For The Record

I am on the road, currently in the Boston (Massachusetts) area. I love going to the numerous discount book stores in downtown Boston and on Harvard Square. In Harvard Square, there is only one that I am aware of: the basement of Harvard Book Store. 

The books I am currently reading:

• The Peabody Sisters, Megan Marshall
• Lord of the Rings, The Complete Classic, With Appendices, Maps, JRR Tolkien
• The Letters of JRR Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien
• Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, Jeffrey Meyers
• The Girl I Left Behind, Judith Nies

I've read several biographies/critical reviews of Tolkien and his works, and I've started Lord of the Rings on many occasions but never seem to be able to complete it. Maybe this time will be diffearent. The Letters of JRR Tolkien are restricted to his letters about the Lord of the Rings, and is fascinating, what little I have read of it.

Because I am in Belmont, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and less than 20 minutes from Concord I finally decided to sort out Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, et al. Of course, that led me to the Peabody family. I happened to run across the Megan Marshall biography and again, another great biography. The copyright is 2005 which means it is probably the most recent (and last?) book written on the Peabody sisters, to include Sophia who married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mary Peabody, who married Horace Mann.

I've had the biography of Scott Fitzgerald for quite some time, but haven't had time to get to it. There was no hurry; I've read many biographies of Fitzgerald and Zelda. Finally I've started this biography and love it. I read it on #73 bus line to and from Boston's Harvard Square and Waverly Square in Belmont.

I don't have a habit of reading current literature or current biographies, but it appears I may have stumbled onto a most interesting memoir written by a woman just a few years older than I who happens to now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just down the road from where I'm staying.

The Girl I Left Behind is by Judith Nies.

It's about her experiences growing up in the '60's. From Amazon.com:

Nies, author and activist, offers a refreshingly candid look at her own life as a product of the 1960s and 1970s. After completing graduate school overseas in international affairs, Nies returns to the U.S. in 1966 to race riots and the burgeoning antiwar movement. She marries a Treasury Department employee, then lands “the most interesting job in Washington,” working as an aide to a group of 10 liberal congressmen.

Against the familiar backdrop of assassinations, the Chicago Democratic Convention riots in 1968, and the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings in 1970, Nies outlines her own hostile work environment during those years. After writing an article on the “institutionalized sexism prevailing on Capitol Hill,” she lands a new job working for a congressman’s wife.

At the same time, her own marriage is disintegrating due to the chasm between her activism and her husband’s administration job. Nothing really new here, but Nies’ personal take on the ripple effects of the women’s movement—both on those involved directly and those who followed—is honest and engaging.

Tonight I think I finally understood why I enjoy reading so much. Perhaps I will post that sometime. But not tonight.