Summer Reading

It's been an incredibly rainy and gloomy June so far here in the City of Dreams. The New York Times ran a story about the "rain rage" developing in New Yorkers, so watch out. And while I'll be extremely happy when real, sunshiny summer finally arrives, I'm trying to enjoy the June Gloom and remember that this is much preferable to the 90-degree, humid, unbearable weather we had this time last year.

So, I've been attempting to enjoy rainy day activities such as more movie-watching, more napping and more reading. Luckily I live just a few blocks away from a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which provides me with a steady supply of reading material. After reading Progressive Pioneer's account of the book These is My Words, I ordered it from the library right away.
I guess I misread her post, because I thought it was a fictionalized version of a real pioneer's woman's actual diary, but it's actually just loosely inspired by the author's grandmother. I was about 100 pages in before I started to suspect that the steamy romance with an "ornery soldier" was too good to be true. But oh well, I'm still totally captivated by this book. The main character, Sarah, is awesome and knows how to ride horses bareback and tend gardens and birth babies and raise cattle and fight off attacks from hostile Indians and horse thieves.

When it rains in the book, flooding the entire homestead, Sarah has to fend off a swarm of poisonous frogs, deal with a corral of panicked horses, shoot a rattlesnake and then has to ride through dangerous flood waters to help her sister-in-law who is deathly ill, with her toddler, while pregnant. So, yeah. This rain isn't so bad.