Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's Daughter and Book-Buying Binges

Actually, I am planning a smattering of binge purchases in the near future.
Independent bookstores have reminded consumers that they will be the hardest hit purveyors of books during the current crisis. Makes sense. As a  result, I will order some books from my favorite independent bookseller in Lake Placid, New York. Tourism is down everywhere, and Lake Placid is deeply influenced by that market. And they are a wonderful store, with an incredibly knowledgeable staff. I hate to think of them taking a hit. I think I'll give them a call tomorrow. If you're able, do give your local bookseller a call or a visit.

When I received an email from the New York Public Library that they are closing tonight for the indefinite future(!), I imagined hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers all clamoring to borrow their ebooks online, and since that is one important source of the books I read, I immediately went online and ransacked the list of books I've been dying to read and managed to borrow two of them. So far I've borrowed Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz (2019), which is a novel about Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva. Then I discovered on Wikipedia, that a comprehensive, authoritative biography of Alliluyeva was published in 2015. So I have just returned from the NYPL website where I borrowed Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, by Rosemary Sullivan, which is over 700 pages. Whew!  I think I'll be happier overall with the biography, because from what I've read, the novel is largely fictionalized. I'll return that tomorrow. As some of us slightly older folks may remember, Alliluyeva defected to the U.S. in 1967, in the deep, dark winter of the Cold War. How well I remember the stir that caused!

I spent three hours this afternoon reading Bleaker House, which I've mentioned  in my previous post, and then  listening to 44 Charles Street by none other than Danielle Steel, which I'm enjoying immensely, while knitting. This is not a recent Steel title. I've had it in my queue on Audible since the beginning of time. And I will repeat that 1) when I'm knitting, a carefully chosen Steel novel is an excellent novel, because information tends to repeat, and 2) they most often portray fiercely independent female protagonists and tell a story that combines a struggle to succeed, with some romance, but the romance never supersedes the woman's desire to succeed. I think some readers have under-rated her, truly. I'm careful about the titles I select, but she is very far from being a fluff romance author.

***While I was writing this post, during the actual time it took to write it, our wonderful Hyde Collection Museum and my beloved Crandall Public Library has closed its doors for the forseeable future  with no end date. This hit Ken and me hard, very hard. Things are closing down. I do expect it will be for the better good, but it's difficult for all of us on the planet  regardless.