January Reading

January reading…. For the book club, I am reading Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, NY 1822-1872 by Nancy Hewitt and The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century, by Catherine Clinton. I’ll add thoughts as we work through the books. I can’t recall what audio book I just picked up at the library. It is something Kathy thinks I will like.

Update January 13th –

Having finished Clinton’s book, I find that some of her wording sparked some presentation ideas and I find her content to be more basic than I was expecting. I chose her book for the book club as a non-geographically specific alternative to the Hewitt book. While I knew Clinton’s book is one of the earlier books looking at the social dynamics of women’s history, I didn’t expect to find myself going through the book thinking ‘knew that, knew that, knew that…” Please don’t think I thought this was a poor book. I don’t. I just hope it wasn’t all old information for the BC readers.

I’ve brought the Hewitt book with me the past few days hoping I would have a chance to read. I’ve only made it through the preface and introduction. Even with just these few pages, I’m enjoying the direction of the book. I’ve started a chart of the three tiers of women in Rochester participating in social reform.