love reading hard copy. It is a funny and informative book by the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff to President Obama. It goes really well with Veep.

When not working, editing, reading, or unwinding to Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President, I am directing For the Loyal, by Lee Blessing, at Heartland Theatre, so my head is full of football, acting notes, and sound cues.