No Surprise and #Nails #MondayRecommends

My #4 Daughter bought me this book for Mother’s Day. Is anyone surprised? Anyone?

It’s a feel-good book, relentlessly upbeat, so don’t expect it to touch on anything like the bleakest, most shameful parts of the history of the continent after the coming of the brewsters. The barest mention of maltreatment of the Native Americans, so far just passing references to slavery. It’s bizarre to read about sugar and rum, with not even a hint of the Triangle Trade. To read about Virginia’s “plantation culture” with only a shadow of what that culture represented to the enslaved people who shouldered it. Hucklebridge does emphasize the contributions of African brewing customs to the development of Southern brews, when the barley and hops that thrived in the north withered and died in the Southern heat.

So, if you want a feel-good book, relentlessly upbeat, this book’s for you. It’s informative, especially with the kind of trivia I love. I learned that Martin Van Buren was, to date, the only president whose first language wasn’t English — It was Dutch. Dutch was still spoken inland in the territory formerly known as New Netherland into the twentieth century.

Here are my nails this week, all cozy and tea-ish:

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about tea.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

You may also like...

One thought on “No Surprise and #Nails #MondayRecommends

    • Author

      Marian Allen

      October 20, 2020 at 12:00pm

      It IS interesting. I like the histories of bits of things that tie in with Big History. Like the reason the German-American beer barons supported the Union in the Civil War was that they came to America to escape the disorder caused by the bits of territory that would become Germany refusing to unite.

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Author

      Marian Allen

      October 20, 2020 at 11:57am

      I actually had some chai-flavored beer the other day. Not a fan, but #4 Daughter loved it!

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply

Leave a Reply, If You Ple-az

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.