Book of Ages by Jill Lepore

Jane Franklin was the younger sister of Benjamin Franklin. He was the youngest son and she the youngest daughter of a large colonial family in Boston. He was six years older than she and, due to gender, miles ahead of her in opportunity. While he was provided with some education and allowed to leave the family candle-making business for an apprenticeship in printing, she, as was standard for the times, was kept at home with no opportunity for education or choice in employment.  He went on to become one of the wealthiest and most accomplished men of all time: writer, scientist, philosopher, diplomat and Founding Father of our country. She became the wife of a poor man and mother of twelve children, only one of whom survived her. He wrote many books and pamphlets, including his Autobiography and Poor Richard's Almanac which are still read today. Her only book, Book of Ages, was a handmade book for personal use, in which she recorded the births and deaths of her children and husband. But she was a writer, exchanging letters with her brother and other friends throughout her life. Her letters have survived due to her connection to her famous brother.  Now author Jill Lepore has used them to write a life of Jane Franklin.  Few people have ever been as gifted as Benjamin Franklin, but in Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Lepore paints a picture of a woman whose innate intelligence outshines her lack of education.  Life in the colonies before and during the Revolutionary War required a courage and perseverance hard for modern Americans to comprehend. Jane Franklin’s letters assist historians in their examination of the life of ordinary people in Colonial America. Drudgery, poverty, illness and death were the order of the day for the American colonists, particularly the women. The rights of women lagged behind the Rights of Man and, in fact, were years in coming. But women contributed to the struggle for independence as well as men, as this book shows.

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The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr

How much thought have you ever given to perfume? Have you lingered in a department store wondering which scent would be best for you, or looked at ads and wondered if a simple spritz could make you more like your favorite celebrity. No matter how much you've thought about perfume, the people who make these scents have spent a lot of time coming up with the perfect scent, and how to market it to you.

The New York Times scent critic Chandler Burr takes year long look in to how perfume is created. He goes into the luxury brand Hermès to watch them create a new perfume that reflects their brand, and can help them compete with brands like Chanel. He also gets an inside look at the creation of Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovey, by the more mainstream perfumer Cody, and even has exclusive access to the actress herself. The amount of thought, time and number of people behind creating a perfume is amazing, and the amount of money behind these scents is astonishing.

Whether you have a collection of bottles or a signature scent, The Perfect Scent is a fascinating look into all the work that goes into making a perfume.

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Mommy Dressing: A Love Story, After a Fashion by Lois Gould

Bad mothers are the most interesting mothers, particularly when they are someone else’s.  In this light, Jo Copeland, mother of author Lois Gould, was a particularly interesting mother. She was a perfectionist who could not express any kind of warmth or kindness to her two children. Copeland was a fashion designer for over fifty years, beginning in the 1920’s.  Professionally successful and glamorous, she helped create the American fashion industry (as opposed to the French.) Her designs were worn by such diverse personalities as Gypsy Rose Lee and The Duchess of Windsor. Both Copeland and her husband were shallowly obsessed with appearances and their marriage did not last, leaving Gould and her brother in the care of nannies and housekeepers. They were isolated in their bedrooms, subjected to long periods of enforced silence and strict senseless rules. In general, they were left out of their mother’s life. A father who bragged that he could “handsome up a room” and a mother who would criticize a daughter for perspiring or getting a pimple were not best suited for raising children. However, Mommy Dressing: A Love Story, After a Fashion is not the emotional, self-pitying memoir it could have been. Gould delves into the story of her mother’s own emotionally deprived childhood, a childhood that left her unable to mother her own children. Good writers always have a talent for empathy and sensitivity that helps them explain the incomprehensible behavior of others. Lois Gould’s purpose in writing this book was not revenge but understanding and her success is the reader’s gain.   

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Mother by Judy Olausen

Judy Olausen’s mother, Vivien, is definitely a good-natured good sport. In her daughter’s book of photographs, Mother, she is the only model and she proves to be willing to pose in all manner of ridiculous situations and costumes in this send-up of the 1950’s ideal housewife and mother. In pictures filled with 1950’s memorabilia, she washes, dries and irons laundry. She scrubs, vacuums, shops, cooks and waits for the man of the house to arrive. Mother goes to church. Mother serves drinks. Mother gets her hair done. Mother goes camping. Mother IS a coffee table. Mother IS driftwood. Mother IS roadkill. Mother IS a doormat. Mother is an excellent model and MOTHER is just plain funny.

Check out Mother @ the library! Also check out other books featuring moms with our May book display!

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann Ross

Ann Ross’s fifteenth novel featuring Miss Julia and her friends and family is a comfortable and warm as a quilt. In Miss Julia’s Marvelous Makeover Ann Ross introduces new characters from Miss Julia’s distant relatives that Miss Julia would like to keep that way or as far away as possible. Miss Julia’s cousin sends her granddaughter, Trixie, to learn manners from Miss Julia and to find a husband in the small southern town of Abbotsville. This town is so well drawn that it often seems as if it is another character in the book.  During this book’s summer Miss Julia must deal with this unwanted house guest plus her beloved husband, Sam has a minor health scare and decides to run for state senate. Yet through it all Miss Julia remains true to herself and steadfast in her faith. 

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American Girl by Mary Cantwell

Born in 1930, Mary Cantwell developed her powers of observation growing up a bit of an outsider in Bristol, Rhode Island, during the Great Depression and War years. Catholic in a mainly Protestant neighborhood and school, she grew up in a close-knit, three-generation family. Her experiences were ordinary for the time and place, but her writing ability makes even mundane aspects of small town life vital and interesting: sharing a bedroom with a sister, having a glamorous aunt, attending school, surviving a polio epidemic, being a Girl Scout, celebrating the Fourth of July, going to the movies, the library, the park, church. Life was slower then and people seemed to do things in a more leisurely way. Today’s shopping experience will stand in stark contrast to a shopping trip with grandma to The Bluebird Shoppe where the ladies of Bristol bought their support garments. Each corset, slip and other unmentionable was removed from its own slender box and tissue paper for examination and fitting and then carefully replaced. With good humor and sincere affection, the author exposes the strengths and weaknesses of small-town homogeneous society, complete with its prejudices, bullying, and sense of safety and generosity of spirit.  American Girl: Scenes from a Small-Town Childhood shows us a world lost to progress. For everything gained, something is lost. 

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Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway

Jim Kennoway is a curmudgeon, an angry seventy year old loner. In the summer of 1973, after losing a leg to disease and unhealthy living, he decides to live alone at his family’s beach house on Fox Island off the coast of Maine. Here his lack of mobility and heavy drinking make him even angrier. He relishes a solitary life until August when a young woman from the Solomon Islands arrives for a visit. Cadillac is the daughter of Tosca Baketi, who was Jim’s native scout and guide when he fought in the South Pacific during World War II. She is on her way to study at Yale’s medical school. A state department agency has decided she should spend a month with Jim to get accustomed to life in the United States. Jim, who was unaware of her existence and never really thought of Tosca since the war, is not happy about her presence. Sensing and respecting his aversion to company, she keeps her distance. He does his best to be hospitable. Over the course of time he comes to like and admire Cadillac. He also mulls over his life story, not just the time spent with Tosca during the war but also his childhood, marriage and academic career studying birds. All his life Jim had been a loner and passionate about his likes and dislikes. He had been a world traveler, familiar with Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific before the onset of the war. But now, having lost his wife, his leg and his profession, his world has shrunk to Fox Island. His likes have narrowed to liquor, cigarettes, birds, Hemingway and Treasure Island. Human nature is complicated. Cadillac, descended from headhunters and cannibals, is sweet-natured and accommodating. Jim, whose father was a doctor and grandfather an industrialist, has been cruel and even savage during his lifetime. Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway examines the emotional lives of people caught in the web of history and their own weaknesses. 

Check out The Bird Skinner @ the library!