March 2023 Zoom Reading Circle
The Personal Librarian. It is getting better. It was so slow to start and I don’t care as much for 1st person writing. But I am enjoying it now and am definitely intrigued by the real life lady the book is about. Also, interesting to read about JP Morgan ‘saving the US economy’ in 1895 and again ‘saving the banks/economy’ at the time of this book - 1909/1910. Especially since that bank just failed on Friday... Silicon Valley Bank. A friend texted me when that news broke that her sons company banks with that bank and now can’t make payroll because the bank failed - so all employees are on furlough. Monday the news came out that the government will step in and cover all money so I guess that means her sons company can make payroll, but it sure is a scary thing...
Pros - definitely interested in this fascinating woman from history that I had never heard of. I want to know more about the real woman.
Cons - keep feeling like they are just making up things for the story and some of those things are not very flattering. Is there actual precedent for their characterization of her and her behavior? Or is it just to make the book more scintillating? I would not be happy with some of the added things (like her slightly promiscuous behavior) if it is not documented. Just something I am thinking about.
Updated...
I found info at the actual Morgan Library website - there is total documentation of the affair between Belle and Bernard Berenson. For about 40 years. I am wondering if that means that the majority of information about Belle comes from her letters to him? I feel kind of badly for her if that is so... he was supposed to destroy them and clearly didn’t. And since she destroyed most of her papers and journals and correspondence, that means the sum total of knowledge of her is from those letters that he was supposed to get rid of. She probably wouldn’t like to know that...
However, I am soooo intrigued by this woman! I do want to know more. I see several other books that are suggested reading on the Morgan Library website so will try to get to at least one more from that list. Quite a story and quite a lady. Still weird about the passing - at first that threw me and I guess as a white woman I couldn’t figure out if that was ‘okay’ or not. That is silly of me and quite presumptuous, too, I guess. (and based on my reading of The Vanishing Half!) Looks like passing was more common at that point than I ever realized (common is relative, of course). Makes me think of the movie Passing that a friend had alerted me to.
What I do know is that our nation has consistently made it hard or impossible for people to 'rise up from their bootstraps' on their own. That is not even a 'thing', even though it is a mantra here. You can only 'rise up from your bootstraps' if you HAVE bootstraps; if you have some means or connection and certainly if you are white. At least that is how it was for so long. And that truly does matter and we must, at the very least, keep that in mind when we view history. Belle de Costa Greene was quite a woman who certainly took her future into her own hands and became a world famous librarian and expert in rare books.
Zoom Reading Circle rated the book, The Personal Librarian, at 3.74.
However, the true story of Belle de Costa Greene we rated 5+ :)
Truly I am utterly fascinated by the woman, Belle de Costa Greene. I have been searching for more information about her and found the following links quite interesting and helpful.
Here is a blog post from The Library of Congress about Belle de Costa Greene.
https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2022/02/belle-de-costa-greene/
Here is a video from The Morgan Library & Museum that I found so interesting. It delves further into the relationship between Belle and Bernard Berenson - and explains that he never destroyed the letters she wrote to him.
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