Memoir about abusive relationship sends chills

Ralph and I went to a book signing Sunday at a small bookstore where we met a woman who wrote a memoir about the life she led with her abusive first husband.
Leslie Morgan Steiner of Washington, D.C. read several compelling passages from "Crazy Love" to a small group gathered at the store on a summer afternoon.

Here's the link to a story I wrote about her appearance.

Meme accomplished

Linda, the author of Are We There Yet? and a fellow Nutmegger, tagged me Sunday for this, The Fifth Sentence Book Meme. I got around to doing it today and it was fun!
Here are the Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

And my offering is:

I picked up "The Intellectual Devotional American History" which has been sitting on the coffee table since I gave it to Ralph for Christmas.
In an incredible coincidence when I opened to the specified page it was about the "one and only" Phineas Taylor Barnum.
He is of course quite a character, and someone about whom I blogged in August, after we visited The Barnum Museum in Bridgeport.
Coincidentally at the time Linda left me a response that she'd like to visit the museum someday.
I recommend it. As for this book, I admit I haven't read it yet.

Here are the three sentences:

Exhibiting her throughout the Northeast, Barnum made a huge profit off gullible audiences who paid to gawk at the woman Barnum claimed had been "George Washington's nurse." He soon hired his most famous midget, the twenty-five-inch tall Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-1883), who went by the stage name General Tom Thumb and became so famous he was summoned to meet Great Britain's Queen Victoria in 1844.
Barnum, who later in life established his first traveling circus, P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Circus, was the first to admit most of his shows were pure "humbug."
And now I tag:
Lynn
Odat
Michele
Sari
The Curmudgeon

Have fun!

The book cover meme

Joan gave me this today. It was fun to do ~ the rules are simple.
Go to the Advanced Book Search on Amazon.com.
Type in your first name in the book title and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.
I almost picked an inspirational book ("Patti's Pearls") by the wonderful Patti LaBelle, until I saw this:

I cannot believe that, Boomer that I am, I had never heard of this doll! I want one.
I've heard of Chatty Cathy and others, but not Patti Playpal. What lovely red hair she has, and a perfect peaches and cream complexion.
Now I know what I want for Christmas.
Thanks, Joan, for this meme!

I just tagged five folks for the other meme, so this one is up for grabs. I urge you to give it a try.

Off to the library

I'm dedicating this post to our recently-retired librarian friend, Joan.
I wanted her to see our beautiful library. It was built in the early 1900s, in part with a $3,400 donation from industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. It was one of 2,509 libraries his vast fortune helped establish throughout the English-speaking world, with 1,679 of them built in the United States.
OK kids, today's history lesson is over.
My husband referred to the library on his blog yesterday and I decided to show it off.
Photo credit: Kathi Gordon